Questions to Ask Your Family
Questions to ask your family when several generations are in one place: a dinner, a holiday, a reunion or a long drive. They run in five groups, from warm-ups a child and a grandparent can both answer, through family stories, traditions and the days each person remembers differently, to a few deeper ones. Each has a note on what to do with the answer, and the guide covers keeping old arguments off the table.
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The questions
Each question, and why to ask it
Warm-ups
What is your favorite memory of all of us together?
Why ask it
The answers are usually small and unplanned: a power cut, a kitchen with too many people in it, the night everyone slept in one room. Let the youngest go early, since they have the fewest to pick from. When two people name the same day, ask each for the part the other left out.
If you were cooking for everyone here tonight, what would you put on the table?
Why ask it
A six-year-old says pancakes and a grandfather names the stew his mother made, so the whole table has answered inside two minutes. Ask each cook who would be allowed to help in the kitchen: it gets a laugh, and now and then a real plan for the next visit.
What were you doing at the age the youngest person here is now?
Why ask it
Say the age out loud, nine for instance, and go from the oldest down. The child hears that a grandmother walked to school alone and an uncle broke his arm falling off a shed, then answers last with what being nine is like today.
What scared you when you were small that seems funny now?
Why ask it
Children get to hear that the grown-ups were once afraid of the vacuum cleaner or the drain in the bath. If a child names something that still frightens them, nobody laughs: thank them and have an adult answer next.
What is the best present you were ever given, at any age?
Why ask it
A grandparent's answer is often something modest, a bicycle shared with a brother or a pocketknife, and the children's answers sound different once they have heard it. Leave the worst-present follow-up for a day when the giver is not in the room.
What is the best thing that has happened to you since the last time we were all together?
Why ask it
Made for reunions and holidays, when months have gone by. Say at the start that small things count, a new teacher, a finished fence, a good checkup, so nobody feels they need a promotion or a baby to report.
Who in this family is the hardest to wake up, and who is up before everyone else?
Why ask it
Pointing is allowed, and the accused gets a right of reply. It makes a safe first tease because few people mind being called a late sleeper. If someone plainly does mind, move along before the table piles on.
Which one song would you make everyone listen to on a long drive?
Why ask it
Best asked in the car, where the answer can be played at once. One song each, no vetoes, no remarks until it finishes. The eye-rolling at a grandparent's pick tends to fade by the second chorus, and the same goes for the teenager's.
If all of us could take one trip together, where should we go?
Why ask it
A child says the water park and a grandparent names the town their mother came from. Ask that second kind of answer 'why there?' and you are into family history without announcing it. It is a wish, so nobody gets to price it or point out who could not get the time off.
Which food did you hate as a kid and like now, or the other way around?
Why ask it
Nobody is short of an answer and nobody is embarrassed by it. A picky eater at the table may quietly take in that tastes change, provided no adult spoils it by turning the moment into a lesson about vegetables.
If our family had a motto, what would it be?
Why ask it
The joke answers come first and are worth having ('Has anyone seen my keys?'). Listen for the one that makes the whole table groan in recognition. That one is accurate, and it will be quoted at gatherings for years.
What is the person on your left best at?
Why ask it
Go around the circle so everyone gives one answer and receives one. Children are startlingly exact ('Grandpa can peel an apple in one long strip'), and a quiet relative may hear something nobody has told them in years.
Family stories
How did each of us get our name?
Why ask it
Include the adults, whose own naming stories the children have probably never heard. Middle names are where the relatives hide. 'We just liked it' is a complete answer, so nobody needs pressing for a meaning.
Why do we live here and not somewhere else: who made that move, and when?
Why ask it
Put it to the whole table and not only the eldest, and you find out how much of the story has reached each generation. Where every version runs out, write the gap down, a town or a year, and give one person the job of finding out.
Who is the oldest relative you ever met in person, and what do you remember about them?
Why ask it
You find out how far back the room's living memory goes. One detail is plenty: pipe smoke, a stern voice, a row of beans. Get it on paper that day, since a detail like that is recorded nowhere else.
How did the couples in this family meet?
Why ask it
Take one couple at a time and have each partner tell it, because the two accounts rarely match and the gap is the entertainment. Pass over any couple that has separated unless one of them raises it.
What is the worst trouble any adult at this table got into as a kid?
Why ask it
The children will like this better than anything else on the page, and the grandparents usually hold the evidence. The adult in question decides how much is told. If a story is being told to shame and not to amuse, say 'your turn' and point at the teller.
Who was the first person in our family to do something nobody before them had done?
