The reason a parents' evening on technology often falls flat is not the content. It is that parents arrive believing they are unqualified. They have heard of an app their child uses, do not understand it, and conclude that the conversation is beyond them. So they say nothing and resolve to set a rule instead. If you are running that session, your first job is to remove the belief that expertise is the price of entry. The good news is that it takes one slide, because the thing that actually works at home is not knowledge. It is curiosity.

The reframe to lead with

Open by telling parents the part that surprises them: they do not need to be the expert, and trying to be one usually backfires. A parent who quizzes a child about an app from a position of obvious ignorance gets monosyllables. A parent who asks, with genuine interest, what their child likes about it gets a conversation. There is a lever here worth naming out loud: children love to feel like the expert. A question that lets a child explain something to their parent flips the usual direction of teaching, and children open up when they are the one who knows. The parent's ignorance, framed as curiosity, becomes the way in rather than the obstacle.

The parent who knows least about the app, but asks the most interested question, gets the longest answer. Curiosity outperforms expertise every time.
A closed question ends the conversation; an open one opens it Two chat panels. On the left, a closed question gets a one-word answer and ends the conversation. On the right, an open question gets a long, detailed answer and opens it. CLOSED QUESTION Was that homework? Yeah. Ends the conversation OPEN QUESTION What did you make on there? I edited those clips from the trip into a little video. Took ages. Want to see it? Opens it
The same parent, two questions. The wording is the whole difference between a closed door and an open one.

The slide to put up

Then put three questions on the screen and tell parents these are the ones to take home. They are open, they cannot be answered with yes or no, and not one of them requires the parent to understand the technology.

Three questions to ask at home
"What did you make or do on there today?"Not "what did you watch." The wording invites the active part, and tells you whether the time was creative, social, or just passive.
"Can you show me how it works? I don't really get it."Lets your child be the expert. The honest admission is the hook, not a weakness.
"What do you like about it?"Curiosity, not interrogation. You learn what need the app is meeting, which is the thing worth knowing.

Model it in the room

Showing the questions is not enough. Perform them. The most useful two minutes of the session is you, at the front, demonstrating the tone. Pick a staff member or a willing parent and run the exchange live, so the room hears the difference between an interested question and a checking-up one. Let the answer wander a little, and resist correcting it, so parents see that the point is to keep the child talking rather than to reach a verdict. A parent who has watched the question land is far more likely to use it than one who has only read it on a slide.

Close by lowering the stakes. Tell parents they only need one of the three, used once, this week. The aim is not a perfect conversation; it is the first one. A parent who asks "what did you make on there today" over dinner and actually listens to the answer has done the whole of what this session was for.

Andy Perryer is the head of digital learning at a group of international schools and the creator of PICRAT Suite.