Keep asking about the parts of a child’s day that never appear on a report card.

Report cards describe a narrow slice of a child’s day and nothing of the part they are actually living: who they sat with, what was funny, what was frightening, who got left out, whether lunch was long enough. Attention that goes only to results teaches them which half of their life adults consider real. The other half is where most of the difficulty sits.

Ask small specific questions rather than how school was: who they played with, what made them laugh, what was hard. Ask while doing something else, since that is when children talk. Let the answers be boring without turning them into a lesson.