Meaningful Conversations With Kids (Greater Good in Action)

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How to do it
Why to Try It
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Time Required

The practice will take 10 minutes.

How to Do It

As parents, we often long to build meaningful connections with our children, but it can be hard to know where to begin. This practice invites you to go deeper in your conversations, creating space for mutual sharing that strengthens your bond and nurtures trust.

The research on this practice comes from children ages eight to 13, but you can try it with children between early elementary school and late high school.

1. Choose a calm moment. Find a time when you and your child are both relaxed—perhaps during a walk, near bedtime, or while sharing a meal. Try to minimize distractions, like phones or TV, so you can both be fully present.

2. Pick a question to explore together. Take turns asking and answering one of the questions from the list below. The goal is to engage in reciprocal sharing, in which both you and your child answer the same question openly and honestly. This kind of mutual exchange helps build trust and a sense of closeness.

3. Listen with care. Both of you should seek to show genuine interest in each other’s emotions, experiences, and perspectives—responding with empathy, curiosity, and appreciation.

Questions to explore:

1. If you could travel anywhere in the world, which country would you like to visit? And why?

2. What is the strangest thing that you have ever experienced?

3. Think back to a moment you felt embarrassed. What happened?

4. Is there something in your life that makes you stressed out? Why does it make you stressed out?

5. Do you ever miss someone? Whom do you miss?

6. Do you ever feel guilty? What do you feel guilty about?

7. If you could have one wish granted, what would that be?

8. Do you ever feel nervous when meeting new people? Why?

9. When is the last time you felt alone? What made you feel that way?

10. Think back to something fun you did with a good friend. What was it? And what made it fun?

11. Did you ever experience something scary when you were younger? What was it?

12. What is one thing about yourself that most people would consider surprising?

13. What is something you are proud of?

Why You Should Try It

Daily interactions with children often revolve around routines, like discussing homework, chores, meals, and activities. While these conversations are necessary, they often stay on the surface, so it’s important to make space for deeper conversations that nurture emotional connection and understanding.

One effective way to foster this kind of connection is through reciprocal self-disclosure, where both you and your child share personal thoughts, feelings, and experiences with each other. Research finds that when families engage in this type of meaningful sharing, children feel more loved by their parents in the moment compared to when they engage in small talk. Since feeling loved by their parents is critical for children’s health and well-being, creating these moments of connection can have lasting benefits for your relationship and your child’s overall development.

Why It Works

Reciprocal self-disclosure helps deepen our relationships by creating a shared sense of trust and equality between parent and child. Rather than staying at the surface, it invites us to share more personal thoughts and feelings—building emotional closeness over time.

Psychologists call this process “social penetration,” the idea that relationships grow stronger when we gradually reveal more of our inner selves. For parents and children, this kind of sharing can be especially powerful. By taking turns opening up, both parent and child “peel back the layers” of who they are. In doing so, they gently challenge the typical parent-child hierarchy, making room for mutual vulnerability and understanding.

What’s more, self-disclosure is also inherently rewarding, activating the brain’s reward system to make us feel good. Even brief moments of this kind of mutual sharing can help children feel more loved and supported by their parents.

Evidence That It Works

Brummelman, E., Bos, P. A., de Boer, E., Nevicka, B., & Sedikides, C. (2024). Reciprocal self-disclosure makes children feel more loved by their parents in the moment: A proof-of-concept experiment. Developmental Science, 27, e13516.

Parent-child pairs were randomly assigned to engage in either conversations that involved reciprocal self-disclosure or small talk for 10 minutes. Children (eight to 13 years old, mostly Dutch) who had the deeper conversations reported feeling more loved by their parents during the interaction compared to those who engaged in small talk. This was consistent across various gender and age combinations.