Questions to ask your teenager

13 questions to ask your teenager about music, dancing and going out

Music is the fastest road into a decade. These questions ask for the first record, the dance hall, the song a mother sang at the sink, the Saturday night that got out of hand. 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 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.
2. What music do we play in the car, and who always wants it changed?
3. What is your dance? Show me, and tell me where you learned it.Where they learned it is a person.
4. If our family had a theme tune, what would it sound like?
5. What song makes you want to jump around the room?
6. What instrument would you most want to play, and what is the first thing you would play on it?
7. What music does Grandma or Grandpa like, and what do you think of it?
8. What song do we sing at birthdays or bedtime, and who always sings it wrong?
9. If you could go to any concert, who would be playing, and who would you take?
10. What is a song that makes you sad, and why that one?
11. What music do you hear at school? Where does it come from?
12. 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.
13. 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 9 of the things a writer needs about your teenager: loves and tastes, their voice and sayings, habits, routines and work, key relationships, how they look and move, how others saw them, wants, fears and wounds, objects, places, food, music, the story that shows them.

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