“Mama, why does that lady always talk to you at the market?”
Ellie asked me this a few Saturdays ago, tugging on my sleeve while I was mid-conversation with one of the vendors we see nearly every week. I laughed it off in the moment, but the question stuck with me all afternoon.
Because here’s the thing — I’m not particularly funny. I don’t walk up to people with clever openers or dazzling stories. If anything, I’m a little awkward in new social situations, a recovering people-pleaser still working through patterns I picked up in childhood. But the vendor and I have a real connection. And when I thought honestly about why, it wasn’t because of anything impressive I’d ever said. It was because, from the very first time we met, I asked her about her tomatoes. Then I asked about her farm. Then I remembered what she told me and asked about it again the next week.
I was interested. Not interesting. And that, it turns out, makes all the difference — not just at a farmers’ market, but in every relationship we’ll ever build. Including the ones our kids are learning to build right now.
The distinction nobody teaches us
Think about the last time you met someone and walked away feeling genuinely good about the interaction. Chances are, it wasn’t the person who told the best story or dropped the most impressive fact about themselves. It was the person who asked you a question and actually listened to your answer.
Research from George Mason University psychologist Dr. Todd Kashdan confirms this. In studies on how curiosity affects social closeness, Kashdan found that curious people — those who showed genuine interest in the person across from them — were consistently rated as more attractive and more trustworthy by conversation partners. Even when controlling for anxiety, confidence, and general positivity, curiosity still predicted closeness on its own. As Kashdan has said, “Being interested is more important in cultivating a relationship and maintaining a relationship than being interesting; that’s what gets the dialogue going.”
That line stopped me in my tracks when I first read it. Because I think so many of us — myself included — grow up absorbing the opposite message. We’re taught, subtly and not so subtly, that being likable means being impressive. Having the right stories. Saying the smart thing. Performing well in social situations. And then we wonder why connection still feels so elusive.
The people who make you lower your guard when you first meet them aren’t doing anything flashy. They’re not performing. They’ve just figured out, maybe instinctively, that the fastest way to someone’s trust is to make that person feel seen. Not to dazzle them, but to notice them.
What I started seeing in my own kitchen
Once this idea took root in my head, I couldn’t stop seeing it everywhere. Especially at home.
I watched Ellie at a playdate, and I noticed something: when she met a new child, her instinct was to show them things. Look at my rock collection. Watch me do this. Come see my room. She was trying to be interesting — which, at five, is completely developmentally appropriate. But I also noticed the moments where she shifted into asking. “What’s your favorite color?” “Do you have a dog?” “What do you like to play?” And those were the moments the other child’s face lit up. Those were the conversations that actually took off.
It reminded me of my years teaching kindergarten, before I had kids of my own. The children who made friends most easily weren’t always the loudest or most entertaining. They were often the ones who noticed when someone else was having a hard morning. The ones who sat next to the quiet kid and asked a question. Curiosity about another person is magnetic at any age — but in children, it’s especially powerful because it hasn’t yet been trained out of them by the pressure to perform.
I realized I wanted to protect that impulse in my kids rather than accidentally replace it with the idea that social success means being the most captivating person in the room.
The science behind why this works
The intuition behind all of this holds up under scrutiny. A well-known study from Harvard, led by researcher Karen Huang, looked at over 300 live conversations — both online and in person — and found a consistent relationship between question-asking and likability. People who asked more questions, particularly follow-up questions, were rated as significantly more likable by their conversation partners. The reason wasn’t complicated: asking questions signals responsiveness. It tells the other person that you’re listening, that you understand, and that you care enough to go deeper.
What struck me most about that research was a detail that’s easy to miss: people don’t anticipate this effect. Most of us instinctively focus on ourselves when we’re trying to make a good impression. We rehearse what we’re going to say. We try to sound smart, or funny, or interesting. And all of that self-focused energy can actually push people away. The researchers noted that behaviors centered on the other person — mirroring, affirming, drawing them out — consistently increase likability, while behaviors centered on the self tend to decrease it.
