Questions to Ask an Old Person About Their Life
Questions to ask an elderly person about their life, whether that is a grandparent on an ordinary visit or someone you are interviewing for a school project or a family record. They run from easy openers about childhood, home and first jobs to harder ones about hardship, regret, and what they want remembered, and the last five are for closing a recorded interview.
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The questions
Each question, and why to ask it
Where did you grow up, and what was the house like?
Why ask it
Physical detail is the easiest way in, because people remember rooms, smells, and who slept where long after they have lost dates. It also gives you specifics to come back to for the rest of the conversation.
What did you do with your time as a child when no adult was watching?
Why ask it
Asking about unsupervised time gets past the sanitised version of childhood into where they actually went and who with. A one-line answer usually means they need a follow-up about a specific place rather than a different question.
What was the first work you were paid for, and what did it pay?
Why ask it
The wage figure fixes the era better than a year does, and it often opens onto what the money was for: shoes, family bills, saving to leave. Watch for whether the work was chosen or required.
Who were you closest to when you were young?
Why ask it
This surfaces the friend or sibling who shaped them, sometimes someone the family has never heard of. Be ready for the answer to arrive with a death attached, and let the pause run.
What did your parents expect you to become?
Why ask it
The gap between the expectation and the life is where the story is. People who met the expectation tend to describe it flatly, and people who broke from it usually remember the conversation where they said so.
How did you meet your partner, and what did you make of them at first?
Why ask it
The second half of the question is the useful part, because first impressions are specific and often unflattering, which makes for a better story than a courtship summary. If the marriage ended badly, the question still works because it asks about the beginning.
What was the first home that was yours like?
Why ask it
First homes carry the details of a whole period: what things cost, who lived nearby, what was missing. It is also a natural bridge from family of origin to adult life.
How did you end up doing the work you did, and would you choose it again?
Why ask it
Most careers were assembled from accidents and constraints rather than chosen, and saying so out loud is often a relief. The second half separates people who found their work worthwhile from people who endured it.
What was happening in your town when you were young that people still talk about?
Why ask it
Local memory produces stories a general question about history never will: a flood, a factory closing, a scandal. It also lets them be the expert, which loosens the conversation.
Which change over your lifetime surprised you most?
Why ask it
Ask for surprise rather than importance, because it produces something particular rather than a list of headlines. Answers often land on ordinary things, such as how people speak to each other or what work looks like.
What was the hardest year you have lived through, and what got you through it?
Why ask it
Placing hardship in a specific year gives them a bounded thing to talk about rather than a mood. Accept a refusal without pressing, and offer to return to it another day.
What did you believe strongly at thirty that you no longer believe?
Why ask it
This asks for a change of mind, which is more revealing than a statement of values, and it applies to religion, politics, and money without naming them. A blank answer often means they will get there if you name your own change first.
Which decade of your life was the best one, and what made it that?
Why ask it
People rarely pick the decade a listener expects, and the reason given, usually about health, children, or a particular house, tells you what they actually value. The choice is a better summary of a life than a list of achievements.
What did your parents teach you that you kept, and what did you drop?
Why ask it
Asking about both sides gives permission to be critical of parents without disloyalty. The dropped half is usually where the real story sits.
What do you know about our family that nobody else still knows?
Why ask it
This treats them as the last holder of a record rather than as a source of anecdotes, and it often produces names, moves, and causes of death that are missing from family accounts. Write those down as they arrive, since they are hard to recover later.
Was there a decision that turned out to matter far more than it seemed at the time?
Why ask it
Turning points are usually small and only visible in hindsight: taking a train, answering a letter, saying yes to a job for the wrong reason. The answer is the closest thing to a plot the conversation will get.
What did you want that you never got?
Why ask it
This is the question that most often produces a long silence and then something they have not said in years. Ask it only once trust is established, and do not follow it with reassurance.
What are you still curious about?
Why ask it
It moves the conversation out of the past and treats them as someone with a present. A thin answer here can be worth noticing, since withdrawal of interest is often an early sign that something is wrong.
How do you want to spend your time now, and what gets in the way?
Why ask it
The obstacle half is the useful part, because it surfaces practical problems such as transport, money, or a hearing aid that does not work, which a family can often solve.
What do you want people to remember, and what would you rather they forgot?
Why ask it
The second clause is what makes this land, because it invites honesty about the parts of a life that are not for display. Treat whatever comes out as told in confidence unless they say otherwise.
Who was in the house when you were small, and who was in charge?
Why ask it
Households were often larger and less tidy than family trees suggest, with lodgers, grandparents, or a cousin staying for a year. Naming who held authority explains a great deal about how they were raised before you ask about it directly.
What did your parents do for a living, and did you have to help?
