Many people think that children are not very good at remembering things that happen to them,
but that's not true. We might not use adults' words or describe things the way adults do,
but our memory works in a similar way to yours.
Children can be good witnesses when adults are good questioners.
I'm going to tell you what it takes to be a good questioner of children.
First, when we tell you something that's happened you need to take us seriously.
Telling something personal is really hard and even harder when that person is an adult.
Telling involves trust and it hurts when someone we trust doesn't listen or think our words aren't important.
We might not show that hurt, we might pretend it doesn't matter, but that hurt is there underneath and it doesn't go away easily.
Trust works both ways - adults need to trust that we can say what happened in our own way.
We don't need special things or lots of detailed questions to share our memories because these distract us.
What we need is a quiet space where we can think and time to tell the best way we can.
You adults take us children seriously when you understand that what you think happened may not be what really happened.
You need to ask us directly, you say,
"Tell me only what happened, don't guess, it's okay to say I don't know".
You listen carefully and don't interrupt. You know we can speak the truth.
To support us best you also need to let us use our own words.
Don't ask lots of 'yes-or-no' questions or 'who', 'what', 'when', 'where', 'why', 'questions'.
Too many 'WH-' questions can make us confused and mix things up.
Ask 'open-questions' like, "Tell me what you've come to talk about".
"Tell me everything that happened".
"Tell me more about the part where".
"What happened then".
The words "What happened" are really good in helping us tell what we know and telling what we know can make us feel better too.
All children deserve to have good questioners. Good questioners make children feel listened to, understood, and not judged.
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