Speaker 1This episode is brought to you by Biogland Smart Minds. New term, fresh start, and every child meets it differently. One isn't sleeping, one can't switch off a busy mind, one's carrying big feelings they can't quite name. I've been there as a parent, and these are gummies I genuinely recommend. Sugar-free and designed to support growing minds, balanced moods, and restful sleep. Find them online and in-store at Holland & Barrett. Today, I am giving you five questions that will completely transform the conversation when your child gets home from school. Because how was your day? How was school? Almost never gets you anywhere. And there is a very good reason for that. These five questions open the door. I'm Dr. Mary Han, and this is how not to screw up your kids. Every parent wants to know how their child's day's been. And almost every parent asks the same version of the same question. How was school? Who did you play with? What did you have for lunch? What did you learn? And almost every child gives some version of the same answer. Fine, or good, I don't know. Or, if they're a teenager, nothing at all. Now, this is not because children do not want to talk. It is because the question, how was school, is almost impossible to answer well. It asks them to mentally review and summarise an entire day while they're standing in the hallway, with their shoes still on, exhausted, having held themselves together since 8am. It's too big. It's too vague. And it can feel less like connection and more like a check-in or an interrogation. Today, I'm giving you five questions which are specific, warm, and genuinely easier to answer. Questions which open up a conversation rather than demand a report. Now, let's start with the distinction between the fine lens and the wide lens and how that shows up in the questions that we ask. So, when we think of this from a fine lens, the problem, our child comes home and we cannot get a word out of them. Yeah? We ask, they shrug, we try again, they disappear in their room, and we're left guessing how their day actually was. So, that's the problem. That's the problem that we're facing. The wide lens that we take when we zoom out and think about a skill rather than a problem, what looks like a communication problem is actually a skills gap in the habit of daily connection. So, the skill we're missing that we're going to be building on, that we're going to be talking about in my top tips, and the five questions is how can we fill that gap and create a habit of daily connection? And that habit matters far beyond the school run because research shows when it looks at parent and child relationships, children who feel heard in the small daily, day-to-day life that seems somewhat irrelevant conversations are significantly more likely to come to their parents with the big things. The pattern set now, does talking to a parent feel easy and worthwhile or effortful and interrogative shapes the relationship that we're in? We have with them through those teenage years and above. So, it's a really important sort of area for us to really reflect and get it right. So, these five questions build that daily connection habit one afternoon at a time. So, the two things from a skills perspective that we're building is first is the habit of daily connection, the small, super low stakes conversations that keep that channel open so the bigger conversations can happen later. We don't know when they're going to happen, but we're building that habit of connection so that they can come later. And secondly, when we're thinking about the skill that we're building when we begin these conversations and ask these questions of our children at the end of their school day is we're trying to build a habit of a child's capacity and capability in being able to reflect on and name their own experience. And that's a really crucial skill, not only to give us a bit of a rundown about how their day was, but because it also builds emotional literacy and self-awareness over time, which is going to be crucial for them in terms of their trajectory into adult life. Now, before we start on the five questions, I just want to highlight timing because it is absolutely crucial that we get the timing right when we begin to ask these questions. Now, school is our children's place of work and that place is an enormous, cognitive and emotional load on children in exactly the same way as whatever it is that we do for work places an enormous cognitive and emotional load on us. So from the moment our children walk through the door in the morning to the moment they walk back out, they are holding it together. They're managing instructions, relationships, expectations, effort, social dynamics, the constant low-level monitoring of how they're doing. And so by the time they get home, yeah, their bucket is full. Or already overflowing or very close to capacity. And a full bucket does not have room for reflection, connection, or conversation, however warmly it is offered. And this is true for all children, but it can look very different in each child, even between siblings in the same household. So for me, even with my own two children, when it came to that bucket, they both presented differently when they were talking to each other. And they got back from school and they both needed different things in terms of emptying it. So do not be misled by the child who comes home talking. Talking is not quite the same as being ready to connect. You know, some children need to eat before they can function. Some need 20 minutes alone. Some need to move, to run, to kick a ball, to get outside. Some need something passive, a screen, a book, quiet. And some, particularly younger children, actually need to be alongside you before they can settle down. Not because they are demanding, but because borrowing from your calm is how they begin to discharge the load of the day. And that might be particularly relevant if you're listening to this with a child who has just started in reception or even in year one. So that last point is worth sitting with. Developmentally, young children cannot regulate on their own. Their nervous system borrows from ours. And that's what we talk about when we have this notion of co-regulation. And it is as physiological as it sounds. When you sit alongside a depleted five-year-old