Curious questions
Sometimes it’s just hard to get to the bottom of what your kid is feeling. Maybe they know but are unwilling to share it with you, or maybe they are caught up in a mass of emotions and can’t identify exactly what’s wrong.
Curious questions are a simple tool that can help us get a snapshot of our children’s hearts. As we work in partnership with God and our child, the questions guide us to the root of the problem.
Curious questions seek to understand what a child is thinking rather then simply correct a wrong belief. They are open-ended questions or statements that help to start a conversation which you then follow with further questions or statements. Think of them as clues that you both follow to get to the heart of the matter. For example:
- You seem to be feeling worried. Is that true?
- What are you afraid might happen?
- Does it feel like this or more like this?
- What happened to make you feel that way?
- Tell me more about that.
- What would happen if … ?
As Rachel Turner says, ‘Be genuinely curious and willing to go down the rabbit hole for the pure sake of understanding. We all long to be understood. When we genuinely set our hearts to want to understand our child and to see through his eyes, then we are on the path to building true heart connections with our child.’
For more about curious questions, and other tools to help you draw close to your kids’ hearts, see chapter 25 of ‘Parenting Children for a Life of Faith Omnibus’.
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