70 Questions to Ask Your Grandparents About Their Life

The best questions to ask your grandparents about their life ask for a scene, not a summary. “What was your childhood like?” gets you “Oh, ordinary.” “Who woke you up on a school morning, and what did you eat before you left?” gets you ten minutes, a kitchen, a smell, and a person you never met. Every question below is written the second way.

There are 70 of them, grouped by era of a life, from their own parents through to what they would want passed on. Each group starts with the question worth asking first and ends with a follow-up that goes a layer deeper. None of them need a writer, a professional recorder, or more than a phone. How to run the conversation itself, from recording to pacing to the silences, is a separate job, covered in our guide to recording a parent’s or grandparent’s life story.

The questions are the easy part, though. The part that goes wrong is everything after the first visit: nobody can remember which ones were already asked, the notes live on three phones, and after a few visits every conversation drifts back to childhood because it is the most fun to talk about, while their thirty years of work never get a single question. If you want the questions and the tracking in one place, the Life-Story & Memory Keepsake Journal holds 200 interview questions across ten eras and shows you which era is still thin, so the next visit plans itself. But a printed list and a notebook will get you a long way, so the list comes first.

What makes a good question to ask a grandparent

A good question to ask a grandparent is one they can answer with a story from a specific moment, rather than with an opinion about a whole decade. Three rules turn a flat question into one that works:

• Ask for a moment, not a period. “Your first day at work” beats “your career.”
• Ask about things and places before feelings. Rooms, prices, food and clothes are easy to picture, and the feelings come out of the picture unprompted.
• Ask one thing at a time. A double question gets an answer to whichever half is easier.

If a question on this list feels too broad for your grandparent, shrink it to a single day using the same move.

Why grandchildren should ask these questions

There is research behind the instinct. Emory University psychologists Marshall Duke and Robyn Fivush found that adolescents who knew more about their family history, such as where their grandparents went to school and how their parents met, showed lower anxiety, higher self-esteem and a stronger sense of family cohesion, as Fivush describes in Psychology Today (opens in new tab). She is careful about what that measures: it is not about knowing particular facts. The questions are a sign of how often a family tells stories at all.

That is one reason to do this as a grandchild specifically. Your parents may have heard these stories. You probably have not, and you are the generation that will carry them.

Questions about their parents and where the family came from

Start here if you can. This is the one era that only the oldest generation can answer, because it happened before anyone else in the family was born.

1. What were your parents’ full names, and what did everyone actually call them?
2. Where were your grandparents from, and how did the family end up where you grew up?
3. What did your father do for work, and what did he do when he got home?
4. What was your mother like on a busy morning?
5. Which relative did the family tell the most stories about, and what was the best one?
6. Was there anything the family didn’t talk about when you were young?

Ask first: number 3. It is concrete, it needs no dates, and it almost always opens onto the house, the money and the mood.

Ask second: “What did you think of that job when you were a kid? And now?”

Questions to ask grandparents about their childhood

This is the era everyone enjoys most, which is why it is easy to over-ask. Six good answers here is plenty.

7. Take me through a normal school day when you were about eight, from breakfast to bedtime.
8. Describe the house you grew up in. Which room was yours?
9. Who were your friends on your street, and what did you play?
10. What did you get in trouble for?
11. What was your favorite meal, and who cooked it?
12. What was the best present you remember getting as a child?

Ask first: number 7. Anyone can answer it, and one ordinary day usually brings back the people, the food and the rooms without more prompting.

Ask second: “Who else lived in the house with you?”

Questions about school and growing up

People often wave these years away as unimportant, yet they are the years most of us look back on as the time we became ourselves.

13. What was your school like, and how did you get there each day?
14. Which teacher do you still remember, and why?
15. What were you good at? What did you dread?
16. What did teenagers do on a Friday night when you were sixteen?
17. How did you earn your first money, and what did you spend it on?
18. What did your parents expect you to become?

Ask first: number 17. Money stories are specific and people enjoy telling them.

Ask second: “Did you become what they expected?”

Questions about leaving home and their first jobs

This era is often overshadowed by the wedding story that follows it, so it goes unasked.

19. How old were you when you left home, and what did you take with you?
20. What did your mother or father say the day you left?
21. Where was the first place you lived on your own? What did it cost?
22. What was your first real job, and how did you get it?
23. Did you serve in the military, train for a trade, or go to college? What was the first week like?
24. What did you do for fun with your first paycheck?

Ask first: number 20. It is a single moment, and it tends to carry the whole relationship with it.

Ask second: “Did anyone cry?”

Questions about love and how they met

Most families have a version of this story, and the details drift with each retelling. If both grandparents are alive, ask each of them separately and compare.

25. Where were you the first time you saw your partner? What were they wearing?
26. What was your first impression of them, and did it last?
27. What did your parents think of them?
28. How did the proposal actually happen?
29. What was your wedding day like, and what went wrong?
30. What was the hardest year of your marriage, and what got you through it?

Ask first: number 25. The detail of the clothes tends to bring the whole scene back.

Ask second: “Tell it as if I’d never heard any of it.”

Questions to ask grandparents about their work

The era that is easiest to skip, even though for most people work took up decades of their weekdays.

31. What did you actually do all day at work? Walk me through a Tuesday.
32. Who was the best boss you ever had, and the worst?
33. What skill were you proudest of?
34. What was the worst day you had at work?
35. What changed about your job over the years you did it?
36. If you could have done any other work, what would it have been?

Ask first: number 31. You may know their job title and not much else.

Ask second: “What would a new person have gotten wrong on their first day?”

Questions about raising a family

Your parents know their own side of this. They don’t know what it looked like from where your grandparent stood.

