Questions to ask your child

85 questions to ask your child about their world

Children are natural storytellers until someone teaches them not to be. These questions are for a bedtime book about them, an "all about me" book, or just for hearing how a seven-year-old sees the house you both live in. Ask one a night.

How to use this list. Ask by voice and record it. One or two questions a visit is plenty; the follow-up ("Who else was there?" "What did she say?" "What happened the day after?") matters more than the next question.

1. What is the bravest thing you have ever done?
2. If you could have any animal as a best friend, which one, and what would you do together on a Tuesday?
3. What is something grown-ups don't understand?
4. What happened on the best day you can remember? Start from when you woke up.
5. What is the funniest thing that ever happened at school?
6. What is a rule you would make if you were in charge of the whole world?
7. What does Grandma always say? Say it the way she says it.
8. What were you scared of when you were little, that you're not scared of now?
9. Tell me about a time you helped someone.
10. If our family was a team, what would it be called, and who would be the captain?
11. What do you want to be really, really good at?
12. Make up a story where you are the hero and something goes wrong halfway through. What goes wrong?This is how a kids' book starts. Trouble in the middle.
13. What does our house sound like in the morning?
14. Who is the kindest person you know, and what did they do?
15. What would you put in a time capsule for when you are a grown-up?
16. What do you think I was like when I was your age?
17. What is something you know how to do that I don't?
18. If you could ask Grandpa one question about when he was little, what would it be?
19. Tell me about a time you were really, really angry. What did you do?
20. What is the best thing about our family? And the most annoying thing?
21. What is the best hiding place in our house, and has anyone ever found you there?The hiding place is the child's own map of the house.
22. If you could change one room in our house, which one, and what would you put in it?
23. What is the first thing you see when you wake up in the morning?
24. Whose chair is whose in our house? What happens if someone sits in the wrong one?Children see the seating rules more clearly than the adults who made them.
25. What does our kitchen smell like on a Sunday?
26. What is the oldest thing in our house, and whose was it before?
27. Where do you go in the house when you want to be on your own?The place they retreat to is a portrait.
28. What is the scariest place in our house at night, and why that one?
29. What can you hear through your bedroom wall?
30. If a new kid moved in next door, what would you show them first about our street?A child's map of the neighbourhood is a chapter adults cannot write.
31. If you could only save one thing from your room, what would it be?
32. What do we do at our house that you think no other family does?
33. Who is up first in our house, and what do they do before everyone else is awake?
34. What happens in the first ten minutes of school? Start from the gate.A ten-minute scene told start to finish is how a child learns to tell a story.
35. Who do you sit next to, and what do you talk about when you are supposed to be working?
36. What is the best thing in your lunchbox, and what do you trade away?
37. Which teacher would you want on your team if the school was attacked by dragons?
38. What is the rule at school that makes no sense?A child's case against a rule is the funniest, fairest writing you will get from them.
39. What are you the best in your class at?
40. Tell me about a time you got in trouble at school when it was not your fault.Injustice at seven is told with more detail than anything else in a life.
41. What does the playground sound like at break time?
42. What do you do on the way home from school that takes the longest?
43. If you were in charge of the school for one day, what is the first thing you would change?
44. What did you learn this week that you did not know last week?
45. Who at school would you pick as your partner for anything, and why them?
46. What is the thing at school you are secretly nervous about?
47. What does the animal you know best do when it thinks nobody is watching?
48. If you had to be an animal for a whole day, which one, and where would you go first?
49. Tell me about a time an animal surprised you.
50. What is the biggest animal you have ever touched? What did it feel like?
51. What animal are you scared of, and what would make you less scared of it?
52. If a dog could talk, what would it say to you first?
53. What animal lives near our house that most people never notice?
54. What would you name a pet dragon, and where would it sleep?
55. Have you ever looked after an animal? What did you have to do every day?
56. Which animal from a story or a film do you wish was real?
57. If you found a lost animal on the way home, what would you do first?
58. What is the funniest thing you have ever seen an animal do?
59. Which animal do you think is most like you? What do you both do?A child's self-portrait, in one animal.
60. Who is your best friend right now, and what was the first thing you ever did together?
61. What is a game you and your friends made up? Teach me the rules.
62. What do you and your friends laugh about that grown-ups do not get?
63. Tell me about a time you fell out with a friend. How did you make up?The making-up is the plot.
64. Who is the funniest person in your class, and what did they do last time?
65. What makes someone a good friend? Name one who did it.The named example turns a value into a scene.
66. If you could invite three people to a sleepover, who, and what would you do at midnight?
67. Who is a friend you do not see much any more? What do you remember doing together?
68. What secret do you and your best friend have that you are allowed to tell me?
69. What do your friends call you, and do you like it?
70. Who in our family is like a friend to you, and what do you do together?
71. What would you do if your friend was being picked on?
72. Who was your first friend ever, when you were really little? What do you remember about them?
73. What song do you know all the words to? Sing me the first line.Record the line; it is the child's voice at this exact age.
74. What music do we play in the car, and who always wants it changed?
75. What is your dance? Show me, and tell me where you learned it.Where they learned it is a person.
76. If our family had a theme tune, what would it sound like?
77. What song makes you want to jump around the room?
78. What instrument would you most want to play, and what is the first thing you would play on it?
79. What music does Grandma or Grandpa like, and what do you think of it?
80. What song do we sing at birthdays or bedtime, and who always sings it wrong?
81. If you could go to any concert, who would be playing, and who would you take?
82. What is a song that makes you sad, and why that one?
83. What music do you hear at school? Where does it come from?
84. Make up a song about our house. What is the first line?Children compose on demand. Record it; it is the book's best page.
85. What is the best sound in the whole world?

What these questions are for

A good book about a person needs more than facts. It needs the person on the page: how they talked, what they wanted, what they did when it mattered, the story that shows them. These questions cover 14 of the things a writer needs about your child: the story that shows them, loves and tastes, beliefs and values, how others saw them, their voice and sayings, key relationships, wants, fears and wounds, habits, routines and work, objects, places, food, music, where they came from, temperament and humour, who they are, loss and fate, how they look and move.

When people ask these. a birthday; the first day of school; a new sibling.

More questions to ask your child

• Questions to ask your child that are funny
• Questions to ask your child that go deep
• Questions to ask your child for a quick conversation
• Questions to ask your child about the houses they lived in
• Questions to ask your child about their school days
• Questions to ask your child about music, dancing and going out
• Questions to ask your child about pets and animals
• Questions to ask your child about friendship

Or see questions for everyone else, and how to interview a parent about their life.