My pay-off

Thinking about yesterday’s post, I realized that I do wheedle some sort of payment for letting other people’s kids play with us (suck out my energy is what they do, those little ghouls). It goes something like this (“five-six-seh-veneight”):
The set-up:
“We gotta go soon. Time for dinner. When do you guys eat?”
“What do you eat?”
“When do you go to bed?”
“Where do you sleep?”
“What time do you get up?”
The punch:
“Which one of your parents smells worse in the morning?”
“Which one of your parents gets cranky sooner?”
“Do they just yell, or what do they do?”
And the kids are off and running, as is my digital voice recorder.

Honestly, the set-up questions really are the ones that get the kids to spill the beans. The trick is to find a topic that is something they fight about with their parents (bedtime, TV, candy, getting dressed, going places on time, etc), then make sure they know you’re on their side. The dirt on the parents surfaces on its own. Well worth your while sometimes.

Especially when the moms are cute, but stuck up.