808. Why does asking about your child's day often result in a frustrating "Fine" or "Nothing"? In this episode, Dr. Nanika Coor unpacks why kids of all ages sometimes don’t share much, what can lie beneath parent-child conversational disconnection, and how to build micro-rituals that foster more collaborative and connected communication.
808. Why does asking about your child's day often result in a frustrating "Fine" or "Nothing"? In this episode, Dr. Nanika Coor unpacks why kids of all ages sometimes don’t share much, what can lie beneath parent-child conversational disconnection, and how to build micro-rituals that foster more collaborative and connected communication.
Find a transcript here.
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You pick your kid up after school, desperate for a peek inside the life they lead when you're not there. Tell me everything! you think, your own nervous system craving reassurance, a sense of control, or simply connection. You ask some variation of, "How was your day?" and the answer comes back a dull thud: "Fine." "Okay." "Nothing." You start to feel that familiar internal tension: a spike of anxiety about their social standing, self-criticism that you’re failing to instill the right values, frustration that this small human refuses to perform the sharing you feel entitled to. You are not alone in this very common moment of parent-child disconnect that leaves you feeling both ineffective and out of the loop.
Welcome back to Project Parenthood, I’m your host, Dr. Nanika Coor. Each week, I help you raise kids in ways that are compassionate, respectful, anti-oppressive, and grounded in connection and community. Today I’m unpacking the fundamental shifts we can make to encourage our children, from toddlers to teens, to genuinely open up about their lives, friendships, and struggles.
But first, before I dive in, take a moment to notice where you are. Are you sitting or standing? Is your body still or in motion? As you anticipate what I’m about to say about connected conversations with your child, does your heart beat faster? Does your breath change? Do you find yourself already strategizing or mentally arguing with what I haven’t yet said? Is there an automatic urge to speed through and get to the "fix"? Just notice from a place of open, curious awareness and without judgment. This is your internal experience of preparing to receive some information.
Let’s get into it.
You’re hoping to reconnect after a day apart from your kid and you get mumbling one-word answers or a shrug when you ask how their day went. So you try again: “What did you have for lunch?” “Same thing as always.” You push just a little more: “Did anything fun happen?” And they’re suddenly prickly, or silent. A wall drops. You feel that small sting in your chest, that mix of rejection, confusion, and worry. You want to know them, to be their safe person, but instead you feel shut out.
When your kid pulls away like this, it can stir something deep in you. Maybe you flash back to your own parents pressing too hard, or to times you wished someone had cared enough to ask. Maybe you start spinning: What’s wrong? Are they being bullied? Am I failing them? Beneath that spinning usually lives something bigger: the internalized hum of capitalism whispering that your family’s success depends on producing an emotionally articulate, high-functioning, well-adjusted child. That pressure fuses with ableist and individualist ideas that connection should look prompt, verbal, tidy, effortless and self-controlled. So when your child needs processing time, quiet, movement, food, or time to discharge the energy of the day, you might interpret their silence as a problem to fix instead of a body seeking balance.
And marginalized parents might have other layers of anxiety to manage. If your child is Black, brown, neurodivergent, disabled, queer, or trans, silence can feel like danger. You might worry about what could be happening in hallways, on playgrounds, or in group chats that you’re not being told about. The stakes feel higher, the fear feels sharper. So when your kid shuts down, you may be unconsciously fishing for a status report because you’re trying to ensure their safety. But to your child’s nervous system, your urgency feels like interrogation, not care.
Think of it like a dance where one partner suddenly starts leading too fast. Your steps quicken under the pull of fear, perfectionism, and social comparison. And the more you push for closeness, the more your child pulls away to find their footing. They stop talking not because they don’t want or need you, they stop because they need a felt sense of safety first.
Over time, this cycle leaves both you and your child feeling unseen. Your longing to connect bonks into your child’s need for physical or temporal space or refueling, and both of you walk away feeling misunderstood. It’s painful, and it can’t sustain the connection you’re hoping for.