I thought about Matt and me when I read that. The thing that keeps us connected, even on the most exhausting days, isn’t grand gestures or witty banter. It’s the question we ask each other every night after the kids are in bed: “How was your day — really?” Not “how was your day” in the polite, half-listening way. The “really” is the follow-up question. It’s the part that says: I’m not just checking a box. I actually want to know.
Where this gets tricky with kids
So here’s the tension I keep turning over: how do you teach a child to be genuinely interested in other people without it becoming another performance?
Because you can’t just hand a five-year-old a script (“ask your friend three questions and they’ll like you”). That turns curiosity into a social strategy, and kids sniff out inauthenticity faster than anyone.
What I’ve been trying instead is much quieter. It starts with how I listen to them. When Ellie comes to me with one of her elaborate stories about a caterpillar she found, I try to respond with “tell me more” instead of “oh, that’s nice.” When Milo brings me a block and grunts something I don’t quite understand, I get down on his level and try to figure out what he’s saying rather than nodding from across the room. I’m trying to model what genuine interest looks like — not as a strategy, but as a way of being.
Harvard’s Making Caring Common project emphasizes this exact approach. Their guidance for building empathy in children centers on helping kids zoom in — learning to really tune in to another person — and zoom out, taking in multiple perspectives beyond their own circle. And one of the simplest, most overlooked ways to do that is by modeling real listening in everyday life. Asking the grocery store cashier how their day is going. Wondering aloud with your kids about how a character in a book might be feeling. Talking about the neighbor’s new puppy and what it might be like to just have moved to a new street.
None of this is dramatic. All of it is formative.
Why the performing trap is so easy to fall into
I think one reason so many adults struggle with this distinction is that we were never explicitly taught it. We were taught to speak up, to share, to be confident. All of which matters. But somewhere along the way, the message became: the most valuable person in the room is the one everyone is paying attention to. And that belief creates a specific kind of anxiety — the fear that if you’re not actively holding someone’s interest, you’re losing ground.
I know this because I lived it. Growing up, conversations in my house stayed surface-level. We didn’t really ask each other deep questions. I learned to read a room and say the right thing rather than to genuinely wonder about the person in front of me. It took years — and honestly, it took having kids — to realize that the most disarming thing you can do in any interaction isn’t to be impressive. It’s to be curious.
When I think about what the research says about first impressions, the pattern is clear: warmth, friendliness, and genuine engagement predict whether someone wants to get to know you. Displays of confidence matter too, but when it comes to building an actual friendship — not just a first impression — it’s communal behaviors that carry the weight. Listening. Showing interest. Being kind. These aren’t flashy traits. But they’re the ones that make people feel safe enough to open up.
And that’s exactly what I want my kids to carry into the world. Not the pressure to perform, but the instinct to lean in and wonder about the person in front of them.
What I’m practicing now
I don’t have this figured out. Some days I catch myself half-listening to Ellie’s stories while mentally planning dinner. Some days I’m so tired that “tell me more” comes out flat and robotic and she looks at me like she knows I’m not really there. This is a practice, not a destination.
But the small shifts have been real. I notice Ellie asking more questions at playdates, not because I coached her but because she’s watching how I interact with people. I hear her say “are you okay?” to Milo when he falls, and then actually wait for a response instead of immediately trying to fix it. These aren’t grand parenting wins. They’re tiny signals that something is landing.
At the market last weekend, the tomato vendor asked Ellie if she wanted to pick out her own basket. Ellie looked up at her and said, “Do you grow these yourself?” And the woman’s face broke into the biggest smile.
My kid wasn’t trying to be charming. She was just curious.
And maybe that’s the whole point. The people who make others feel at ease have never confused being interesting with being interested. They don’t walk into a room wondering how to impress. They walk in wondering who they might learn something from.
If I can give Ellie and Milo even a fraction of that instinct — if I can model it in how I listen to them, how Matt and I talk to each other, how we treat the people we meet in our ordinary days — then I think they’ll carry something into every room they enter that no performance could ever replicate. The quiet, disarming power of someone who actually wants to know.