and you stay warm and calm, you're not just being kind, you are providing the neurological scaffolding they need to come down from the day. Over time, they internalize that capacity and they will build the ability to regulate themselves. But that takes years. And for now, your presence is the mechanism. And so that might be something that we have to do. We have to reflect on in terms of what does our day look like and how are those first 30 to 60 minutes when our children get back from school to be able to consider for our children, and it will all be different for all of you, what do they need and how can you make that available to them? So I would encourage you to spend a week maybe just simply noticing what empties your particular child's bucket. Is it food? Does everything shift the moment they have eaten? Definitely the case with my son. Is it time alone? Definitely the case with my daughter. Do they reemerge completely differently after 20 minutes in their room? Is it physical? Something about moving their body. Is it connection? Proximity to you, but low demand. No questions yet. So once you know what empties your child's bucket, you stop fighting the transition home and start working with it. You build the emptying in first and then when the bucket has a little room in it, you can offer the questions. So here we go. The five questions, and they are not for the hallway, they are for after. So before we get into the questions, a word of warning. If your household has been stuck in there, how a school loop, the one word answers, the silence, the shrug, you're not going to break out of that habit in a single afternoon. Your child has learnt what that question means and what is expected from them in terms of response. So what we're trying to do now is build a new, a new routine and new habits and they do take time to bed in. And so I would encourage you to maybe just think about if you have been stuck in that loop and trust me, I have been stuck in that loop. It took me a very long time to come out of it and I still kept going back into the, how was your day? What did you learn? You know, who do you spend time with? That just go gentle with it. Don't go launch straight in with five questions. Pick one that feels easy. Yeah, that is the right word. I was about to kind of change it, but actually easy for you because it feels like something that you might naturally say and easy for you because you feel it's relatively low stakes for your children to be able to respond to. So here are the five questions. Number one, she says five questions. And I just want to give you some of this context in terms of what I would like you to do. So here is how to do it in a way that actually works. So the first thing is commit to a regular time and place. Same question, same moment in the day same warmth every day. Consistency is what signals to a child that this is how things are now. This is what we're doing now, what we did in the past. The moment we do this consistently and regularly over time, they learn that that's a part of that new pattern. In exactly the same way as our children that go from preschool or nursery or being at home full time to starting school, this is what the pattern looks like. And so they can begin to expect it and predict that it's happening because of that consistency. So consistency is what signals to a child that this is how things are now. And the routine itself creates safety because they begin to know what to expect. And that predictability is what eventually lowers the guard. So if it happens every day, it stops feeling like an interrogation and starts feeling like just what we do in this house. This podcast is brought to you by Biogland Smart Minds, the tasty gummies supporting young people's sleep, mood and focus with high quality magnesium and carefully selected vitamins, amino acids and natural extracts to help your child's brain and body function at their best. It's that time of year again, new school, new college, new everything. The year seven and a blazer they'll grow into it by Christmas, the backpack are bigger than they are. And here's the thing I come back to again and again. Every child meets this moment in their own way. One's lying awake at night, one can't quieten a whirring mind, one's wobbly and out of sorts and can't tell you why. I remember it as a mum too, that knot of hope and worry as you wave them off at the gate. So these are gummies I'm genuinely happy to recommend because there's something for each of them. A nighttime gummy for sleep, a focus one for those busy brains, a mood and mind one for the wobbles. Sugar-free and designed to support growing minds, balanced moods and restful sleep. Available online and in store at Holland and Barrett. Number two, I would recommend that you start with either one or two questions, not all five. The five questions below run in order. So I'm going to give them to you in a hierarchy from the easiest to the most open. So begin at the top of the list. Two questions is more than enough. You are planting seeds, not conducting an interview every day. And if you have a child that is regularly either said nothing or grunted, then go slow. Because that predictability and then knowing it's almost like a subconscious level. They begin to prepare the answer. Another caveat before we go into the questions is before you ask your child anything, answer the question yourself. So the best part of my day was we're modeling what we are saying, what we're going to ask them to do. This does two things. It removes the spotlight from them. Suddenly it's not an interview. It's a conversation and it shows them by example, what sharing actually looks like. And children who see parents reflect on their own day gradually learn to do the same. And it provides them a little bit of a template, a little bit of an understanding of, ah, so that question means this because that's the way that my parent has responded. So that's point number three. Point number four is be patient and keep going. At first, they may still shrug. That's fine. Do not push. Do not show disappointment. Do not abandon the routine. The consistency is doing work even when it does not look like it. Children are pattern recognition machines. They will notice that this happens every day. And then one day, often the day, probably that we're least expecting it, they will have something to say. So we've got ourselves all together. And remember, these run from the easiest to the most open. Start with the first two and build from there as the habit takes hold. Number one, rate your day one to 10. Super simple. They've just simply got to give a number. One is the worst day you can imagine. 