Questions to Ask an Old Person
Questions for an ordinary conversation with an older neighbour, relative, or friend, weighted toward their present life and current views rather than a tour of the past.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What did you do today?
Why ask it
Starting in the present avoids casting them as a historical exhibit, and the answer tells you how full or empty the days are. If today produces nothing, that is worth knowing before you ask anything else.
What are you reading or watching at the moment?
Why ask it
Current tastes are the fastest route out of small talk, and they give you something to bring or send next time. Watch for whether they have anything in progress at all.
Who do you speak to most in a normal week?
Why ask it
The answer maps the actual support network, which is often narrower than the family assumes, and sometimes centres on a neighbour or a shop rather than relatives. Names that have dropped off the list are the useful detail.
What is the best thing about where you live now?
Why ask it
This invites something positive about a situation that may not have been chosen, and it usually surfaces the practical anchors: a bus stop, a view, someone across the hall. The absence of any answer is itself a signal.
What do people get wrong about being your age?
Why ask it
Almost everyone has a ready complaint here, usually about being spoken to slowly or being assumed incapable. Hearing it early makes the rest of the conversation better.
What has got easier as you got older?
Why ask it
People expect to be asked about decline, so this question tends to produce something considered: caring less about opinion, knowing how to say no, spending money without guilt.
What has got harder that people do not talk about?
Why ask it
Answers often concern isolation, admin, or the constant small negotiations with institutions rather than health. This is where a family can usually do something practical.
Whose advice do you take now?
Why ask it
Older people are constantly advised and rarely asked whom they trust. The name that comes back tells you who actually has influence, which matters when a decision about money or care is coming.
Is there anything you have changed your mind about recently?
Why ask it
Adding recently is what makes this work, because it refuses the assumption that views were fixed decades ago. A specific example, even a small one about food or technology, opens the door to bigger ones.
What do you make of the way people work now?
Why ask it
This gets a comparison rather than a lecture, and it usually produces sharp observation about hours, loyalty, or how much of the job happens at home. Better than asking what they think of young people.
What do you miss that no longer exists?
Why ask it
Answers land on shops, radio programmes, ways of doing business, and specific people, which is more interesting than nostalgia in general. Follow whichever one they say with feeling.
What do you not miss at all?
Why ask it
This is the question that stops the conversation drifting into a golden age story, and the answers are often blunt: the cold, the smoke, the way certain people were treated.
Which of your friendships lasted, and why do you think it did?
Why ask it
The reasoning is the point, and it tends to be unromantic: proximity, a shared job, one person who kept phoning. That is more useful advice about friendship than anything a younger person will read.
What do you do when you cannot sleep?
Why ask it
It is a small, unguarded question that gets a real answer, and it often reveals what occupies them at three in the morning. Loneliness and worry surface here more readily than in a direct question.
What are you looking forward to?
Why ask it
Anyone can name something if there is something. A long pause followed by nothing is worth taking seriously rather than filling with encouragement.
What advice do people keep giving you that is not useful?
Why ask it
This gives permission to be irritated, and the answer often describes exactly what the family has been doing. Listen without defending it.
When did you last do something for the first time?
Why ask it
The date matters as much as the activity. Recent answers usually come with a story about who arranged it, which shows you what kind of prompting works.
Is there anything you want to do but have not asked anyone for help with?
Why ask it
Older people often withhold requests to avoid being a burden, and the specific unasked thing tends to be small and easily fixed. Ask this only if you intend to act on the answer.
Is there a compliment you still remember years later?
Why ask it
The one that stuck is nearly always specific and from someone unexpected, which tells you what they hoped to be seen as. It is an easier route to values than asking about values.
What should I not put off?
Why ask it
This asks for advice narrowly enough to get a real answer instead of a platitude, and it treats them as someone with standing to advise you. Expect it to be about a person rather than an achievement.
Having the conversation
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Practical points that change the conversation
Fix the sound before the subject
Turn off the television, sit on the side of the better ear, face them in the light, and speak lower rather than louder. Most conversations that stall with older people stall on hearing, not on interest.
Talk while doing something
Washing up, walking, sorting photographs, driving. Side-by-side activity removes the interview feeling and makes the harder questions easier to answer.
Answer your own questions too
Say what you have changed your mind about before asking them. Without that, the conversation becomes an assessment, which is what most older people are already getting from everyone else.
Come back to one thread
Mention the book, the neighbour, or the plan they raised last time. Being remembered accurately is what makes the next conversation go further.
A short visit that goes somewhere
Twenty minutes
- 1Start with today, not with the past.
- 2Ask what they are reading or watching, and follow it.
- 3Ask what has got harder that people do not talk about.
- 4Close by asking whether there is anything they need but have not asked for.
Common pitfalls
Turning it into a memory test
Questions that require dates, names, or sequences can feel like an examination to anyone worried about their memory. Ask what something was like rather than when it happened.
Only asking about the past
A visit made up entirely of reminiscence tells someone their present is not interesting. Half the questions here are deliberately about now.
Treating repetition as a problem
A story told again is usually a story that matters. Ask a new detail about it rather than pointing out that you have heard it.
Talking to the carer instead
When a family member or aide is present, questions drift to them. Keep addressing the person, and wait for their answer even when someone else could give it faster.