37. Where were you when you found out you’d be a parent?
38. How did you choose the names you gave your children?
39. What was my mom or dad like at five years old?
40. What was the hardest part of raising kids when you did?
41. What did you do differently from how you were raised?
42. What’s a story about my parent they’d rather I didn’t hear?

Ask first: number 39. Most grandchildren want the answer, and most grandparents enjoy giving it.

Ask second: “What did they get in trouble for?”

Questions about everyday life back then

These feel too mundane to record, and they are easy to regret not getting. They are also the easiest questions to ask over the phone.

43. What did a loaf of bread, a gallon of gas and a movie ticket cost?
44. What was the first phone, TV or car you remember in your house?
45. How did your family do laundry, shopping and cooking in a normal week?
46. What did you do in the evenings before there was a TV in every room?
47. What shops, streets or places from your town are gone now?
48. What’s something ordinary today that would have amazed you as a child?

Ask first: number 43. People love answering it, and the prices open up the whole decade.

Ask second: “And what did a week’s wages come to?”

Questions to ask grandparents about the history they lived through

Ask how the big events felt at their kitchen table, not what the history books say about them.

49. What news event do you remember exactly where you were for?
50. How did the big events of your lifetime change your family’s daily life?
51. What did your family argue about at the dinner table?
52. Was there a year when money was really tight? What did you cut?
53. What’s changed in the world that you’re glad about, and what do you miss?
54. What do you think my generation misunderstands about yours?

Ask first: number 49. It is a single memory with a place attached, and it moves easily to the questions around it.

Ask second: “Who were you with, and what did they say?”

Questions about what they believe and would pass on

These are the answers families read aloud afterward. Don’t save them for “when there’s time.”

55. What are you proudest of?
56. What’s the best advice anyone ever gave you, and who gave it?
57. What do you wish you had done differently?
58. What do you want your grandchildren to know about you that they might not?
59. What family tradition do you hope we keep?
60. What would you want a great-great-grandchild, who will never meet you, to know about you?

Ask first: number 56. The question is about someone else, so it feels easy to answer, but the answer says a lot about them.

Ask second: “Did you take the advice?”

Questions young kids can ask their grandparents

Children aged about five to ten do best with short questions that have a concrete answer. These work for a school “interview a grandparent” assignment, and they are a good way for younger kids to take part in a family recording session.

61. What was your favorite toy?
62. What did you eat for breakfast when you were my age?
63. Did you have a pet? What was its name?
64. What games did you play at recess?
65. What did your bedroom look like?
66. What were you scared of when you were little?
67. What was the naughtiest thing you ever did?
68. What did you want to be when you grew up?
69. What’s the funniest thing that ever happened to you?
70. What was my mom or dad’s favorite thing to do when they were little?

Let the child ask and let the adult take notes. Many grandparents answer a grandchild more playfully than they answer an adult.

Questions to save for a later visit

Some questions reach grief, war, a lost child or a family rift. They matter, and they belong in the third or fourth conversation, once your grandparent trusts the process and you have a feel for what they are willing to talk about. Examples: the hardest loss they lived through, a relative nobody mentions, a decision they still regret.

When you do reach them, give a real way out: “We can leave that one.” Ask once, accept the answer, and don’t come back to it in the same visit. The practical side of running these conversations, including the silence after a question, handling a painful memory and writing it up in their words, is covered in our guide on how to record a parent’s or grandparent’s life story. If you only get one visit, the free Three Stories to Capture First printable gives you the three questions to ask, with room to write down the answers.

How to keep track of what you’ve asked

After a few visits, it is hard to remember which of these seventy have been answered. Tracking them by era fixes that: mark each question as asked or captured, and let the era with the fewest captured answers choose the next visit. The guide to recording a life story explains why that one habit keeps the project from stalling.

Do that with a notebook and a checklist, or let the Life-Story & Memory Keepsake Journal do the counting. It holds 200 questions across ten eras, and its coverage dashboard names the thinnest era for you. It also includes a life timeline that works out their age at every event from one birth-year cell, and a photo log that flags any picture still missing a name, a date or a story. It is a file your family keeps, not a subscription that ends. If you don’t know what a structured interview like this is called, a keepsake interview is the term.

Two related records are worth starting while you’re there:

• The recipes. If the kitchen came up in the childhood questions, the Family Recipe Heritage Keepsake Binder records the “by feel” amounts and the story behind each dish, before the one person who knows them isn’t around to ask.
• The practical side. If the conversations are happening because your grandparent needs more help day to day, a caregiver binder for an aging parent keeps the medical and household details in one place, separate from the keepsake.

Common Questions About Interviewing Your Grandparents

How many questions should I ask in one visit?

Fewer than you think. A good answer can run ten minutes or more, and the follow-ups are where the stories are, so a visit that covers a handful of questions properly has gone well. How to plan and pace a whole session is covered in our guide to recording a life story.

Should I record the conversation?

Yes, with their permission. A phone voice memo is enough. The recording keeps their voice and their exact words, and it frees you to listen instead of taking notes.

Can I ask these questions over the phone or a video call?

Yes. The everyday-life and childhood questions work especially well on a call, because they need no photographs and no props. Keep calls shorter than an in-person visit, around thirty minutes, and send the questions a day ahead so they can think.

What if my grandparent says there’s nothing interesting to tell?

It is a common first reply, and it rarely means there is nothing. Ask about a place or another person instead: the house they grew up in, their mother’s kitchen, the neighbor everyone talked about. A question about someone else is easier to answer, and it usually leads back to them.

Start with one question this week

You don’t need all seventy. Pick one from the list, call or visit, and ask it. Then say nothing for a moment and let the answer come.

When you’re ready to turn one conversation into a record the whole family keeps, the Life-Story & Memory Keepsake Journal was built for exactly that: 200 questions, ten eras, and a dashboard that tells you which part of their life to ask about next.