In this situation, this Mum goes on to explain that she “always will give him things to do that are cleaning and non-fun things because I know he won't do them. And so it's like, well, I am offering things. It's just, you choose not to do them. So you have to think of your own things. If you want something to do that you would like to do. And I don’t know if that's a good goal or not.”

Now, if you didn't include the ‘fun’ part, then yeah… that would be hard for him to handle. But, by saying “You could do this or you could think of something fun to do”, that’s a good idea.

Because then you could add, “Huh... I wonder what you could do now.”

We do need to honour the fact that many kids actually are stuck thinking of something. So they do often need us to give them the helping hand, just the trigger.

Now one of the brilliant tricks you can use here is just a, “Huh, I wonder, huh?”

And you're looking up, you've got your finger here on your chin and it's, “Hmm. I wonder now…”. Half the time you can think of a hundred things that he could do, but you want it to come from him again. “I'm really stuck. What do you reckon? Hmm. Well, I suppose you could do the washing. You could help me with the washing, but what else? Huh?”

Now they're thinking, “Oh, far out. I'm not gonna do the washing. No way.”

Then suddenly they start thinking faster.

So I used to do that in the classroom a lot, especially with kids who were not answering or were very reluctant, very shy kids. I'd go up – not in the whole class often, because they weren't ready for that – I'd go up next to them and I'd say, “Hey, how are you going with that, blah, blah,” whatever it was. And they’d tell me that they’re really stuck, or something along those lines.

Then I’d say, “Hmm, I wonder how, I wonder what…” And it just gets them into thinking mode.

Or if I had a whole class and if I had kids that weren't contributing and I needed to re-engage them, they'd all gone flat and no one was answering or something, I’d just say, “Oh, I can't think of the word. What's the word?” Even though I'd know it in my head.

Another example, although I didn’t exactly do this because I didn't teach maths. But as an example, “1 + 1 is what, what is it?”

And I ask the easiest question. But then nearly every kid in the class, they've all suddenly got their hands up and I've got them back. Then I’d say, “Ha, thank you. I don't know why I couldn't think of that. Thank you.” And they're back thinking; you've just triggered their thinking.