Questions to ask your grandparents about their life

The best questions for your grandparents are the ones that give them permission to tell their story: where they grew up, how they met, what they ate as kids, how they ended up where they are. Here are 65, by topic, to ask over dinner or on a video call, so you can save the answers for your kids.

In short

How many at once: One or two per visit, no rush
How: With old photos in hand, and recording with their permission
Most important: Write down what they told you, with their name

A tip

Before you ask

Bring old photos: a picture unlocks more memories than any question. Ask one or two per visit and let them wander; the best stories usually come from something you didn’t ask.

Ask if you can record on your phone, then write down what they said with their name: "as Grandma Linda told it." Twenty years from now, that’s what your kids will want to read.

Growing up

Where were you born, and what was your house like?
What were your parents like, and what did they do for a living?
How many brothers and sisters did you have? Who were you closest to?
What games did you play as a kid?
What chores did you have growing up?
What was school like? How did you get there?
Who was your best friend when you were little?
What scared you as a kid?
What was your favorite candy or treat?
What do you miss most about the town you grew up in?

Their parents and grandparents

What were your grandparents’ names? Did you know them?
Where did our family come from before that?
What did your parents tell you about when they were young?
Is there a nickname or a saying in our family that goes back to your grandparents?
Is there a family story everyone tells a little differently?
Who keeps the old family photos?
What recipe of your mom’s or your grandma’s do you know by heart?
What did your dad teach you that you still use?

Love and marriage

How did you meet Grandpa (or Grandma)?
What was the first thing you liked about him (or her)?
What was a date like back then?
How did the proposal happen?
What was your wedding like, and who was there?
What was the hardest part of your first years together?
What advice would you give someone getting married?

Where our family comes from

Whether your family crossed an ocean or just moved two states over, nobody else can answer these:

Who was the first person in our family to come to this country?
Why did they leave, and what did they bring with them?
Where did our family live before this town?
Why did you move here?
Who helped you when you first got here?
What did you miss most at the beginning?
Did you ever go back? What was it like?
What would you tell someone moving far from home today?

Work and life

What was your first job, and how much did it pay?
What did you want to be when you grew up?
What was the hardest time in your life, and how did you get through it?
What are you most proud of?
What has changed the most since you were young?
What was the best year of your life?
What did you learn that school never taught you?

Food and holidays

What was Sunday dinner like at your house?
Who was the best cook in the family?
What did Thanksgiving look like when you were a kid?
What had to be on the table at Christmas?
What was the biggest celebration in your town?
What song takes you right back to being young?

To fill in the family tree

The ones that turn a story into names and branches:

What was your mother’s full name, maiden name included?
How many brothers and sisters did your dad have, and what were their names?
Where were your grandparents born?
Who in the family moved far away, and where did they go?
Are there cousins we’ve never met?
Who did your brothers and sisters marry?

At the Thanksgiving table

For when the whole family is together and someone needs to get the stories going:

What was Thanksgiving like the year you were ten?
Who always sat at the head of the table?
What dish did your mom make that nobody makes the same way?
Which family member would you love to have at this table again?
What are you most thankful for this year?

For the rest of us

The ones almost nobody dares to ask, and the ones everyone is grateful for later:

What do you want your grandkids to know about you?
What advice would you give your twenty-year-old self?
What family tradition should never be lost?
What makes you proud of this family?
How do you want to be remembered?
What matters most to you in life?
Is there something you’ve never told us and want to?
What would you like us to do together this year?

A family moment

What Grandma Linda told him

Ethan video-called his grandma Linda in Columbus and asked how she met Grandpa Thomas. She laughed before she answered. She told him about a church picnic, a borrowed bicycle with a flat tire, and how Thomas walked it two miles home for her without saying much of anything.

Ethan wrote it down that night on his grandpa’s page, with her name on it. The next morning his aunt Anne read it and texted him: "She never told it to me like that."

What to do with the answers

Write them down with the name of whoever told them and the date, even in a notebook. What doesn't get written down is gone within a generation.

In ReuniTree, every memory lives on that person's page, with the name of who shared it, and the whole family can read it: the cousins who weren't at dinner and the grandkids who can't read yet.

Text a few questions to your family