Examples of C.L.A.P. interview questions

Note: C.L.A.P. is the acronym (for Chores, Learning, Attitude, and Planning) that I created to help myself some have clear direction in my attempts at mothering effectively. CLAP Interviews are when I discuss with each child individually each of these categories and them give them their allowance, or as we call it, Bank of Dad. Below are some questions that I have used in CLAP Interviews (see initial CLAP interview post here).

CHORES (aka Bless Our Home):

• What is your favorite way to bless our home? Your least favorite way?
• What is one chore that you find difficult? Which chore do you think is easiest?
• What kinds of things do you think about as you bless our home?
• Which of your siblings do you think has a talent for blessing our home? Why?
• Which of our Bless Our Home sayings helps you the most?
• If you were in charge of Blessing our home, how would you improve our system?

In order to keep the interviews to ten or twelve minutes, I only ask about two questions per letter of the acronym. 

As I formulate interview questions, I want to have open-ended ones that require more than a yes or no answer! As my children answer them, I make little notes in the CLAP notebook so I don't ask the same questions over and over every week... and I make little notes about their answers, too!

It's a little bit tricky not to be judgmental about their answers, and not to try to "fix" things (like when they get a chance to "complain" by telling me their least favorite chore). Sometimes, though, I ask if they can think of a solution to whatever problem and then follow up with them the next time we have a CLAP interview.

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For very young children, I will play a little game, like charades. "Use your actions to do a pretend chore and see if I can guess it!" or the other way around -- I will do the charade and have them guess. Or I will ask, "If I want to bless the house by sweeping, what tool do I need?"

CLAP Interviews are something that I look forward to because I get to chat with each child and get to know their personalities a little better. And of course the children look forward to them because they get their money!!!