Best Questions to Ask Your Grandparents
Questions to ask your grandparents about their life, in six groups: their childhood, family roots, love and work, raising a family, the history they lived through, and looking back. Written for grandchildren who want more than small talk, whether you need interview questions for a school project, are putting together a family history or have an ordinary Sunday visit ahead. For African American families there are questions on who moved and who stayed, on segregation and the civil rights years, and on the records a family keeps for itself. The guide covers choosing a few, recording the answers and what to change when memory or health is a factor.
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The questions
Each question, and why to ask it
Childhood
Where were you born, and where did you grow up?
Why ask it
Start here even if you think you know. The place on a birth certificate and the place someone calls home can be two different towns, and the move between them is your first story. Get the spelling, and ask what the nearest big town was.
What is your earliest memory?
Why ask it
Earliest memories tend to be a fragment: a doorstep, a coat, being lifted up to see something. Ask how old they think they were and who else is in the picture, and do not mind if it turns out to be something they were told and now remember as their own.
Can you walk me through the house you grew up in, starting at the front door?
Why ask it
A place is easier to describe than a feeling, and going room by room brings back the smells, the furniture and whoever usually sat in each one. Sketch the floor plan as they talk and let them correct it, which suits a grandparent who dislikes being interviewed.
What was your life like when you were the age I am now?
Why ask it
It pins the conversation to one year of their life, so you hear about a particular classroom, job or kitchen instead of the old days in general. Trade answers as you go: what each of you was responsible for at that age, what you owned, how far from home you had been.
Who was your best friend when you were growing up?
Why ask it
Get the name first, then what the two of them did together and whose house they were always at. Find out whether they kept in touch. If the friend has died, the name may be all they want to give, and it is still worth writing down.
What were you like as a teenager?
Why ask it
You find out how they saw themselves: shy, wild, bookish, the responsible one. If a brother or sister of theirs is still around, put the same question to them about your grandparent and see whether the two portraits match.
What were you not allowed to do as a child that you did anyway?
Why ask it
Mischief is usually easy for a grandparent to tell a grandchild, because it stopped being a secret worth keeping long ago. Ask whether they were caught and what the punishment was. That half usually says more about their parents than about them.
What did you do after school when you were a kid?
Why ask it
For a lot of children those hours had no adult in them, so this is where the games, the dens, the river and the long walk home come out. Expect something that would horrify a parent today, and ask who they were with, which is how you find the childhood friends.
What did your family eat on an ordinary weeknight, and who cooked it?
Why ask it
Ordinary food dates a childhood more exactly than the holiday meals everyone already describes. Ask what they refused to eat and what happened when they did, which tells you how strict the house was.
What music was playing in your house, and what did you listen to when you got to choose?
Why ask it
Songs often come back when dates and names will not, so this is a good one for a slow day. Find the song on your phone and play it, and the story may start before the second verse.
Who did you share a bedroom with, and what was that like?
Why ask it
Sharing a room, or a bed, with brothers and sisters was ordinary in many families, and it is a detail grandchildren with their own rooms rarely picture. You also get the siblings as children: who talked all night, who kicked, who got the window.
What were you good at in school, and what did you dread?
Why ask it
The dreaded subject usually arrives with a teacher's name and a story attached. If they left school early, ask how old they were and whose decision it was, and ask it as a fact, not a loss.
What did you want to be when you grew up?
Why ask it
The childhood ambition is usually told with a laugh: a pilot, a nurse, a film star, a farmer like their father. Ask what the adults said when they announced it, since in some families the answer had already been decided for them.
Which chores were yours, and from what age?
Why ask it
Children's work was real work in many households: fires, animals, younger siblings, a shop counter. The age they started is the detail to get, because it explains what they think a ten-year-old ought to be able to do.
Did your family keep pets or animals when you were young?
Why ask it
A dog's name can come back faster than a cousin's. On a farm or a smallholding the animals were work and not company, which is a different story and worth hearing too: who milked, who fed, which one they were secretly fond of.
Did you have a nickname growing up, and who gave it to you?
Why ask it
A nickname comes with a story and usually a person: the brother who could not say the real name, a teacher, a team. Ask whether anyone still alive calls them by it.
Who were the neighbours, and which house on your street did you avoid?