10 is the best. Where does today sit? That's it. They've just literally got to give you a number. They don't need to do any in-depth aspects of that. We might follow it up with, what was it? But this is the lowest barrier question there is. Your child does not need words, does not need to review their day, does not need to know how to describe how they feel. They just need a number. And because it is concrete and almost playful, even children who have been given one word answers for months will usually engage with this one. It works at five and it works at 15. So that's super easy, low level. Let's start with that one. Question two, one thing that impacted the score. So what is the one thing that made it that number rather than higher or lower? So they've already have some context because they've given you that number. Do not do this follow on question if there's been resistance at the first time. If they've given you an answer, then go ahead with this one. Again, remember that you're answering first so that you can give them an idea of how they can go about responding to it, but keep up the faith. If they don't respond, they don't know how to, this might be a habit piece of that connection that they're still working on. So they've already got that context because they've given you a number. And what this question does is it builds directly from it. So it does not feel like a new demand. Just one thing. One moment, one interaction, one feeling that explains the score. And that's what you will want to be doing when you do your response first. The specificity of the one thing, the one moment that affected the score is answerable and the connection to the number makes it feel logical rather than probing. So that's question number two. So those that you go no further, if you have been stuck in a rut for a really long time of either one word answers or nothing at all. Questions three, four and five. I've just now get progressively more open. Question three is one thing that made them laugh or smile. What is one thing, even something small that made you smile or laugh today? Positive and light. Children almost always have an answer to this, even on difficult days. And the act of retrieving it from their memory, naming it and sharing it with you is itself actually quite regulating because it puts them back in that moment. It shifts the mood of the conversation a bit. So that's question three, which is useful before the harder question, which follows. It always tells you something real about their social world that you would never get from how a school. So that's question number three. Question number four, one thing they found hard. Now you can see we're beginning to get deeper here. Now we're getting into much more open and probing questions. Was there anything hard today? Just one thing. By now there is warmth and momentum in the conversation. So this question, lands very differently at number four than it would do at number one. You wouldn't start with this question. There needs to be a little bit of that warmup of that connection. And we're building that habit of reflection. They've already given you a number. They've explained a moment. They've shared something joyful. The hard thing now feels like one piece of a further picture rather than the point of the exercise. So, and adding just one thing keeps it manageable. It keeps it light. Catalogue their struggles. Just name one thing. That's question number four. Question number five. It's a lovely open one. Anything still on your mind? Is there anything you're still thinking about from today? Anything still with you? This is the deepest question and the one most likely to produce the real conversation. And it comes fifth for a reason, because it's that last piece. You're not pressing. You're not leaving a door open. And often it is this one. Ask gently, after the others have warmed the connection that produces the moment we're hoping for. When our children, when we're first asking that, how was your day? How was school? What did you learn? What did you eat? It catches the unresolved worry, the moment being replayed, the thing that has not been processed yet. And if you do not get an answer in this moment, that's fine. You may not get an answer at all, but you might just plant the seed that they later on in the day is that I'm here. I'm available for you whenever you need that. Now, remember that timing matters as much as the question. Asking the moment they walk through the door when they are at their most depleted after literally holding it together all day is rarely going to be the right moment. Give them 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 60 minutes. Let them have a snack. Let them decompress. Whatever they need is really crucial. And side-by-side conversations work better than face-to-face ones in the car while cooking on a walk. No eye contact required. Something about doing an activity together typically lowers the threshold for talking. So use that. So I hope you find that helpful. Let me know how you get on when you try these questions. Which question did you try? How often have you done it? What response did you get? Were there shifts? Were there not shifts? How did you feel about it? What did you feel about it? And on Thursday, in the next episode, I'm exploring one of the biggest questions in parenting. How do you raise a child who is genuinely confident from the inside? Not performing confidence, not just telling them that they're wonderful, but building the real thing from the inside out. I will see you Thursday. And that's everything for today. Be as kind to yourself as you're trying to be to your children. You don't have to get it right every time. And the fact that you're here, learning and growing already says a lot. For more episodes and all the resources to support you, head to drmaryhan.com. I'm Dr. Mary Han. Take good care of yourself. I'll see you Thursday. © transcript Emily Beynon
PodcastTranscript AI