When your child shuts down your attempts at getting them to share, what you’re seeing on the surface might be a signal of a deeper imbalance. Maybe it’s an unmet need, a taxed nervous system, or a set of social expectations that subtly demand more than their developing body or mind can sustain.
All day long, your child has been performing self-control and emotional containment in environments usually shaped in one way or another by adult convenience and industrial efficiency. School, daycare, aftercare, sports—each is built on schedules, expectations, and social hierarchies that ask kids to suppress their impulses, meet external standards, and navigate power dynamics they can’t control. What looks like resistance or distance at home is often their body’s way of saying, “I’ve reached my limit.”
Here are some of the unseen forces at play underneath your child’s avoidance of opening up to you:
Keeping It Together All Day Comes at A Cost
Your child is moving through systems that prize productivity, compliance, and performance over relational well-being. These structures reward kids for fitting in, not for being whole. They learn to regulate outward behavior even when inwardly they’re overwhelmed. For children from marginalized groups—Black, brown, disabled, queer, trans—there’s the added pressure of masking, code-switching, and managing microaggressions just to stay safe. By the time they get home, their emotional energy is spent. Silence is self-protection.
Your Child Doesn’t Always Feel Safe To Share
Your child’s relationship with you exists within a real power imbalance. You hold the resources, the authority, and the final say. If your child has learned that sharing their truth leads to being corrected, judged, or “fixed,” silence becomes the safest choice. When your child senses that your anxiety might turn into control, they protect their autonomy by withholding. From a respectful parenting lens, you’re not trying to erase your authority—you’re transforming it into leadership that fosters trust rather than fear.
Before They Can Talk, They Need to Settle
Your child can’t simply talk their way back to calm. When their system is overloaded, their thinking brain goes offline. What they need first isn’t a conversation—it’s your steadiness. Your presence, tone, and body language can help bring them back into balance. If you meet their withdrawal with interrogation or worry, you unintentionally activate their stress response. But when you respond with warmth and patience, you’re offering your own regulated nervous system as an anchor. That’s co-regulation, and it’s the foundation for the connection you’re craving.
“How Was Your Day?” Can Be Too Big of An Ask
Even older kids can struggle to recall, organize, and narrate their day on demand. A younger child might not yet have the language or memory integration for storytelling. A tween might be beginning to need privacy as part of developing identity. A teen may guard emotions as a form of self-determination. For neurodivergent kids there’s often a sizable gap between their chronological age and their true social-emotional readiness. Expecting a coherent “status report” from a tired or dysregulated neurospicy kiddo is a mismatch between their developmental capacity and your adult desire for control.
And then, layered below all of that, are the echoes of internalized capitalism and ableism, shaping your inner dialogue: If my child isn’t opening up, I must be doing something wrong. If they’re not expressive in the expected ways, I must not be a good parent. These inherited systems confuse regulation with performance and worthiness with productivity. But in actuality, your child’s silence isn’t a failure on either of your parts—it’s a relational cue that they need safety, some sort of soothing for their body, and the kind of steady presence that helps them feel seen and understood just as they are.
The more you can slow yourself down, the more your child’s body will sense that safety has returned. Over time, this rewires both of you—teaching their brain that your love is unconditional, and teaching yours that closeness doesn’t need to be chased. It grows naturally in the space you make for it.
Now that you know what might really be happening underneath your child’s silence, I want to talk about what helps. The goal isn’t finding the perfect question or tricking your kid into “opening up on command.” What you want is to shift toward learning to read your child’s cues, honor their pace, and meet their needs before you try to get a conversation going.
Here are some ways to start.
1. Snacks Before Status Updates
When your kiddo walks in the door or jumps in the car, remember: reunion time is regulation time. Their body needs to transition from the day’s demands with a soft landing, not a debrief.
This small shift tells your child: “You don’t have to perform for love here.” It’s your way of saying, “It’s safe with me to let yourself exhale now.”
2. Create a Simple Sharing Ritual
Conversations bloom in rhythm, not randomness. Pick a small, predictable moment—like dinner, bedtime, or while brushing teeth together—and make that your no-pressure check-in time.
