The One Question That Changed How I Listen to Every Child

By Kate Markland

After twenty years as a physiotherapist, I thought I understood listening.

I had been trained to ask open questions, to reflect back what I heard, to check my understanding before offering any interpretation. I knew that the presenting complaint is almost never the whole story. I knew that the first move is never to fix. It is to understand.

Then a court order reduced my contact with my twelve-year-old son to one hour a week on FaceTime, and I discovered I had never truly applied any of it to a child.

In that hour I made one decision. I would ask Gabriel what happened next in his story, and I would write down every word without correcting a single one. Not one word. Not a spelling. Not a plot inconsistency. Not a character whose name changed halfway through.

Eight weeks later he said: Mum, it is a book.

That book became an Amazon bestseller. The methodology that grew from it, StoryQuest, is now used in nine UK schools with 465 children. My work has been accepted by UK Parliament as evidence, considered by UNICEF for international distribution, and presented to the British Psychological Society. One hundred percent of children engaged. Zero behavioural incidents. Including every child previously labelled reluctant, disengaged, and unable to write.

The question that made all of that possible was not a clever question. It was “Shall we make up a story where you are the hero?”

No interpretation embedded. No correction implied. Just an invitation to continue.

The reason this question works where others fail is simple. Most of the questions adults ask children about their writing are actually assessments dressed as questions. What do you think the character feels? asks the child to demonstrate emotional literacy. What might happen next? asks for a prediction with an implicit right answer. Both signal that the adult is evaluating rather than receiving.

What happens next asks nothing except for the next part of the story. It positions the adult as a recipient, not a judge. And children, particularly children who have been told in various ways that their stories are not quite right, respond to that distinction immediately and completely.

In StoryQuest sessions, we train children to ask this question of each other. Not adults asking children. Children asking children. Peers receiving peers. The power dynamic is different. The permission feels different. A child who will not write a word for a teacher will tell their whole story to a classmate.

This is the principle I want to leave with anyone who works with children, teaches children, or simply lives alongside one. Before you help, before you guide, before you correct, before you encourage: ask what happens next.

Then write it down exactly as they say it.

Read it back. Ask: have I got that right?

What you receive will surprise you. Not because it is perfect. Because it is theirs.

Author Bio: Kate Markland is the founder of StoryQuest, co-author of the Amazon number one bestselling Adventures of Gabriel series, and an International Editor for the International Journal of Medical and Allied Health Professions. www.storyquestglobal.com | www.katemarkland.com