Why ask it
Let the table argue over what counts: finishing school, leaving the country, opening a shop, marrying someone from outside the town. The argument shows what the family is proud of, and a teenager hears that doing it differently has precedent.
What jobs have people in this family done, as far back as anyone knows?
Why ask it
A run of farmhands, seamstresses, drivers and clerks is a family history on its own. Work backward from the people present until memory gives out, and watch the younger ones when a quiet relative turns out to have driven a truck or run a switchboard.
Which family legend would you most like to see proved or disproved?
Why ask it
Treat it as a mystery to look into and not a claim to defend, whether it is the famous ancestor, the land that was lost or the narrow escape. Someone can check a record later, and whoever tells it best should not feel caught out if it falls apart.
Which family photograph would you save first, and who is in it?
Why ask it
Send someone for the picture if it is under this roof, and hand it around. Pencil the names on the back while the people who know them are sitting there: an unlabeled face is a stranger to whoever inherits the album.
Which object in the family has the longest history, and where is it now?
Why ask it
A ring, a table, a cast-iron pan, a box of letters. Ask what is known about each person who owned it. Stay with the history: who gets it next is an inheritance conversation, and that belongs to a different day with fewer listeners.
Which relative who is no longer living do you wish the youngest ones had met?
Why ask it
Each adult picks one person and gives a single thing they did or said. Portraits, not eulogies. When the loss is recent and a voice catches, let the quiet sit, say thank you, and turn to someone else.
Which trip or move in this family's past would make the best movie?
Why ask it
Answers run from a crossing made generations back to the vacation when the car died in the rain. Asking for a movie sets the children casting relatives as actors, which holds them in a history conversation longer than you would expect.
What did this family do for fun before there were screens in every pocket?
Why ask it
Grandparents first, then parents: card games, the radio, a single television everyone had to agree on. Head off the 'kids today' speech when you feel it coming. Finish by asking the children which of those they would try, and try it that evening.
Traditions
Which of our family traditions is your favorite, and which part of it exactly?
Why ask it
The second half is where the information is. When three people name the walk after the meal and nobody names the meal, you know where next year's effort should go.
What does our family do that other families would find strange?
Why ask it
The children who have slept over at a friend's house are the experts, having seen the difference firsthand. Expect things the adults never counted as traditions: how a birthday morning starts, what gets said at the door, who is owed the last piece.
Which dish has to be on the table or it does not count as a family gathering?
Why ask it
Next, find out who can make it. If that is one person, treat it as a warning and have them cook it with someone younger standing by with a pencil, since the measurements have probably never made it onto a card.
What word or saying does only our family use?
Why ask it
Most households have a few: a baby's mispronunciation that stuck, a grandfather's standing warning, a name for the remote control. Put them on one sheet. In-laws and new partners get the glossary they have been missing.
Which of our traditions started by accident, and who remembers how?
Why ask it
Plenty of rituals began as a mishap: the year the oven broke and everyone ate pizza, the wrong turn that became the usual route. Children are often surprised that a tradition had a first time at all. If two adults date it differently, let both dates stand.
What did a birthday look like for each generation here?
Why ask it
A grandparent may describe a cake and nothing more, a parent a backyard full of neighbors, a child a party with a theme and a venue. No version wins, and saying so early keeps the talk off spoiled children.
What did you bring into this family from the one you grew up in?
Why ask it
This one is for the in-laws and stepparents, who spend most gatherings learning someone else's customs. A recipe, a card game, a way of opening presents. A good sign is a child saying 'we do that because of you?'
What did you do at family gatherings as a kid while the adults talked?
Why ask it
It puts the generations level for a minute: the answers are forts under the table, cousins loose in the yard, being sent for more chairs. Adults who have just said theirs out loud often turn more patient with whatever the children are up to at this very gathering.
Who taught you something by hand, a recipe, a knot, a card trick, and have you passed it on?
Why ask it
Skills move down a family the way stories do, and they stop with one person just as easily. If the second half gets a no, the remedy is in the room: pair the one who knows with whoever asks first and name a day.
What is one small thing we could do every time we are all together, starting today?
Why ask it
Small is the word doing the work: a photo on the same step, one song, a walk to the same corner. Give the children's ideas real weight, choose one before people leave, and do it once so it has already begun.
How does this family say goodbye, and how long does it really take?
Why ask it
The forty minutes at the door, the wave from the porch until the car turns, the leftovers pressed into your hands. Nobody planned that tradition. Ask it near the end, just before you all go and do it.
Compare notes
Pick one trip we were all on: what is the first thing each of you remembers about it?
