The Interview: Questions to Ask Your Kid Tonight

I scrolled back through my phone last night. Thousands of photos of Munchkin. Her in the yard, her covered in spaghetti, her asleep on Jasmine, her holding Junior for the first time with a look on her face like she'd been handed a live grenade.

And not one where she's telling me what she thinks about anything.

I know what she looked like at two. I don't have what she sounded like. What she was into. What she thought I did that was annoying. I've got the outside of her, thousands of times, and none of the inside. And she's two, so fine, there's not a lot of inside yet. But there will be. And I'm not going to miss it again.

This is the activity that fixes that. I call it the interview. (If you want more than five, I built a questions to ask your kids generator that hands you one at a time, by age and by where you are.) It takes fifteen minutes, it costs nothing, and in ten years it's the most valuable file on your phone.

How to Run It

Sit across from him. Kitchen table, couch, the floor of his room, wherever. Prop your phone up or hold it. Hit record. Video, not just audio. You want the face.

Then ask five questions. Here they are.

What's the best thing about being you right now?

What do you want to be when you grow up?

What's something I do that annoys you?

What do you want to remember about this year?

Is there anything you want to tell me?

That's it. Ask them in that order. The first two are easy and get him talking. The third one is the door. The last two are what you're really there for.

When he's done, stop recording, save it somewhere with the date in the filename, and put the phone down. Then do it again next year, same questions, same time of year. Birthday week is easy to remember. So is the first week of school.

The Only Rule

Don't react. Don't correct. Just listen.

That sounds simple. It's the hardest part of this by a mile. He's going to say something that isn't accurate. "You never play with me." He's going to say something that stings. "You're on your phone a lot." He's going to say something that makes you want to teach a lesson.

You're not there to teach. You're there to record. Nod. Say "okay" or "tell me more." If you argue with him in the middle of question three, you'll never get an honest answer to question five, and he'll never do this with you again.

I'll say the thing plainly because I've had to learn it: when your kid tells you something about you that you don't like, the worst move is to explain why he's wrong. The best move is to shut up and think about it later, alone, when he's asleep. That's what the recording is for. You can watch it back.

Why These Five Questions

I picked these on purpose and I'd ask you not to swap them out until you've done it once.

"Best thing about being you" gets him talking about himself in a way kids don't usually get asked. Most adults ask kids what they did. Almost nobody asks them what they like about their own life.

"What do you want to be" is the one that changes the most year to year, which is exactly why it's fun to have on tape. Firefighter to YouTuber to marine biologist to "I don't know" at fourteen. That arc is your kid growing up.

"Something I do that annoys you" is the one most dads want to skip. Don't. It tells him two things at once: I know I'm not perfect, and I can hear it from you. A kid who learns he can say that to your face at eight is a kid who'll tell you the real stuff at sixteen.

"What do you want to remember about this year" makes him pick. Whatever he picks is what mattered to him, and it's almost never what you thought.

"Anything you want to tell me" is an open door. Most of the time he'll say "no." Sometimes he won't. That's the one you're really there for.

By Age

Four to seven. The answers will be short and weird and that's the whole charm. "Best thing about being you?" "I have a dog." Keep it under five minutes. Don't push for more. The three-year-old who says "I want to be a truck" is the best recording you'll ever make.

Eight to twelve. This is where the interview really works. He's got opinions now and he's still willing to share them with you. Give him time on the annoying question. He might start with something safe and then, if you wait, hit you with the real one.

Teenagers. He'll roll his eyes. Do it anyway. Tell him it's five questions, it takes five minutes, and you're not going to comment on any of it. Then keep that promise. The teenage version of this is the one you'll watch the most later, because it's the version you almost didn't get.

If you've got a teenager who won't sit across from you at all, start with The Drive to Nowhere instead and work up to this.

What Goes Wrong

You turn it into a lecture. He says you're on your phone too much and you spend four minutes explaining about work. Now the interview's over and he knows it. Save it. Watch it later.

You do it once and never again. A single interview is a cute video. Ten years of them is a document of who your kid was. The value is in the repeat. Put it on the calendar right now for the same week next year.

You do it in front of siblings. One kid at a time, alone. He's not going to tell you what he wants to tell you with his sister listening.

You lose the file. Phones break. Save it to the cloud, email it to yourself, put it on a drive. Whatever you do with the photos you'd cry over losing, do that.

What You're Actually Building

I think about my own dad. There were years he wasn't around, and later, when we got right, I would've given a lot to know what he thought about anything back then. I've got no record of the man he was at thirty, and he's got no record of who I was at ten.

The interview is me refusing to let that happen with my kids. It's fifteen minutes a year. By the time Munchkin is eighteen I'll have sixteen of them. She'll watch them at thirty and hear herself at four saying she wants to be a truck, and she'll know somebody thought that was worth keeping.

That's the whole point.

If you want the card for this one on your phone, it's in the activity generator. And if you're looking for more ways to get your kid talking, the father son and father daughter lists are full of them.

Lock in.

-- Gene, The Dad Post