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How Can I Help My Child Not Be Afraid to Ask Adults Questions?

- User Submitted

How can I help my child not be afraid to ask adult ques adults questions? More specifically teachers? Oh, such a great question. So I'm gonna tell you, and this is one of my favorite conversations. You're, you're talking with your child, you wanna role play. One of the core challenges that we can, uh, have with parents or as parents is what do we help? What, what about our child? What if they don't know what to say? So we take a situation, say, let's role play it. When we properly practice what I call preparation for deeper conversations or important conversations, we can go into them with more confidence. So in this situation, one of my favorite tools or strategies is, let's role play this. What is it that we need or want to say to the teacher? So it's what I call the what, the why, the how. So what do I wanna say? Why is it important? And then how is really the practice? How am I gonna communicate this with my teacher? So maybe I don't like a grade they gave me. So let's just take that as an example. So what's the issue? The issue is I need to talk with a teacher. I, I'm not sure if I understand my grade. Why is this important? Because I need to be able to have this conversation because I'm, I'm confused. I don't know what to improve. So how do I say that with my teacher? Now you and your child are roleplaying, rehearsing. Well, could it be said this way? What if I said this? Yeah. Well, let's try that. Okay. So say it out loud. You have them practice Now, how does that feel to you? Ah, that is still not right. Okay. So now you've practiced with them to the point where they're like, okay, can I do this? Then they go do it. And what you've taught them is this lifelong skill, and I'm gonna say this in most our most important relationships, one of the biggest challenges that we have is that we don't take the time to properly prepare for these most important conversations. Married couples are the same way. We seem to go into these most important conversations, and we haven't mentally rehearsed or prepared for the conversation. If I was a business person and I was doing a huge presentation that maybe would get us a multimillion dollar deal, I'm not gonna go in and wing that presentation. And yet, with our most important people in our lives, we get into these conversations. We, I say, wing it somehow thinking that we're gonna get positive outcomes. So as a parent, teacher, child, the skill of mental rehearsal and more our most important conversations, it will lead to better outcomes. It really will. And that's a model that if you teach them now, they'll have it for life. So proper preparation, mental rehearsal, will often lead to better outcomes.

Important: The use of parentguidance.local/ and the content on this website does not form a therapist/patient relationship with any clinician or coach.

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Dr. Kevin Skinner