Why ask it
Children in working households often had real duties, and describing them usually produces more detail than a question about childhood in general. It also tells you what the family's money depended on and how fragile that was.
How much money did your family have, and did you know it at the time?
Why ask it
The gap between the reality and what the child understood is the interesting part, and asking it this way makes the question answerable without embarrassment. Expect careful phrasing, because many people learned early not to discuss this.
What do you remember about starting school?
Why ask it
First days are unusually well preserved: the walk, the smell of the room, the name of a teacher. Ask what happened at the end of the school day too, because that is where the unsupervised part of childhood lived.
What did the place look like then, and what has gone from it since?
Why ask it
The second half invites them to be a witness rather than a subject, which many people find easier. Answers give you shops, factories, and streets you can look up and use as prompts in the next session.
What did you do that your parents disapproved of?
Why ask it
This is often where the guarded version of the life gives way. It also produces the stories younger relatives most want to hear, since it shows the person before they became somebody's grandparent.
Was there a teacher, employer, or neighbour who changed the direction you took?
Why ask it
People rarely volunteer these names, but almost everyone has one. What you get is the moment a life turned, and often a debt they have never had the chance to acknowledge out loud.
What did an ordinary Saturday night look like when you were twenty?
Why ask it
Asking about the ordinary rather than the memorable gets you dance halls, kitchen tables, shift work, and radio, the texture that big events leave out. It is also an easy question on a day when they are not in the mood to be serious.
What news event did everyone in your house talk about?
Why ask it
This gets a first-hand account rather than an opinion about history. Ask where they were and who they were with, since the personal setting is the part no record holds.
Which of your things has a story attached to it?
Why ask it
Objects are reliable prompts, and the answer tells the family what to keep, which they will otherwise have to guess. Photograph the item alongside the recording so the two are not separated later.
What do you know how to do that hardly anyone learns now?
Why ask it
Skills such as mending, preserving, shorthand, or handling animals are worth capturing while there is someone to demonstrate them. Ask them to talk you through it step by step rather than to summarise it.
Of everything we talked about today, which part would you like to come back to?
Why ask it
It hands them the agenda for the next sitting, and the choice shows which period they consider unfinished. Write it at the top of your notes so the next visit can start there.
Who else should I talk to about those years, and what would they say that you would not?
Why ask it
An interview with one person is one account, and a sibling or an old neighbour will remember the same kitchen differently. The second half tends to bring a laugh first and then a disagreement worth hearing about.
Is there anything you said today that you would rather I kept to myself?
Why ask it
Asking while the recorder is still running puts their wishes on the record next to the story itself. People speak more freely at the next visit once they have seen a request to leave something out honoured.
What should I have asked you about that I did not?
Why ask it
Every interviewer arrives with a plan, and the person across the table may have been waiting to see whether one subject would come up. Keep recording, because this answer can run longer than any other.
If a great-grandchild listens to this one day, what would you like to say to them directly?
Why ask it
Speaking to a listener who is not in the room moves them from recalling to addressing someone, and it sounds different on a recording. Let them take it wherever they choose, including a joke.
Interviewing someone about their life
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
How to run the conversation
Record it, and ask first
A phone on the table captures names and dates you will not remember and lets you listen instead of writing. Ask permission openly, say what the recording is for, and agree that anything can be cut.
One period per sitting
Trying to cover a whole life in an afternoon produces summaries. An hour on childhood alone yields more than three hours ranging across eighty years, and it leaves a reason to come back.
Put objects in front of them
Photographs, a map of the old street, a recipe card, a service record. Memory attaches to things, and people who say they cannot remember much often talk for an hour with a photograph in their hands.
Ask for the scene, not the summary
When an answer arrives as a general statement, ask who else was in the room, what time of year it was, or what happened next. Detail turns a fact into a story.
Following one answer further
From first job to a whole period
- 1What was the first work you were paid for?
- 2Who else worked there, and what were they like?
- 3What did you spend the money on?
- 4When did you know you would not stay?
From a photograph
- 1Who is standing next to you here?
- 2What was happening that day?
- 3Where was this taken, and does it still exist?
- 4What were you worrying about around then?
Common pitfalls
Correcting the record
If a date or a name is wrong, note it and check later. Correcting someone mid-story tends to end the story and makes the next answer shorter.
Working through the list
Treating this as a questionnaire produces a run of short answers. Ten questions with real follow-ups will give you more than the whole list asked in order.
Filling silences
The hardest questions here need five or ten seconds of quiet. Jumping in with a suggestion gives them an easy exit.
Ignoring energy and hearing
An hour is a long time for someone who tires easily, and background noise makes hearing aids useless. Sit close, turn off the television, and stop before they flag.