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t Leah’s next session, we practice schmoozing.

“I had a good day at work,” Leah starts, picking her default conversation topic. “We didn’t mix up any orders today.”

“Great job getting straight to the action,” I compliment her.

Leah’s ready to practice schmoozing about the other person’s interests.

“Let’s pretend I’m a boy you’re dating,” I tell Leah. “We’ve just talked about your day and your job. Now you need to talk about the other person’s interests, find out about them.”

“Uh… What are your interests?” Leah tries.

“I like to follow politics. Did you hear about the contenders for 2020?”

Leah looks at me. “Why do we need to talk about politics?”

“Leah, what’s the point of a bakery?”

“To sell cakes and make money.”

“Okay, great. So your boss loves the oldies. She wants to sell sponge cakes and brownies. But you’ve been telling me that her sons want to sell miniatures. Why’s that?”

“Because people don’t want sponge cakes, they want miniatures.”

“Right. You have to offer what people want, not what you want. That’s how relationships work, too. You have to talk about what the other person is interested in.” [Leah needs to acquire the ability to see another’s perspective in order to figure out what to talk about with other people]

“But how do I know what’s going on in their life?”

“Well, you can always say, ‘What’s new by you?’ ” Understanding lights up her eyes — she’s heard that line many times. “But even better would be to ask about something specific that you know they’re occupied with.”

I give Leah a page with a list of 12 hours in the day. At the top she writes, “Ima.”

I point to 7:00 a.m. “What does your mother do at seven?”

“Davens. Makes breakfast.” She fills it in.

“What about nine?”

“She’s at work. She’s a nurse in a doctor’s office. She takes care of patients.”

“So what might you say to your mother when she comes home from work?”

“Ummm… ‘How was your day?’ ”

“Good! Anything more specific?”

“Ummm… ‘Did you meet anyone interesting today?’ ”

“Great!”

Leah completes a daily schedule for her father, one of her sisters, and Mrs. Perk, her boss. Then we role play having a conversation, with me taking the role of her family member or boss.

“You can also talk about areas where your life intersects with the other person’s. So for example, with your boss, you can talk about your thoughts on the changes to the business.” Leah fills in a shared area of interest for her mother and father (housekeeping and plans for Sunday, respectively) and we practice talking about those.

“And then there’s the world at large — what’s going on in the news, the weather, things like that.”

For homework I tell Leah to pick three family members [Conversing with family members is the best place to start as they are happy to help, are forgiving of mistakes, and Leah knows them well so she is most likely to succeed with them] to practice these skills with.

“You’ll see, good conversations are fun!” I tell her, noticing the nervous look on her face.

Originally featured in Family First, Issue 641. D. Himy is a speech-language pathologist in private practice and creator of the Link-It and STARPower curriculums. The fictional characters in this column represent typical client profiles.