Why ask it
A street is a cast list. The house they avoided, the one that always fed them and the family everyone talked about describe the place faster than any account of the town.
What was in your house growing up that you wish you still had?
Why ask it
Objects are reliable memory keys, and the answer is often something small: a clock, a set of tools, a record. If it still exists somewhere in the family, you have just found out who should have it.
Family roots
What did your mother and father do for a living, and what were they like at home?
Why ask it
Most grandchildren know their great-grandparents only as names on a tree. Asking about work and temperament together gets you a person instead of an occupation, and it can explain a family habit you had assumed was ordinary.
Which of your own grandparents did you know best, and what do you picture them doing?
Why ask it
Asking for the one they knew best gets a person at a stove or in a garden instead of four names and dates. Few people still alive met them, so ask early in a visit while their energy is good, because the recall takes effort.
How many brothers and sisters did you have, and where did you come in the order?
Why ask it
Birth order decided a great deal in bigger families: who left school to earn, who stayed home, who got the education. Ask for each sibling's name and what became of them, and write it down as they go.
Where did our family live before it was here, and why did they move?
Why ask it
Get place names down to the village or the street if they have them, and ask for spellings of anything unfamiliar. The reason for the move is the part that goes missing first: work, a war, a marriage, a falling-out.
Who stayed behind when the family moved, and did you ever go back to see them?
Why ask it
The branch that stayed is the half of the family a move tends to lose. For African American grandparents whose parents left the South for a northern or western city, the answer is often a summer spent back with an aunt or a grandmother, so ask what the journey was like and what felt different when they arrived.
Do you know where our family name comes from, or whether it was ever spelled differently?
Why ask it
Surnames get changed at a border, shortened for a job or respelled by a clerk, and the older spelling is what you will need if you ever search records. Ask about maiden names too, which are easy to lose. If they do not know, find out which relative might.
What were you told about our family from before anyone wrote it down?
Why ask it
For many African American families the paper trail thins out within a few generations, and the same goes for any family that was moved, displaced or never recorded. Whatever a grandparent heard from their own elders, a first name, a county, a farm, a trade, may be the only source there is. Write it exactly as they say it, including the parts they are unsure of.
What sayings or words did your parents use that nobody says now?
Why ask it
Dialect, another language, a phrase from a trade: the way a family spoke is among the first things it loses. Ask them to say it the way it was said, and make sure the recording is running.
What did your family talk about at the dinner table?
Why ask it
Some tables argued politics every night and some ate in near silence, and either answer is a picture of how they were raised. Whether a child was allowed to disagree at that table goes a long way to explaining how the same subject is handled in your family now.
What did your parents teach you about how to carry yourself away from home?
Why ask it
Some of what parents taught was manners, and some of it was safety. Many African American grandparents were given exact instructions as children: which streets, which shops, what to say and what never to say. Ask how old they were when they were told, and whether they passed the same words on.
What did your family believe in, and how did that show up in an ordinary week?
Why ask it
This asks about practice instead of doctrine: a place of worship or none, grace at meals, what the day of rest was for. Keep it descriptive and leave your own views out, because people stop answering this one the moment they sense an argument coming.
Who was the character in your family when you were young, the one everybody had a story about?
Why ask it
Most families have a relative who gets quoted for decades. You get a great-uncle or a great-aunt at full volume, and usually one story that explains why a certain subject still makes the older relatives laugh.
Who was the first in our family to do something the ones before were kept from doing?
Why ask it
A first tends to be remembered with a name and a year: the first to vote, to own the house, to finish school, to be hired somewhere that had always said no. Ask how the family marked it, and who did not live to see it.
What was the biggest day of the year in your house, and what happened on it?
Why ask it
Leaving the day unnamed lets them choose: a religious festival, a fair, a harvest, the one birthday that got a party. Ask who came and what was on the table, and listen for the part your family still does without knowing where it started.
Is there a family dish you make that I should learn, and where did it come from?
Why ask it
The quantities are usually in their hands and not on paper, so ask to make it with them and weigh each handful as it goes in. Find out whose dish it was before it was theirs, and photograph any handwritten card, stains included.
Which family photograph should I be sure to ask you about?
Why ask it
They choose the picture, so you get the one with a story instead of working through an album in order. Note who is in it on a separate sheet, and photograph the back if anything is written there.
