Be in the same room doing nothing
Children disclose things sideways, during dull shared time, not when asked directly how they are.
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The BeingKind editorsPublished How this is written
Why it lands
Difficult things surface in the gaps — in a car, at a sink, halfway through a walk — and almost never in response to a direct question. What that requires is quantity of unstructured shared time, which is precisely what busy households eliminate first in favor of organized activities. The dull hour with nothing happening is doing more work than the day out.
How
Be present without an agenda: cooking, driving, a jigsaw, a walk with no destination. Do not use the silence to ask how they are. Let them raise things and respond without turning it into a discussion they will regret starting.
Answer if you want. It changes which ideas are shown first.
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