Best Questions to Ask Your Grandparents
Twenty questions for your grandparents about the house they grew up in, their first job and what it paid, how they met, the relatives nobody mentions and the years that were hard. Written for grandchildren who want more than small talk, with notes on recording the answers.
The questions
Open any question for the note
Where were you living when you were my age, and what was the house like?
Why ask it
Starting with a place rather than a feeling gives them something concrete to describe, and rooms, smells and neighbours pull other memories along with them. It is also an easy question for someone who finds being interviewed uncomfortable.
What did your parents do, and what were they like?
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 rather than an occupation, and it often explains a family habit you had assumed was ordinary.
What did you do after school when you were a kid?
Why ask it
The unsupervised hours are where childhoods differ most across generations, and this question gets the games, the chores and the walking distances. Expect the answer to include something that would horrify a parent today.
What was your first job, and what did it pay?
Why ask it
The number is the part worth having, because it fixes the story in a real economy and makes the rest of the era legible. It also tends to lead straight into what they spent it on, which is where the story is.
What do you remember about your own grandparents?
Why ask it
This reaches back a further generation and is often the only route to it, since nobody else alive met those people. Ask early in a conversation while their energy is good, because the recall takes effort.
How did you two meet, and what did you think at first?
Why ask it
The second half is what keeps this from becoming the version told at anniversaries. First impressions are often unflattering and funny, and they get you the courtship rather than the wedding.
What did you imagine your life would look like when you were twenty?
Why ask it
Invites the version of their life that did not happen, which almost never comes up at a family table. Some people answer this lightly and some do not, so ask it once and follow their lead.
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.
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.
Which relative do we never talk about?
Why ask it
Most families have one, and grandparents are often the last people who know why. Ask it gently and accept a refusal without pushing, because a closed subject is usually closed for someone else's sake.
What did your family talk about at the dinner table?
Why ask it
A precise way into how they were raised: politics, work, religion, nothing at all. Whether disagreement was allowed at that table often explains how the same subject is handled in your family now.
What did you do when money was tight?
Why ask it
Practical and rarely asked, and the answers are specific: a second job, a landlord, a relative who helped, meals stretched. Grandparents who grew up without much are often more comfortable with this question than their children are.
What was the hardest year you can remember?
Why ask it
Asking for a year rather than a feeling makes it answerable and lets them choose how much to tell. Do not fill the silence afterward, and do not try to move them on to something cheerful.
What changed in the world that you never expected to see?
Why ask it
Better than asking how times have changed, because it asks what surprised them personally. The answer is often something domestic, a telephone, a supermarket, a woman in a particular job, rather than a headline event.
What was my mother or father like as a child?
Why ask it
Reliably the most enjoyed question of any visit, and it gives you a version of your parent nobody else can supply. Ask what worried them about that child too, which is where the honest detail arrives.
What do people my age get wrong about your generation?
Why ask it
Invites them to correct you, which flips the usual direction of these conversations and tends to produce something forceful. Take the correction rather than defending your generation, and the rest of the conversation opens up.
What are you proud of that nobody ever thanks you for?
Why ask it
Most of what holds a family together is unglamorous: work taken, debts paid, people looked after. This question gives them permission to name it, and it is often the answer families are most glad to have recorded.
Is there anything about our family you have never told anyone?
Why ask it
Ask late, alone, and only if the conversation has been going well. Some people have been waiting to be asked and some have not, and both answers should be treated as final.
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
The best closing question because it hands over control after an hour of you directing things. Leave a long pause: this one often takes a while, and the answer is frequently the reason to have recorded the conversation.
How to Have This Conversation Well
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
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 most people forget it within minutes. Say plainly that you want to keep their voice, which is usually received as a compliment rather than a request.
Bring photographs or an object
A shoebox of pictures produces more than any 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
Older memories usually survive longest
If recent recall is unreliable, childhood, first jobs and songs are often still clear. Ask about the distant past rather than testing them on last week, and never quiz.
Follow their version of events
Correcting someone with dementia rarely helps and often distresses them. If a detail is wrong, let it stand in the recording and note your query separately.
Watch for tiredness and stop early
Illness, hearing aids and medication all shorten the useful window. 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 they are proud of, what they want the family to keep, and what they want you to know are the answers people most regret not having. The childhood detail can wait.