Questions to Ask Your Grandparents (From a Grandma)

The best questions to ask your grandparents are specific and open: “What did your house smell like when you were little?”, “How did you and Grandpa meet?”, “What was my mom like at my age?” and “What do you wish someone had told you at twenty?” Below are questions grouped by stage of life, a kid-sized set a four- to six-year-old can really ask, and something most lists leave out: how it feels from the grandmother’s side, and how to save the answers.

I have been on the answering end of these questions many times now, from grown children, from a grandchild with a school project, and from a five-year-old who asked whether dinosaurs were around when I was little. What I’ve learned is that the question matters less than the follow-up. “Tell me more about that” gets better stories than any list.

Before you start

A few things make the conversation go better, whoever is asking.

• Ask about one period, not a whole life. “Tell me about the house you grew up in” goes somewhere. “Tell me your life story” goes nowhere.
• Use objects. A photograph, a recipe card, a piece of jewelry. Ask what it is, where it came from and who had it before.
• Record it. A phone’s voice-memo app is enough. Ask first, then set the phone down and forget about it.
• Stop while it’s going well. Twenty minutes with good stories is better than an hour where everyone ends up tired.

The nonprofit oral-history project StoryCorps publishes a long list of great questions with a section for grandparents. Two of theirs I would put at the top of anyone’s list: “Do you remember any of the stories your grandparents used to tell you?” and “What was my mom/dad/parent like growing up?” The first reaches back a generation further. The second is the one grandchildren enjoy most.

Childhood: the house, the street, the food

1. Where did you grow up, and what did your street look like?
2. What did your house smell like?
3. Who lived in the house with you?
4. What did you do after school?
5. What games did you play, and who taught you?
6. What was your favorite food, and who made it?
7. What was a normal Saturday like?
8. What did you get in trouble for?
9. Who was your best friend, and what happened to them?
10. What did you want to be when you grew up?

School and growing up

11. What was your school like? How did you get there?
12. Who was the teacher you remember best, and why?
13. What were you good at? What did you find hard?
14. What did teenagers do for fun when you were one?
15. What music did you love?
16. What was your first job, and what did it pay?
17. When did you first feel grown up?

Love, work and becoming a parent

18. How did you and Grandpa meet? (Or whoever it was. Leave room for the true answer.)
19. What was your wedding like, or your first home together?
20. What work did you do, and what did you like about it?
21. What did you find out about yourself when you became a parent?
22. What was my mom (or dad) like as a baby? As a teenager?
23. What did my parent do that drove you up the wall?
24. What was the hardest year, and what got you through it?

Family history and heritage

25. Where did our family come from before that?
26. What do you remember about your own grandparents?
27. Are there family recipes, sayings or traditions we should keep?
28. Who in the family was the storyteller?
29. Is there something in the family nobody talks about that you think we should know?
30. Which family heirlooms have a story, and what is it?

Questions to ask grandma about life now

The questions people forget, because they are about the present.

31. What is a good day for you these days?
32. What are you still curious about?
33. What do you think about when you can’t sleep?
34. What do you wish you’d known at twenty? At forty?
35. What are you proudest of?
36. How would you like to be remembered?

A kid-sized set for small grandchildren

Little ones can ask good questions too, especially on a video call where Grandma’s face is right there. Keep them short and concrete, and let the child pick one or two. These are the ones that have gone over best with my grandchildren, aged four to six.

• What was your favorite toy?
• Did you have a pet? What was its name?
• What did you eat for breakfast when you were little?
• Were you ever scared of the dark?
• What was the naughtiest thing you ever did?
• Did my mommy (or daddy) ever cry when she was little?
• What did you want to be when you were my age?

The second-to-last one always gets a laugh, and the child goes home with a story about a parent being small, which children love. For more ways to use a call, see my video call activities with grandkids. If the grandparents live far away, asking one question per call adds up to quite a family history over a year, which is part of how I keep close in long-distance grandma life.

The grandma’s side: answering honestly

Nobody writes about this side, so here is mine.

You can say “I don’t want to talk about that.” A good question deserves an honest answer, and sometimes the honest answer is “not today.” Grandchildren can handle that. What hurts them later is a polished version they find out was not true.

Tell the small stories. I used to think the important material was the big events. It isn’t. My grown kids most often ask me to repeat the story about the neighbor’s goat and the laundry line.

Answer for the age of the person asking. A six-year-old asking whether I was ever scared deserves a true answer, but a short one about the dark, not my worst year. The full answer can wait until they’re older and ask again.

Write some of it down yourself. If you would rather write than talk, a guided journal does the prompting for you. Grandma’s Story by Korie Herold asks one question per page and leaves space for your own handwriting, which a grandchild will value later as much as the answers.

What to save, and how

• The recording. Name the file with the date and who was talking, and keep a copy somewhere other than your phone.
• A few written lines. After each conversation, write the three best answers on a card. Cards get read. Hour-long recordings mostly don’t.
• The objects with their stories. Tape a note inside the lid of the jewelry box: who owned it, and when.
• The recipe with the voice. If a grandmother tells the story of a recipe while she makes it, record that. You’ll be glad of it later.

FAQ: questions to ask your grandparents

What are good questions to ask grandparents?

Specific, open questions about one part of their life: their childhood home, how they met their partner, their first job, and what your parent was like growing up. Follow every answer with “tell me more.”

What questions can a young child ask a grandparent?

Short, concrete ones: what was your favorite toy, did you have a pet, were you scared of the dark, what did you want to be when you grew up. Let the child choose.

What should I ask my grandma before it’s too late?

Ask about her own grandparents, the family recipes and traditions, the heirlooms and their stories, and how she would like to be remembered. And record the answers.

How do I record my grandparents’ stories?

A phone’s voice-memo app is enough. Ask permission, set the phone down, and ask about one period of life at a time. Afterward, write down the best few answers.