Who keeps the family Bible, the funeral programs or the reunion book?
Why ask it
Plenty of families hold their own record outside any archive: births written inside a Bible, a drawer of funeral programs, the booklet from a reunion. In African American families these are often the fullest history there is, so find out whose house they are in and ask whether you can photograph every page.
Who in the family do I remind you of?
Why ask it
You will hear about a relative you have never met, described by someone who knew them. Ask what that person was actually like rather than accepting the comparison, since the description is the useful half.
What illnesses or health conditions have run in our family?
Why ask it
A doctor may ask you about family history one day, and a grandparent may be the only person who knows what a great-aunt had or how old a great-grandfather was when he fell ill. Write down who, what and roughly what age, in the words they use, and take the list to your own doctor instead of drawing conclusions from it.
Which relative do we never talk about?
Why ask it
Only ask if you have noticed a gap: a name that stops the conversation, a face cut out of a photograph. Grandparents may be the last people who know why, so ask gently and accept a refusal, because a closed subject is often closed for someone else's sake.
Love and work
What was your first job, and how did you get it?
Why ask it
How they got it is often the better half: an uncle had a word, a card in a shop window, a morning spent walking from one works gate to the next. Ask what they actually did all day and what they were most afraid of getting wrong.
How old were you when you started earning, and where did the money go?
Why ask it
In many households a first wage was handed to a parent and came back as pocket money. Ask what they were allowed to keep and what they did with it, which may be the first thing they ever chose for themselves.
At twenty, what did you think you would be doing by forty?
Why ask it
You are asking for the life that did not happen: the trade they meant to learn, the city they meant to live in, the plan a war or a baby interrupted. Some people answer this lightly and some do not, so ask it once and follow their lead.
What was the best job you ever had, and what was the worst?
Why ask it
The worst job tends to get the better story: the boss, the cold, the day they walked out. Ask what a normal shift involved, because the hours, the tools and the journey there are what nobody thinks to pass on.
Who taught you how to do your work properly?
Why ask it
Most people had a foreman, a ward sister, an older hand or a relative who showed them how the job was really done. You hear about someone the family has never met, and sometimes the source of standards they still hold you to.
What did you do when money was tight?
Why ask it
The answers tend to be practical and exact: a second job, a lodger, a relative who helped, meals stretched, something sold. Ask who in the house kept the money and made those decisions, and hold back sympathy they have not asked for.
Did you ever move for work, or turn down a chance because of the family?
Why ask it
Where your family lives now was often settled by one of these: a transfer accepted, a promotion refused because a parent was ill or the children were settled at school. Listen without telling them it all worked out for the best.
How did you meet my grandmother or grandfather, and who spoke first?
Why ask it
You may know the outline and none of the detail: where exactly, who introduced them, what was said. With both of them in the room, expect two versions and enjoy the argument. If one of them has died it is usually still a welcome question, though not in the first raw months.
How did the two of you decide to get married, and was there a proposal?
Why ask it
Not every engagement began on one knee: some were agreed on a walk home, and some were hurried along by a posting, a job in another town or a parent's opinion. The unstaged version tends to be the funnier one, so ask how long they had known each other and who they told first.
What did a date look like when you were courting, and who paid?
Why ask it
You get the dance hall, the cinema, the walk home and the curfew, the whole machinery of courtship as it then was. Who paid, and who had to approve, shows how much say each of them had.
What did your parents make of the person you chose?
Why ask it
In-laws are a rich subject and usually a safe one after this many years. If the answer is that they disapproved, ask what changed their minds, or whether anything ever did.
What was your wedding day like, and what went wrong?
Why ask it
Asking what went wrong gets you past the photograph to the rain, the late car or the uncle who made a speech nobody had asked for. Find out who made the dress, who paid and how many came. If the album is in the house, fetch it and note down who everyone is.
Where did you live when you were first married, and what did you have in it?
Why ask it
A first home is usually small, borrowed or shared, and remembered in detail: the rent, the landlady, the one good chair. It tells you more about how early married life was lived than the wedding day does.
What did you two argue about, and how did you make it up?
Why ask it
Asking for the secret of a long marriage gets a stock line. This gets the specifics: money, in-laws, who went quiet and who went for a walk. Leave it out if the marriage ended badly or a loss is recent.