Why ask it
Settle on the trip before anyone answers, then go around. One person has the weather, another the argument over the map, the youngest a dog on the beach. Say early that nobody is wrong, because the urge to correct each other is strong.
What do you remember about this family that you suspect nobody else does?
Why ask it
Sometimes another face lights up and adds a piece, and sometimes there are only blank looks. Take the memory as given in both cases. 'That never happened' is the sentence that shuts this kind of talk down.
What is the earliest thing you remember about someone else at this table?
Why ask it
Aim it at one person at a time so each gets a turn being described, and start with whoever tends to be overlooked. A child's first picture of a grandparent, or a sister's memory of a brother being carried in the door, is usually news to the person described.
What were the house rules when you were growing up, as you remember them?
Why ask it
Brothers and sisters will insist the rules differed for each of them, and they may well be right. Keep to what the rules were. Once it turns into 'she always got away with it,' an old argument has walked in: say that one needs its own day, and ask a grandparent what the rules were a generation earlier.
What do you remember about the day the youngest person here joined the family?
Why ask it
Every older person holds a piece: the phone call, the drive, who stayed with whom. The child hears their own arrival from five angles. It works as well for an adoption day, or for the first dinner a stepparent or partner came to, with the wording changed to fit.
Which story that gets told about you do you remember differently?
Why ask it
The subject of the story finally has the floor. Let them finish before the usual narrator answers, and leave both versions standing. If it is plainly a story they have never liked, the best result is the family agreeing to retire it.
What sound or smell takes you straight back to a house this family lived in?
Why ask it
People raised in the same house name different things: a screen door, a brand of soap, one radio station on Saturday mornings. Ask the ones who only visited last. They tend to name something the residents had stopped noticing.
Which two people in this family are most alike, and do those two agree?
Why ask it
The pair usually protest, then prove the point by protesting in the same manner. Hold it to habits and humor. 'You are just like your father,' said with an edge, is a comparison to stop before it lands.
What did someone here do for you that they have probably forgotten?
Why ask it
The usual reply is 'I don't remember that,' and that is the reason to say it. A ride at midnight, a coat lent, a word at the right moment. It lets one person thank another at a full table with no speech required.
Deeper
What is this family good at when things go wrong?
Why ask it
It comes at the hard times through what people did well in them, so nobody has to recount the bad year itself. Turning up with food and joking in the waiting room are both answers. So is 'we never mention it again,' which may deserve a gentle 'does that always help?'
What about your life right now do the rest of us not quite understand?
Why ask it
Teenagers and grandparents tend to have this ready, and it is often the same thing: how their days really go. The table's whole job is one curious question each. Advice and fixes can wait until they are asked for.
What did you learn from someone in this family that they never sat you down to teach?
Why ask it
These are answers about watching: how a mother dealt with a rude customer, how a grandfather never left the house without saying where he was going. The person named seldom knew they were being studied, so make sure they are listening.
What would make it easier for this family to stay in touch between visits?
Why ask it
A good answer is small: a Sunday call, a shared photo album, one fixed weekend a year. A worrying one arrives as a charge ('you never visit'). Turn it back into a request by asking what would make it easy, and set one date before anyone stands up.
Who in this family do you wish you knew better?
Why ask it
The name is often a generation away or a long drive away: a cousin seen once a year, a grandfather who answers in one word. The remedy is practical. Seat the two together at the next meal, or trade phone numbers before anyone leaves. If the name is someone who has stopped coming, hear it and leave the reasons for a private talk.
What do you hope the children here remember about these gatherings when they are grown?
Why ask it
Adults answer while the children listen, and then the children say what they expect to remember. The lists tend not to match: adults name the meal and the effort, children name the cousins and the dog. Plan the next one by the children's list.
Is there a question you have always wanted to ask someone at this table?
Why ask it
Then they ask it, and the other person is free to say 'later, just us two.' Most turn out mild: why did you leave that job, what was I like as a baby. If one is loaded, 'later' is the right answer and nobody pushes.
When have you been proudest to belong to this family?
Why ask it
Expect a particular day: a funeral where everybody came, a graduation, the time the cousins closed ranks around one of their own. If someone cannot think of one, do not fill the gap for them. Come back after two others have answered.
What should the next generation of this family know that is not written down anywhere?
Why ask it
It could be how the bread is made, why two branches stopped speaking, where the papers are kept or what illness runs in the line. Have someone take notes. For health and legal matters, settle only who to ask privately; the details are not for a full table.
What is the best advice that has been handed down in this family, and who said it first?
Why ask it
Advice with a name on it sticks better than advice in general. Ask whether the person who gave it lived by it themselves. That tends to get a laugh and a truer picture of them than the saying does.
