How was your day?

School is back in full swing. Schedules are crazy, and you are trying to get everyone, including yourself, back into the school routine after the summer. There are lunches, homework, pick up, drop off and afterschool activities that must be figured out, that we sometimes wonder, where did my day go? How was my child’s day at school? Did we even discuss what they did, or did I accept “fine” or “nothing” in the rush of getting it all together? Don’t beat yourself up over this. As we all know, life is busy, and we sometimes must stop and take some extra time to know what really happened in our child’s day. For some parents, it might be easy for your child to tell you everything about everything and how her friend Katie cut her hair this summer and that someone was mean to her on the playground. But for others, it is a true struggle. You get one-word answers or no answers and when they do talk about school, you have no context to understand what they are talking about. This can be incredibly frustrating! Today we want to share some suggestions on how to help your child share what they did in school.

1. Ask Open Ended Questions: “How was school today?” does not bring about a lot of conversation. They need a more specific question to help them remember their day. Avoid questions that can be answered in one word especially “yes” or “no.” Instead, try some open-ended questions like, “Tell me about the game you played at recess today” or “Look at that picture of the farm. Tell me about it.” or “I wonder what you had for lunch today.”
2. Use Artwork or Take-Home Papers to Start A Conversation: It is much easier for your child to tell you about something that they can see right in front of them. Think about it for yourself, how many of your write in a calendar or use your phone to help you remember things? These are all visuals that we use to refer to our day. You will be surprised what your child can tell you, just from a picture or papers they bring home!
3. Start a Routine of Talking About Your Day at The Dinner Table. This is something I have seen many times and creating this routine will help your child share about their day. Go around the table and have everyone share one good thing and one tough thing about their day. Mom, dad, brother, sister, the dog, the cat (of course you will have to speak for your pets), anyone can share about their day. This also helps with learning social skills, like taking turns, listening to others, empathy and much more. Now a discussion can be opened about how to help with those tough things and celebrate those good things! We always need more celebration of good things!
4. Ask Your Child’s Teacher for A Daily Email About Their Day. I cannot say this enough. Teachers at the end of the day are in a rush to get everyone out to where they need to be on time, all their things together, write in assignment notebooks, the list goes on. Sometimes they don’t have time to write in the notebook every day. This is one of those amazing things about technology that is a huge help. Ask for a daily email. If you don’t ask, it will always be no. Ask, but make it simple. Have them share one good thing and one tough thing for your child that day. They can get this done before they leave for the school day. Be persistent if you have asked and they are not sending one. It is important that you know good and difficult things from your child’s day. This will help start the conversation at home, but maybe your child tells you something other than what the teacher told you. Awesome! Now you have another topic to talk to them about!
5. Create A “My School Day” Paper for Your Child to Complete at The End of The Day. These are great, if you really want to know what your child did in school. These are simple papers that they can fill out to look back at their day and say: “Yes, I did that” or “No, I didn’t have that today”. At the beginning, your child might need some extra help filling it out, but once it is a routine, it will be much easier! I have created a sample here. Your child would write the date and then circle or color in all the things they did that day. When they get home, this is a great way to help them remember what they did that day!

There are many more ideas out there on this topic, but we wanted to share a few that we have seen work in the past. Our kids know so much and sometimes they just need a little help to tell us about it. We hope these ideas help and would love to hear what you think about them!