It is a long-known fact that you should not ask your child “How are you?” But that arsenal of correct questions, which, thanks to psychologists, parents already have in their arsenal, can eventually get boring for both parties: the one asking and the one answering. I wanted to come up with something new. That’s what I came up with. It’s essentially a simple a game of similarities and differences. I invite Verochka, my youngest daughter, to talk about such topics 👇 - Name five similarities between you and your friend. - How are a dance teacher and a music teacher similar? - How do yours change? thoughts when you are surrounded by your peers and when you are alone in your room? - How is your evening different from this morning? List five points. - How different were your emotions in English class from those in arithmetic? Would you like to talk about these? emotions? (At home we use Plutchik’s theory, where there are eight basic emotions). - How did today’s food aromas in the dining room differ from yesterday’s? Remember the five aromas. Most often, when thinking about the answer, a child has an insight/discovery when he suddenly becomes brighter? see the obvious. I’ll use the example of Verochka and me to show how we had a conversation about a new school. She started first grade at one school, finished it at another, and now she has a new school, her third. Two weeks passed from the start of the school year, and I asked: “How is the current school different from the previous one?” Vera named five points. Moreover, she would have stopped earlier, but since the task was “five”, that means five. I quote: 1. The previous school did not have a uniform, but the current one does. 2. School rules differ significantly from each other. 3. There was no discipline in that school, but here there is. I would like to stop at the third point to clarify. Vera began her education in a public school. The first teacher taught the children well: in order to acquire knowledge, it is important to first hear and understand it. Children are used to concentrating in such conditions. April-May Vera completed her studies at a private school. In the classroom you could get toys during class, play with them, walk around the class during class, and talk. The children who studied there from the very beginning were accustomed to it, they felt absolutely comfortable, but Vera found it difficult to concentrate and remember. She often told me about this, and together we planned that she would definitely manage to get used to it. In the second grade, Vera went to a new school, it’s just that our family circumstances developed that way. Here there are more children in the class and there are rules to work calmly in class. I’m not talking about that silence where children are turned off with the phrase: “Stand up, sit down, shut your mouths!”, but about a normal, comfortable, healthy environment. In a word, I could talk for a long time, but the point is that our Vera responded so much that she turned on add this point to my comparative analysis of schools. And note, I didn’t ask her: “How do the children behave?” There was a completely different question, thanks to which I learned significantly more! Let me return to the list of differences: 4. At the old school, it was so noisy during breaks that my ears hurt, the breaks were very long and I wanted them to end as soon as possible. Here the breaks are much shorter, but we have good time to play during them because there is no yelling. 5. Here, throughout the school, the children are kinder. Of course, the fifth point also requires explanation, but this will be the text of a whole separate post, I won’t go deeper. Briefly, I will say that it is a matter of perception of the aura, the general atmosphere. I feel this too, so I understand what Vera is talking about. Now imagine how much new I learned about my daughter’s life, about her thoughts and feelings! We discussed so much together! This definitely wouldn’t have happened if I had asked simply: “How are you?” or even: “Where do you like best?”!! Behind this are very valuable, irreplaceable things in the relationship between parents and children: trust, understanding, attention to each other, listening, the ability to hear. I come up with questions for Vera in the context of our lives + 7 913 917 87 48