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Q

Dear Daniel,

My dad is nice and he can guide me to solve problems, but he is very busy. When it comes to daily communication, embarrassing (令人尴尬的) silence takes over our life. I don’t know what to talk about with him, but I want to change our relationship. What should I do?

Louisa

A

Dear Louisa,

I don’t think you are alone. There are many families and friendships where people find it difficult to communicate. In fact, I think most problems – in family, friends or romance –come from poor communication.

My first piece of advice is perhaps the most difficult, but the most effective (有效的). Tell him everything you told me in your letter.

If you’re not quite that brave, here are some tricks to start conversations.

First, remember that (almost) everyone loves to talk about themselves. So ask him something about himself. Maybe you can start by saying you know he’s very busy. Ask him: “What’s something you loved to do in your youth but you never have time for these days?” You will learn something about him, and you may get a whole new conversation topic for next time.

Another great question would be something from an essay-writing prompt (作文题). Tell him something stressful that happened to you. Ask him about a time he was stressed. You could change “stressed” to any other word – embarrassed, frightened, overconfident, etc.

Here’s one more trick: Icebreaker questions. I used these all the time when I was a teacher. You can find thousands of them online. If he asks why you have so many strange questions, tell him your English teacher shared them and you think they’re fun.

I hope this gets your conversation started!

Daniel