Questions to ask your teenager

43 questions to ask your teenager that are funny

Laughter gets more truth out of people than seriousness. These are the questions that produce the stories the family will quote for years. Ask in the car or while doing something else. Eye contact is the enemy of a teenager's honesty.

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 is the funniest thing that ever happened at school?
5. What is a rule you would make if you were in charge of the whole world?
6. What does Grandma always say? Say it the way she says it.
7. If our family was a team, what would it be called, and who would be the captain?
8. 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.
9. What would you put in a time capsule for when you are a grown-up?
10. What do you think I was like when I was your age?
11. What is something you know how to do that I don't?
12. What is the best thing about our family? And the most annoying thing?
13. 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.
14. 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.
15. What is the scariest place in our house at night, and why that one?
16. What can you hear through your bedroom wall?
17. What do we do at our house that you think no other family does?
18. Who do you sit next to, and what do you talk about when you are supposed to be working?
19. What is the best thing in your lunchbox, and what do you trade away?
20. Which teacher would you want on your team if the school was attacked by dragons?
21. 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.
22. 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.
23. What do you do on the way home from school that takes the longest?
24. If you were in charge of the school for one day, what is the first thing you would change?
25. What does the animal you know best do when it thinks nobody is watching?
26. If you had to be an animal for a whole day, which one, and where would you go first?
27. If a dog could talk, what would it say to you first?
28. What would you name a pet dragon, and where would it sleep?
29. Which animal from a story or a film do you wish was real?
30. What is the funniest thing you have ever seen an animal do?
31. Which animal do you think is most like you? What do you both do?A child's self-portrait, in one animal.
32. What is a game you and your friends made up? Teach me the rules.
33. What do you and your friends laugh about that grown-ups do not get?
34. Who is the funniest person in your class, and what did they do last time?
35. If you could invite three people to a sleepover, who, and what would you do at midnight?
36. What secret do you and your best friend have that you are allowed to tell me?
37. 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.
38. What music do we play in the car, and who always wants it changed?
39. What is your dance? Show me, and tell me where you learned it.Where they learned it is a person.
40. If our family had a theme tune, what would it sound like?
41. What music does Grandma or Grandpa like, and what do you think of it?
42. What song do we sing at birthdays or bedtime, and who always sings it wrong?
43. 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.

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 12 of the things a writer needs about your teenager: the story that shows them, loves and tastes, beliefs and values, how others saw them, their voice and sayings, key relationships, objects, places, food, music, wants, fears and wounds, habits, routines and work, temperament and humour, who they are, how they look and move.

More questions to ask your teenager

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

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