Two words that turn a shutdown into a real conversation

Maria had asked her son the same question a dozen times: why won't you start your book report? Every time, he said it's boring, and every time, she told him plenty of things are boring and he still has to do them. The conversation went nowhere, fast, and ended the same way it always did.

Ross Greene calls what Maria was doing grilling, and distinguishes it sharply from what he actually recommends, which he calls drilling. Grilling is interrogation dressed up as concern. Drilling is patient, curious information-gathering, and it looks almost boringly simple on paper: you open with I've noticed you've been having difficulty starting your book report, and you close with two words, what's up? Then you wait.

The skill isn't in the opening line. It's in what happens after the child answers, which is rarely a clear, complete explanation the first time. It's boring isn't an answer, it's a starting point. Greene's advice is to reflect it back, plainly: it's boring, tell me more about that, and keep going, gently, until something specific surfaces. In Greene's own case example, a girl named Ana moves from it's too hard through several rounds of reflection until she finally lands on the real obstacle: she knows what she wants to say, she just can't find the words to start each paragraph. That's a solvable problem. It's too hard wasn't.

What makes drilling difficult isn't the technique so much as the discipline it demands. Adults are used to filling silence, offering theories, or quietly steering toward the answer they already suspect is right. Greene warns that all three habits shut the process down before it gets anywhere. If a child says I don't know, the right response is often just patience, not a guess spoken out loud. If a child seems defensive, the right response is honesty: you're not in trouble, I'm not deciding anything yet, I just want to understand.

Maria never got a full answer out of her son by asking why he was avoiding the report. She got somewhere the day she stopped asking why, and started asking what's up, and then just listened.

Pick one recurring problem you already know is coming, and instead of waiting for the next blowup, bring it up calmly using two simple moves: name it starting with I've noticed, using no mention of the behavior itself, and end with what's up? Whatever answer comes back, resist the urge to fix it immediately. Repeat it back in your own words and ask for more, staying curious rather than corrective, even when the first answer is something vague like it's boring or I don't know. If silence follows, let it sit there without rushing to guess out loud. Keep going gently until nothing new surfaces, and only then move on to sharing your own side of the problem.