52 Questions to Ask a Grandparent Before It’s Too Late

Most people who sit down to record a grandparent’s life come away with less than they hoped for. Not because the grandparent was unwilling, but because the questions were too big. “Tell me about your childhood” is a question almost nobody can answer. It is too wide to stand in.

The questions below are narrower on purpose. They ask for a specific thing — a room, a smell, a Tuesday — because specifics are where memory actually lives. Start anywhere. You do not need to work through them in order, and you will not get through all of them in one sitting.

Beginnings

• What is the first thing you can remember?
• Who else lived in the house when you were small?
• What did your kitchen smell like?
• Where did you sleep, and who else was in the room?
• What did you do on a Saturday when you were eight?
• Which room in that house did you like best, and why that one?
• Was there a sound you could hear from your bed at night?
• Who was in charge of you when the adults were working?

Your parents, as people

This set often produces the biggest surprises, because it asks a child to describe adults they mostly knew as parents rather than as people.

• What did your mother do all day?
• What was your father like when he was in a good mood?
• What did your parents argue about?
• What did they hope you would become?
• What did they never talk about?
• Was there something your parents did that you swore you would never do?
• What is something you understand about them now that you did not then?

School and the world outside

• How did you get to school?
• Which teacher do you still remember, and what did they do?
• What were you good at that nobody noticed?
• What got you in trouble?
• Who was your best friend, and what happened to them?
• What did you do after school before anyone came home?

Becoming an adult

• What was your first job, and what did it pay?
• What did you spend your first wages on?
• When did you first feel like an adult?
• Where did you live when you first left home?
• What did you think your life was going to look like?
• Who gave you advice you actually took?

Love

• How did you meet?
• What did you think the first time you saw them?
• What did your family think?
• What did you do on a night out, and what did it cost?
• When did you know?
• What has been the hardest part of staying together?

Work and the middle years

• What did you actually do all day at work?
• What were you proud of that nobody else would find impressive?
• Who did you learn the job from?
• What was the hardest year, and what made it hard?
• Was there a decision you nearly made differently?

The hard parts

Most people skip this section, and it is the one that matters most. Research from Emory University found that families who talk about difficulty in coherent, emotionally open ways had children who coped better with their own difficulties. Not families who avoided hard subjects — families who talked about them clearly, including how they came through.

• What is the hardest thing that happened to your family?
• What did you lose that you still think about?
• Was there a time when there was not enough money? What did you do?
• What frightened you as a young person?
• Who helped you when things were bad?
• What got you through it?
• What do you know now about hard times that you wish someone had told you?

Us

• What were you like as a grandparent compared to how you were as a parent?
• What do you see of yourself in me?
• What do you hope we keep doing after you are gone?
• Is there anything you have never told me that you would like to?
• What do you want the children to know about you?

When someone says “there’s nothing to tell”

This is the most common obstacle, and it is almost never true. It usually means “my life was ordinary and I assume you want something remarkable.” Three things that work:

1. Ask about objects. A photograph, a tool, a piece of jewellery. Objects carry stories that direct questions cannot reach.
2. Ask about other people. People who will not talk about themselves will talk at length about their mother, their boss, their neighbour. Their own life arrives sideways.
3. Ask about prices and routines. What bread cost, what time the factory whistle went. These feel trivially easy to answer, and they open the door to everything else.

One more thing

Ask now. The most common regret we hear is not that someone asked clumsily. It is that they waited for a better moment, and it did not come.