What are you looking forward to in the next year, and how can the rest of us show up for it?
Why ask it
It points forward and hands everyone a small job. A recital, a move, an operation, a retirement: write the dates down before the plates are cleared. Worth worrying about is the person with nothing to name; call them next week.
How to ask these with the whole family in the room
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Before you ask
Pick a handful
Read the list ahead of time and mark five or six, at least two of them from Warm-ups. A family that is enjoying itself will supply the rest. Working down a page in order turns a dinner into a survey, and people start answering to get it over with.
Say what you are doing
One sentence is enough: 'I found some questions, can I try a few?' Relatives who are quizzed with no warning wonder what is being dug for. If a child can read, let the child read the questions out. Very few adults refuse a seven-year-old.
Follow the order of the groups
Warm-ups first, at any gathering, because they have no wrong answers and no history in them. Family stories and Traditions suit the middle of a meal. Compare notes needs people who are already laughing, and Deeper waits until the plates are pushed back and nobody is watching the clock.
Fit the place
At a table, one question can go all the way around. In a car nobody can see faces, so short ones work best and the driver may pass on anything that needs thought. At a reunion of thirty people, forget the full circle: take one question to a cluster of four or five, or leave a few on cards by the food.
Relatives on a call
When someone is joining by phone or video, ask them first on each question. The person on the screen is the easiest one to forget, and going first saves them from talking over a room they cannot hear well.
Getting every generation to answer
Who goes first
For the light ones, start with the youngest, before they have heard an adult answer they feel they should copy. For history, start with the oldest, so everyone else's version has something to hang on. In between, start with whoever has said least.
Passing is allowed
Say so once, at the start, and honor it without comment. A pass is common from teenagers and from relatives who are having a hard year. Come back to them later with an easier question, and they will often take it.
Small children
Shorten the question and make it concrete: 'what would you cook for everybody?' and not the full sentence. Take whatever they say as an answer. A four-year-old who gets laughed at may not answer again that evening.
Teenagers
Don't aim a question at one alone with the whole family watching. Ask the table and let them come in when they choose. Handing them the phone to record, or the job of asking the next question, often works better than asking them anything.
The oldest relatives
Sit near them, face them, and repeat the question once if the room is loud. Let a long pause end on its own, because memory takes a moment to arrive. A story you have heard before is still worth hearing out: a grandchild may be hearing it for the first time.
The one who talks most
Most families have a narrator. Thank them, then put the same question to someone else by name: 'and how do you remember it?' Going around in seat order does the same work without singling anybody out.
Keeping old arguments off the table
Know the sore subjects beforehand
Most families have two or three: money lent, a will, a divorce, politics, who did the caring when a parent was ill. Go through the list and strike any question that leads straight to one. You know which they are better than any page can.
Ask for stories, not verdicts
'What do you remember about that summer?' gets a story. 'Who was right about the house?' gets a hearing. If a question could be answered with a ruling on someone's conduct, reword it until it can only be answered with a memory.
Let two versions stand
In Compare notes especially, people will remember the same day differently. Say 'so that makes two versions' and go to the next person. People are rarely talked out of their own memory at a dinner table, and trying costs the evening.
A line for when it starts anyway
Have one sentence ready and say it lightly: 'That one needs more than a dinner. Let's give it its own day.' Then put the next question to a child or to the oldest person present, the two people a table will most readily quiet down for.
People who are missing
A death, a divorce or a relative who has cut contact can sit behind an innocent question about weddings or who came to the old gatherings. If someone goes quiet, do not ask why with everyone watching. Change the subject and check in with them alone afterward.
What a list of questions cannot do
These are for a family that mostly gets along and wants better conversation. They will not mend a serious rift, and a crowded holiday is a poor place to try. That is work for the people involved, in private, with outside help if they want it.
Keeping what you hear
Write it down the same day
Names, places and years fade first, so note those before bed even if the rest waits. A few lines in a phone are enough. Read spellings back to the person who gave them.
Record only with a yes
A recording of a grandparent telling a story is something the family will want later. Ask first, lay the phone flat where it can be forgotten, and stop if anyone is uneasy. Children's answers deserve the same courtesy.
Follow up on one thing
A gathering usually leaves a loose end: a photo with no names on it, a recipe nobody has written out, a date somebody promised to check. Choose one, give it to a person, and ask about it the next time you are all together.
Send a question to whoever was absent
A relative who could not come can still answer by message or on a call. Send them one question along with what the rest of the family said. It tells them they were missed, and it adds their version to the others.