Raising a family
What do you remember about the day my mother or father was born?
Why ask it
Birth stories from their time can be startling: who was allowed in the room, how long the stay was, how the news got round. Two grandparents often remember two quite different days, so ask each of them if you can.
How did you choose my parent's name, and what else was on the list?
Why ask it
The rejected names are the fun part, and the chosen one may lead back to a relative or a friend you have never heard about. Ask who had the final say.
What was my mother or father like as a child?
Why ask it
Hardly anyone else can give you your parent at six: the tantrums, the obsessions, the food they would not touch. Ask what worried them about that child too, which is where the honest detail arrives.
What did my mother or father get up to as a teenager that they think you never found out about?
Why ask it
Parents of teenagers often knew more than they let on, and decades later they enjoy saying so. Settle before you leave whether it can be repeated at the next family dinner, because some of it should not be.
What did you find hardest about being a parent?
Why ask it
They were once as new to it as anyone, and the answer may be money, tiredness, one particular child or a partner who was away a lot. A candid answer can change how you read your own parent's childhood, so treat it as told to you and not to the family.
What rule did you have for your children that you would drop now?
Why ask it
Easier to answer than a question about regret, because a rule is a small, specific thing. It sometimes comes with an apology meant for your parent, in which case ask whether they would like you to pass it on.
What do you see of yourself in my mother or father?
Why ask it
They trace something down the line: a temper, a laugh, a way of doing sums at the table. The natural follow-up is whether it has reached you as well, and they may tell you before you ask.
What do you remember about the first time you saw me?
Why ask it
They have probably been waiting to tell this one. You get the phone call, the journey, the first look, and a version of your arrival that your parents were too tired to keep.
What surprised you about becoming a grandparent?
Why ask it
Asking whether they enjoy it gets a yes. Asking what surprised them gets something more exact: being needed less than they expected, or more, or finding they are softer with you than they were with their own children.
What did you like doing with me when I was little?
Why ask it
A gentle one for a low-energy day, and good with a grandparent who finds the bigger questions hard. You may get back a walk, a game or a phrase you had forgotten, and you can offer to do it again.
What is different about how children are raised now, and what do you think we have got right?
Why ask it
The second half stops this becoming a complaint. What they concede is usually considered: fathers who are around more, children who are listened to, fewer things left unsaid.
History
Which big event in history do you remember living through?
Why ask it
School gives you the date. A grandparent can add where they were standing, who told them and what was different in their street the week after. Let them choose the event, since it may not be the one in your textbook, and ask whether it frightened them at the time.
What changed in the world that you never expected to see?
Why ask it
The word doing the work is expected: it asks what surprised them personally. The answer is often something domestic, a telephone, a supermarket, a woman in a particular job, and not a headline event.
What is the first piece of news you remember hearing, and where were you?
Why ask it
A first news memory usually comes with a room: a radio on a shelf, adults gone quiet, a newspaper on the table. Ask how the grown-ups around them reacted, which is what a child actually takes in.
What did things cost: a loaf of bread, a cinema ticket, a week's rent?
Why ask it
Prices are easy to recall and worth having in figures, especially set beside what they earned. Keep it from becoming a talk about inflation. The point is what a week's money could and could not stretch to.
What was the first television, telephone or car your family had, and who was allowed to use it?
Why ask it
Arrival stories are vivid: neighbours coming round to watch, a phone in the hall, the only car on the road. Ask about the rules for touching it, because whoever set them ran the house.
How did you keep in touch with people who lived far away?
Why ask it
Letters, a shared telephone, a visit once a year. If the family was split by a move, this is where you learn what the distance cost, and whether any of the letters were kept.
Did you or anyone close to you serve in a war, or live through one at home?
Why ask it
Ask once, plainly, and let them set the depth. A posting and a date with nothing more is a complete answer. If they do want to talk, get the names of units, ships and places spelled out.
What do you remember about segregation, or about the day a rule like that ended where you lived?
Why ask it
A grandparent who grew up under it can give you what a textbook cannot: which school, which entrance, which seat, which water fountain. Ask for one ordinary day and not the whole era, and let them decide how much of the anger or the fear to hand you.
Was anyone in our family part of the civil rights movement, or of a march, a boycott or a strike nearer home?
