get to know your kid

Author Shana Noyes offers a weighty, but lighthearted parenting guide with her new book Get to Know Your Kid ($17). We talked to Shana, a mother of two, recently and she shared her three must ask questions to help parents learn more about their children and chronicle their growth. Shana recommends probing your children for answers when they wiggle off your questions with short rebuttals and encouraging chatter and conversation daily. This includes asking the simple "What was the best part of your day today?" question — daily. Here's why.

Watching your child develop into his or her own as a thinking person is one of the greatest rewards of being a parent, and if you ask the right questions you'll get a window into your little one's ever-changing world. Author Shana Noyes offers a parent's cheat sheet to Get to Know Your Kid ($17). The book, which was just released, is half guidebook and half journal with blank pages for you to archive your child's answers. We talked to Shana, a mother of two, and she shared her three must ask questions.

LilSugar: Your book offers oodles of questions you should ask your child to get to know them and help make a keepsake record of their development. What would you say are the three most important — and rewarding — questions to ask your kids?

Shana Noyes: I worked with two child psychologists on Get to Know Your Kid, and every question in the book is designed to encourage kids to open up in some way. The questions that I consider to be the most rewarding are some of the more serious questions in the book, ones that ask kids to think about profound topics and to look deeper into themselves than they might normally look.

What should you ask? Shana shares.