Game

Imagine someone asking her son, "How was school today?"

"Good."

Not so uncommon to find such economy of words, huh?

"What did you do?"

"Stuff."

Is this always the case when we ask our children about their experiences? It might not be, though - not by a long chalk.

Heck, it's sometimes harder to get a school-age child to open up than that of Ebenezer Scrooge's wallet. Try as you might, you just can't make a child talk to you. The more you ask, the more you get stuck. If you've ever poked a snail to coax it out of the shell, you know what I mean.

Recently, I learned a new trick to encourage my daughter to recollect and share her stories after school.

This is how it works for me: "Tell me two things that really happened today - the best part of your day and one not-so-best part. And one thing that are fake. Then I'll guess which two are true."

A good mix of memory integration, humour and imagination. This sidesplittingly funny game has now become the ritual of our dinner.