I wanted to write a quick follow up to my post on praise versus interest. Hopefully you were encouraged to look for new ways to communicate your interest and care in both your child and their creativity/creation. My own daughter is in the process of writing a short story for her homeschool class, and so I had opportunity to put into practice my own advice, and I was so surprised by the results.

I stink at it.

I learned that asking truly interested questions requires not only interest (though without it, it’s nearly impossible - more on that in a later post), but also a retraining of my way of asking questions. Even when I was most interested - I truly cared not only about the piece of work she was creating, but also her - I struggled with asking questions that opened up conversation. Too often, I ask leading questions. A leading question, in case you don’t know, is a question that is leading towards a certain response. In a court room, a leading question is a question asked to get a specific answer, often a yes or no answer. “That short story took you a long time to write, didn’t it?” is a leading question - it is likely to only get a yes or no answer, and then, well, the conversation stops. “How long did it take you to write?” isn’t much better, though it will get an answer that is hopefully more than one word.

The weird thing about leading questions is what they are really doing. Open ended questions allow the person answering to tell their story - to share something they want to share. Leading questions, on the other hand, allow the one asking questions to direct the story. It gives a subtle control of the conversation to the question-er, rather than opening up conversation. Since I want to know others better, I want to open up that conversation, not shut it down . . . Even if it means that I am not “in control” of where the conversation is going to go.

So I’ve begun to listen to my questions before I ask them, and make sure that they are opening the way to more conversation, not leading my daughter (or anyone) to follow my lead. It sounds silly, but it’s proving to be surprising effective (despite my awkwardness in doing it). Take a look at the questions you are asking, and hopefully your own conversations will be richer for it!