Why Kids Don’t Want to Talk About Their Day (and How to Get Them to Open Up)
The ride home from school can feel like a battle of will with the eldest son. When I start the car, he is a bundle of ecstatic energy. But when I start asking him about his day, his smile fades and he closes his mouth like a safe. The rest of the trip is more jittery than the Law & Order episode , as I listen to any clue that makes it open up to me.
My wife and I shared our son’s excitement that he will go to kindergarten this year. But now that he has a few weeks left, we find it difficult to gauge his enthusiasm. And as someone who found it difficult to communicate at school, I am always worried that other children bully him or he finds it difficult to cope with the curriculum.
But getting kids to talk about their day has been a parenting challenge for generations. And, judging by the myriad articles on the topic, the struggle to find out what’s going on in school will continue in minivans and around dining tables into the distant future.
To help fight, we researched why kids don’t talk about what happens after we dropped them off and shared some strategies and questions that can encourage kids to open up.
Children need to relax after school
Even when adults come home from work, we often need (or wish we had) a few minutes to relax and allow our brains to switch from “work mode” to “guardian mode.” And instead, when we are greeted with a stream of questions and demands – What’s for dinner? Wow, the meatloaf AGAIN? – it can irritate us a little.
According to this article by Megan Leahy of the Washington Post , young children also need time to move from school to “home.” But due to the fact that they are younger, it is more difficult for children to do this:
[B] because children are small and immature, their brains cannot move from “work” to home. When they are overwhelmed, their brains are fried. Children cannot keep their maturity when they are so tired. To add to this dynamic, children who are very sensitive may show even more signs that they are overwhelmed.
Leahy recommends giving the children a few minutes to relax and wait for them to open up. And when they finally start talking about their day, listen carefully to what they have to say: “Look what happens when you don’t let your need to know about [their] day to eat up space and energy. Focus on being a 100 percent listener. “
Small children do not remember the events of the day the way you do.
One of the reasons your child turns you off when you ask how his day went is actually more biological than psychological. The first significant stage of brain development occurs between the ages of two and seven. At this age, child neuropsychologist Alison Gopnik writes in her book The Infant Philosopher: What Children’s Minds Tell Us About Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life , that when asked about their present day in general terms, children cannot study because the brain cannot remember memories in the same way as adults or even older children.
As frustrating as it is to get a standard answer from your child, he does not resist your questions. One way to get them to open up is to use the regular school day itinerary that most preschools and teachers assign to parents at the start of the school year. Gopnik offers to help you ask questions that will help the children recall specific memories of what happened during their day and can trigger a longer conversation.
First tell them about your day
Unless you’re a movie star or, I don’t know, Jeff Bezos, chances are your typical workday is boring and monotonous – and chances are your child thinks that way about their day as well. Maybe the details about long division teaching or who sat next to whom at dinner seem too trivial to summarize. But Sarah Ackerman writes for The Washington Post that when she began spending her day with her daughter, her daughter responded to the request:
It doesn’t matter if you’re a software developer, cashier, blogger, doctor, bus driver, or couch potato, because it’s not about the little things. It’s about sharing what makes us laugh and bored, the mistakes we make and what is difficult for us, the interesting people we meet. When I model this for my daughter, she is more willing to share the same with me.
What if you think they are being bullied?
One in five children is bullied , and 25 to 60% of these children do not report it to their parents or authority figure. As startling as these statistics are, parents probably won’t stop this trend by directly asking children if they are being bullied at school.
If you suspect that your child has been the victim of bullying, there are ways to get them to open up. According to HuffPost , parents should start asking simple, clear questions about who they are playing with and how they are doing. For example: who did you play with today? What was it like? What do you like to do with other children? What do you dislike most?
If that doesn’t work, you can use bullying books, movies, and TV shows as a tool to help kids open up or start a conversation about how kids interact with their peers. Even if your child is not being bullied, starting a conversation like this will show him that he can talk to you about these issues.