Essential Conversation Starters for Parents

Most parents know they should be talking to their kids about this stuff. Almost nobody knows how to open it without it turning into an argument, or a shrug, or a door closing.

The problem is almost never the parent. It's the opening line.

"Who were you talking to?" gets you nothing. "What's the most unhinged thing you've seen on there this week?" gets you a conversation.

What's inside

• Questions by age band: elementary, middle, high school
• Questions by worry: screens, friendships, someone they've met online, mood
• What to do when you get a one-word answer
• The three things that shut a conversation down fastest

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Why this works

I spent nearly three decades in schools, and a lot of that was getting teenagers to tell me things they didn't want to tell me. Almost none of it was clever. It was mostly asking better questions and then shutting up long enough to hear the answer.