We all are eager to know about our children’s secret life, what they do at school, how they connect with friends and so much more. But how do we ask the right questions, so that it does not scare away our kids or irritate them?

In previous times adults were practically not interested in their children’s lives. Kids lived somewhere below the level of the adults’ view (at that exact time the term “children's subculture” was formed in psychology). Attention, given by adults, was concentrated on children only in some extraordinary cases. For example, if a child had severely injured his knee and required instant medical aid. Or if a kid had broken a window in the classroom, and his parents were asked to visit school because of that.

Commonly there were three types of signals addressed to children by adults:

—     directions (What to do; What not to do),

—     disapproval, punishment (Got a fight at school — no going out for a walk),

—     neutral informational messages (The lunch is on the table; On Saturday we all    are going to visit our uncle).

Sometimes there were some encouraging and cheering comments too, but not too often, since it was believed that children could get spoiled due to all this extra attention.

Back in the middle of the 20th century, child psychologists and teachers got an idea that adults do need to be interested in their children’s life. Frankly speaking, I do not know what reason would those experts have to make people do that. But there are three possible assumptions:

—      you can never have enough information, so knowing what is happening with your children can always be of use,

—      people require communication, and children are people too (by the middle of the 20th century, almost everyone clearly understood this),

—      children will like being concerned about, thus the relationship between parents and children will have improved.

So if you are interested in your child’s life, you can consider yourself a good parent, and if you don’t care — then you’re a bad one.

And here's my opinion as a practicing psychologist — during the past 70 years there was a drastic deviation to the opposite non-constructive side of parents' attitude.

Now adults want to constantly ask their kids about everything almost as soon as the latter were born. If kids prefer not to reply (basically because they just can’t, since parents tend to ask questions which sometimes can’t be answered even by grown-ups), possible correct answers could be instantly prompted to them by the askers. And those answers can walk alongside children for years.

Kids get irritated and bored because of their parents’ questions. They quickly learn not to hear them, prefer to answer formally and curtly or simply ignore them. When children turn into teenagers, they lose their temper and start yelling: “Leave me alone!”, “Get off!”, “It’s none of your business!”

It is a common fact that kids are perfect imitators. If you really want to know more about their life, then tell them about yours. And your stories should be detailed, natural and exciting. Consider the age of a kid, of course. Tell him everything — what you had for lunch, whom you met, what you are afraid of, what you believe is beautiful and what is disgusting, how you feel about a certain thing now and you felt 20 years ago, what you thought and felt when…

Do it on a regular basis, every single day, and do not expect any response from your kids. And you will just see what is going to happen.

We should already stop asking those mechanical questions we direct to our kids every day: “What did you have for lunch in the kindergarten?”, “Did you finish all your homework?” — and tell them something really interesting from our personal daily life (or from our past). And some time later we will definitely hear our kids telling something really important about their own life.