Why ask it
Not everyone marched. Somebody cooked, drove, gave money, lent a front room for meetings or kept turning up to work, and those stories go untold because nobody thinks they count. Ask what their own parents made of it, since the generations did not always agree.
What is the furthest from home you have ever been, and what took you there?
Why ask it
For one grandparent it is military service, for another a honeymoon, for another a single coach trip they still talk about. Listen to how they describe the foreign part, the food, the heat, the language, and you hear how big the world looked from where they started.
What did you wear when you wanted to look your best, and where did the clothes come from?
Why ask it
Clothes come back in detail: made at home, handed down, saved for, borrowed from a sister. If there is a photograph of the outfit, this is the moment to go and find it.
What was a normal thing to do then that would get strange looks now?
Why ask it
Smoking on the bus, children sent to the shop alone, a teacher with a cane. Keep your reaction mild whatever they name, because they are reporting, not recommending.
What are you glad is gone for good?
Why ask it
Asked on its own, this cuts against the idea that the old days were simply better. You may hear about an outdoor toilet, washday, an illness nobody could treat, or a rule about who was allowed to do what.
What do people my age get wrong about your generation?
Why ask it
Here they get to correct you, and the answer tends to be forceful: that they were not all strict, not all hard up, not all of one mind. Take the correction without defending your own generation and they will keep going.
Looking back
What are you most proud of?
Why ask it
Leave it open and notice whether the answer is a person, a piece of work or something they got through. Then ask what it took, in years, money or worry, since the effort is the part they rarely mention on their own.
Which years of your life were the happiest?
Why ask it
Do not be surprised if the answer is a plain stretch nobody photographed: a first flat, a job with good company, the years when the children were small. It may fall before you were born, which is no slight. Ask what a normal Saturday looked like then.
When things were at their worst, who did you lean on?
Why ask it
Asking about a person rather than the trouble lets them choose how much of the hard part to tell. The name is often someone the family has never thanked: a sister, a neighbour, a boss who kept the job open. Do not fill the silence afterward, and do not try to move them on to something cheerful.
Which decision turned out to matter most, though it seemed small at the time?
Why ask it
Big decisions get rehearsed over the years and small ones do not. A job taken for six months, a dance they nearly skipped, a letter answered: the answer tends to show how narrowly your family came to exist.
Is there anything you regret, or would do differently now?
Why ask it
Keep this for a quiet moment with nobody else listening. Some people have an answer ready, a school place turned down or a quarrel left too long, and others say they regret nothing, which is an answer and not a dodge. Listen without rushing to tell them it was not their fault.
What is the best advice anyone gave you, and did you take it?
Why ask it
The second half makes this more than a motto. Advice ignored at twenty and understood at fifty is a better story than advice followed, and you get the adviser's name along with it.
What advice would you give me at the age I am now?
Why ask it
Tell them what you are actually deciding at the moment, a course, a job, a move, a relationship, and the advice gets specific instead of general. You do not have to take it. Ask what happened in their own life that makes them say it, and you leave with a story as well as an opinion.
What lesson took you the longest to learn?
Why ask it
A slow lesson has a story behind it, often several tries and a bill at the end. The answer might be patience, money or when to keep quiet, and whichever it is, ask how old they were when it finally sank in and what happened that day.
What did you worry about that turned out not to matter?
Why ask it
Their answer may be the exam, the debt or the neighbours' opinion that you are losing sleep over yourself. Then ask what did turn out to matter, which can be the more surprising answer.
What can you do that I ought to learn while you can still show me?
Why ask it
This turns the conversation into something you do together: a knot, a pastry, a card game, sharpening a blade, reading a pattern. Skills taught side by side bring out stories that a sit-down conversation never reaches.
What should I know about getting older?
Why ask it
Many older people have a clear, unsentimental answer ready about knees, friends and time. Ask with real curiosity and no pity, and do not rush to tell them they are not old.
What are you still hoping to do?
Why ask it
Nearly everything else on this page looks backward, and this one treats them as someone with a future. If the answer is something you could help with, a trip, a visit, a thing to learn, you have just been handed a plan.
What family story has been tidied up over the years, and what really happened?
Why ask it
Ask late, alone, and only if the conversation has been going well. Many families have a story that was smoothed over for the children, and a grandparent may be the last person who knows the first version. If they would rather leave it tidy, that answer is final.
