“What’s the most interesting thing that happened in school today?”
This is my new thing. The magic is in the open ended-ness. The genius (too much?) phrasing prohibits the “nothing” response which I would say is stereotypical if it weren’t fact. This way of positioning does the impossible, it forces a damn answer.
Sometimes the answer is that “Spencer pulled a massive booger out of his nose during Spanish class and had it on the tip of his finger while he waited to get SeƱor Diaz’ attention for a tissue” and if that’s the most interesting thing to have happened, than so be it. Also, ew, Spencer! Seriously, dude?
But other times, and more often than not, you’ll hear a genuinely enlightening nugget of reality, a retold moment allowing you to peer into your kid’s daytime life such as “in music class we weren’t being very good so she asked if we needed to relax. We said yes and she had us all lay down on the floor to get into our most comfortable positions, and then we closed our eyes. Our teacher quietly asked us to relax each body part, until even our finger tips were like jell-o. It was so neat and after that everyone was good and got to work playing our instruments.” That’s the very thing the Bear told me last night over dinner.
Give this a shot after school one day to find out exactly who shot the biggest snot rocket in the cafeteria or what clever trick the teacher used to reclaim control of her/his classroom. You might just find out that your kid’s day involved a lot more than nothing.