When you model openness, you teach your child that talking about real feelings isn’t dangerous, it’s just part of being alive together.
3. Use Humor and Specifics to Melt the Freeze
When your child’s brain is tired, broad questions like “How was school?” feel impossible. You can spark connection with humor or specificity.
Absurdity and specificity bypass their brain’s “I don’t know” defense. They invite play, not pressure.
4. Listen Steadily Without Fixing or Fear
When your child does start sharing, your main job is to stay with them emotionally, not to manage, interpret, or correct.
Listening without reactivity builds the safety your child needs to come to you again next time. It’s how trust grows: one nonjudgmental moment at a time.
5. Choose Connection Over Communication Control
If you notice yourself pushing for answers or getting frustrated by silence, pause and ask: What does my child’s nervous system need right now, to report the day’s data, or some kind of connection?
Every time you meet your child where they are instead of pushing them to do what they’re not ready or inclined to do, you’re teaching them that your relationship is more important to you than their performance.
Maybe start by trying just one of these ideas today. Offer the snack before the questions. Tell a small truth from your own day first. Or simply practice being still beside your child when words don’t come. These tiny, everyday choices slowly rewire both your nervous systems toward trust, and that’s the real goal - a relationship sturdy enough to hold whatever they bring.
Okay, let’s slow down for a second here. I want to invite you to take a slow inhale and an even slower exhale. Bring to your mind an image of your child: the way they move through the world, the sound of their laugh, the look on their face when they’re lost in thought. Now imagine that moment when they clam up and don’t share their experiences. Notice what happens in you, all by itself, when you picture that. Is there a flicker of worry? Is there a pang of loneliness? Some tension somewhere in your body you didn’t notice before?
If something stirred while you listened today, see if you can just notice it. Maybe your shoulders moved toward your ears slightly when you heard “resist jumping to advice.” Maybe the thought of sitting in silence together brought up some guilt or discomfort. That’s okay. Those reactions aren’t wrong, they’re signs of how deeply you care, and how much pressure you’ve carried about “getting it right.”
You’ve been taught that good parenting means constant effort, constant talking, constant doing. But real connection grows in the spaces where you allow yourself to pause, breathe, and simply be with your child. You don’t have to fill every silence. Sometimes the most loving thing you can offer is your calm, grounded presence.
You’re not behind. You’re unlearning a lifetime of messages that said love had to sound a certain way. What you’re doing now, choosing curiosity over control and tenderness over judgment, is a powerful thing.
So next time your child stays mum, see if you can soften instead of striving. Let the silence be its own kind of conversation. Allow for the possibility that you and your child are both worthy of the kind of love that doesn’t have to be performed, it can simply be lived, one small and steady moment at a time.
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If you’ve found this episode helpful, I’d love it if you shared it with a friend who also finds that getting their kid to open up is a challenge. Remember, you’re not the only parent trying to figure this out. Parenting was never meant to happen inside these little boxes where each family is left to fend for themselves—it was always meant to unfold inside circles of support, where stories and struggles were shared, not hidden.
And other parents listening right now, just like you, are doing something brave. You’re all daring to raise your children differently. Trying to slow down, to listen more deeply, to plant something new in soil that wasn’t really designed for empathy and tenderness. You’re all reimagining what it means to build families rooted in safety, compassion, and authentic connection.
How are you navigating those tricky-silence moments with your child lately? I’d love to hear what’s shifting for you after listening today. You can tell me about it on Instagram @bkparents or email me at parenthood@quickanddirtytips.com. And if you want to feel a little more supported in your parenting journey, visit brooklynparenttherapy.com where you can join my newsletter for updates about upcoming community events. I’m Dr. Nanika Coor. Thanks for listening. I’ll catch you next week.
Credits:
Project Parenthood is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Thanks to the team: audio-engineer Dan Feierabend; Holly Hutchings, director of podcasts; advertising operations specialist Morgan Christianson; marketing manager, Rebekah Sebastian and thanks also to your contractor, Nat Hoopes.