How would you like to be remembered?
Why ask it
Ask it lightly, as a question about what matters to them and not about dying. The answer is often a single word, kind, fair, funny, hard-working, and the follow-up is to ask for a time they think they lived up to it. If they turn it into a joke, laugh and move on.
What did you do for the family that never got the credit it deserved?
Why ask it
Most of what holds a family together is unglamorous: shifts worked, debts paid, a parent nursed, a brother taken in. Wait out the first modest refusal, since naming it is not boasting when someone has asked, and say thank you when they finish.
What do you hope we keep doing as a family?
Why ask it
A calm way to ask what they want carried on, without making the conversation about their death. Answers tend to be modest and specific, a meal, a place, staying in touch with a particular branch, which makes them easy to actually honour.
What do you want me to know about you that I would never think to ask?
Why ask it
Save it for the end, because it hands over control after an hour of you directing things. Leave a long pause, since this one takes thinking about, and keep the recording running until they have clearly finished.
How to Have This Conversation Well
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Choosing What to Ask
Pick a handful, not the whole list
Five or six questions fill an hour once the follow-ups start. Choose them beforehand, lead with one you are honestly curious about, and keep the rest for the next visit.
Match the group to the visit
Childhood and History are easy at a crowded table or on the phone. Family roots needs a pen and some quiet. Love and work and Raising a family go better one to one, and Looking back belongs at the end of a conversation that has already gone well.
If it is an interview for a school project
Ask for things you can write down and check: places, years, jobs, prices, names. Childhood, Family roots and History are the groups to draw from. Say what the project is and who will read it before you start, so they can decide what to leave out.
For African American families
Written records for many Black families in the United States thin out the further back you go, so what a grandparent heard from their own elders can be the only account left. Family roots has the questions on who moved and who stayed, what was passed down by word of mouth and who keeps the funeral programs, and History has the ones on segregation and the civil rights years. Get the county as well as the town, because old records are usually filed by county.
With two grandparents in the room
Couples correct each other, which is entertaining and tends to lose the quieter one's version. Ask the shared questions together, then find a time with each of them alone.
Setting It Up
Ask in advance rather than at the table
A holiday dinner with eight people and a television on is the worst setting for any of this. Ask for an hour on a quiet afternoon, tell them what you are curious about, and let them think about it beforehand.
Record it, and ask permission first
A phone on the table between you is enough, and it tends to be forgotten once the talk gets going. Say plainly that you want to keep their voice, ask whether they mind, and tell them who else will hear it.
Bring photographs or an object
A shoebox of pictures can do more than a list of questions, because faces prompt names and names prompt stories. Ask who is in the frame and write the answers on a note, not on the photograph.
Keep sessions short and come back
Forty minutes is plenty, especially for someone who tires. Two or three shorter conversations produce better material than one long session that ends with everyone worn out.
Write down names, places and dates as you go
Spellings of villages, maiden names and the years people married are the details nobody else will be able to reconstruct later. Ask them to repeat anything you are unsure of while you have them.
While You Are Talking
- Sit beside them rather than across a table, especially if hearing is a problem, and keep your face visible.
- Let a story you have heard before run to the end anyway. The repeated stories are the ones that matter to them, and the details shift each time.
- Do not correct dates or facts in the moment. Note the discrepancy and check it later against records.
- Ask what happened next rather than why, since why can sound like an accusation about a decision made fifty years ago.
- Follow the names they mention, since each one is a thread into a part of the family you may not know exists.
- If they get upset, stop asking and stay. Sitting with it is better than changing the subject brightly.
When Memory or Health Is a Factor
Start with the oldest memories
When recent recall is unreliable, childhood, first jobs and songs are often still clear. Ask about the distant past, do not test them on last week, and never quiz.
Follow their version of events
Correcting someone whose memory is failing tends to upset them and adds nothing to the record. If a detail is wrong, let it stand in the recording and note your query separately. If you are unsure what is kind in their case, ask whoever looks after them day to day.
Watch for tiredness and stop early
Illness and poor hearing make a long talk hard work, and they may not say so. Ending while they are still enjoying it is what makes a second conversation possible.
If time is short, ask the last three questions first
What never got the credit it deserved, what they want the family to keep doing, and what they want you to know are the answers nobody else can give for them later. The childhood detail can wait.