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Questions to Ask Your Kids That Beat How Was School

By Joshua S. Brogley · September 5, 2026

How was school gets fine for the same reason how are you gets good: it is a status check, and kids answer it like one. Questions that get real answers are specific, low-stakes, and aimed at their world rather than your agenda. What was the funniest thing today. Who did you sit with. What is the current favorite song, show, friend, fear. The question proves you know their world exists; the answer is how you get let into it.

Take the closed-book quiz first

Before improving your questions, test your current knowledge: each kid's favorite show right now, best friend right now, the thing they are proudest of this month. No peeking, no asking your spouse. Most dads fail it, because favorites change fast and the office does not send updates. The gap between what you knew and what is true is the exact size of the conversation you owe them.

Specific beats open, sideways beats head-on

What was the hardest part of today beats how was your day, because it can actually be answered. Questions also land better mid-activity, in the car, on a walk, over a game, than across a table with eye contact, which reads as an audit. The mechanics are the same as talking with a teenager, just with training wheels.

A starter set that works

What made you laugh today. Who was kind to you, and who did you help. What would you do tomorrow if there were no school. Which grown-up rule makes the least sense. What are you into right now that I probably do not know about. If today had a title like an episode, what would it be. One per dinner, not an interview. The point is the habit of asking, and the day the answers get long, you have won.

Answer them back

Kids stop answering questions that only flow one way. Give your own answer to the same question, honestly and briefly, and the exchange becomes a conversation instead of a check-in. Related: connecting on their terms, listening to a teenager, and the questions to ask your own parents, which run on exactly the same rule.

Dad The F*ck Up

365 days of showing up like the father they'll brag about. One page a day, one Dad Mission, funny enough to survive the diaper years.

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What should I ask my kid instead of how was school?

Specific, answerable questions: what was the funniest thing today, who did you sit with, what was the hardest part. Specificity signals real interest; a status-check question gets a status-check answer.

Why does my child give one-word answers?

Usually because the question was closed, the timing was head-on, or answers have historically triggered follow-up interrogation. Ask sideways, mid-activity, one question, and answer it yourself too.

written by the author, at the kitchen table, after work.