Ask better questions

When my middle child was a preschooler she was the Queen of Questions. She asked hundreds a day, but one of my favorites from that season was: “Are Mickey and Minnie married?” After some research on the matter, it turns out Walt Disney said in a 1933 interview that they are in fact married in private life. That same day her high-pitched voice wondered to a more pointed question, “Why did you marry Daddy?”

With age my now fourth-grader’s questions have changed. She doesn’t ask quite as many, but she can still ask some doozies. This past weekend she asked my mom if she thinks Grandaddy can see us from heaven. And that’s not one we can Google. She longs to know who he was and what he was like with her questions.

Earlier this week I went on a field trip with the first grade. We went to a museum and then to the city council building to visit with the mayor and a circuit court judge. The most amusing part of the day was hearing the mayor and the judge field questions from a room full of eager 6 and 7-year-olds. These kids aren’t interested in how county government or circuit court works. They’re asking questions like:

How old are you?
Are you married?
Do you have a family?
Do you have a dog?
What do you do all day?
Have you ever done something bad?
What’s the hardest case you’ve ever judged?

They want to get to know the people standing in front of them, and they aren’t yet old enough to filter their questions or to be intimidated by titles and position. It’s entertaining to watch professional grown-ups in typically somber roles answer these sorts of personal inquiries.

Children are naturally good at interviewing people because they are curious and sincere. They just want to know stuff. But somewhere between adolescence and adulthood most of us stop asking as many questions. Maybe being inquisitive starts to sound nosy or ignorant or impolite. Whatever the case, the questions we ask become fewer and more predictable. We see someone who is getting ready to graduate and we automatically default to:

Where are you going to college?
What are you majoring in?
What are you going to do now?

Similarly, I make the mistake of asking shallow, predictable questions of the girls all the time on our car rides home from school:

What did you have for lunch today?
Who did you play with at recess?
Do you have any homework?

I could do better, but old habits are hard to break.

I heard a quote not long ago that makes me want to reframe the way we talk to the girls about their day and about their lives in general.

“The most important thing in your life is not what you do;
it’s who you become. That’s what you will take into eternity.”

Dallas Willard

One of the best ways I can think of to start doing this is for us to ask better questions of them. Instead of focusing so much on what they’re doing, I want to help them think more about who they’re becoming. It’s a simple but powerful change to add one word to the phrase and ask, “What do you want to be like when you grow up?” instead of “What do you want to be when you grow up?” The first goes deeper and further.

The first time I ever spoke to my now spouse was when he called me to set up our blind date in graduate school. To this day I can remember our conversation and one of the questions he asked me. He caught me off guard when he said, “What is your dream car?”

Now, what he didn’t understand is that as a 24-year-old female I spent a lot more time thinking about my dream guy {turned out I was talking to him} than thinking about my dream car {still not sure I have one}. But his question no less showed actual interest in who I was and what made me tick. It wasn’t as much the quality of the question as the heart behind the question that endeared me to him.

When I think about my favorite people and the reasons I enjoy spending time with them, the one thing they all have in common is this: they ask good questions. Questions that go deeper than the casual, “How are you?” They’re unafraid to ask the harder “why” questions, and more importantly, they’re sincerely attentive to the answers.

Coincidentally, or not, I read these lines in a devotion this week:

We must learn the art of asking and answering
good questions if we want meaningful friendships.

… We need to risk potential conflicts and pose questions with courage—always keeping in mind the purpose: to know each other better and to build each other up in Christ.

IFequip.com

Of course, the best question-asker of all time is Jesus himself. Can you imagine having coffee with him? I don’t think he’d spend much time on small talk. He dives deep. Questions like:

Why are you afraid?
Who do you say that I am?
What do you want me to do for you?
Where is your faith?
Do you realize what I have done for you?
Do you want to be well?
Do you love me?
What’s your dream car?

Just kidding about that last one.

We aren’t Jesus, so I think it’s fair to say that we don’t always know what to ask and when. But I think we can look to his lead and to the example of the kids around us to see the value and beauty of a good question.

And the next time I see a graduating senior I’m going to try hard to switch my question from one that produces anxiety — “What are you going to do now?”— to one that offers them a little more space to breathe and dream — “What are you excited about?”