What are good interview questions for grandparents?

The best ones are about everyday detail: the house they grew up in, what a normal school day looked like, what their parents did for work, and how they met their partner.

How do I record an interview with my grandparents?

A phone voice memo works. If they would rather write, Go Family Story sends questions by private link and keeps the written answers, photos and recordings together.

How long does it take?

At three questions a week, a hundred questions takes about eight months — and nobody has to sit through a long interview.

Questions to ask your grandparents

A grandparent holds two generations of family memory at once: their own life, and everything they were told about the people before them. These questions are written to get both, in their own words.

Questions to ask your grandparents about their own life

Ask these directly. They work as well over a kitchen table as they do in writing.

1.What was the world like when you were a child?
2.What did your parents do, and what were they like?
3.What was your childhood home like — the rooms, the smells, the sounds?
4.What place surprised you?
5.What did a school day look like for you?
6.What did your family live through that shaped them?
7.What did people your age do for fun?
8.What do you do when you are worried?
9.How did you meet your husband or wife?
10.What was your wedding day like?
11.What was your first home together?
12.What is your favourite time of day, and why?
13.What work did you do over the years?
14.How much did things cost, and how did you manage?
15.What was the hardest time you lived through?
16.What would you like to be better at?
17.What news event do you remember most clearly, and where were you?
18.What was it like to become a parent in your time?
19.What did they do that you have never told them about?
20.What is the one story of yours that explains everything?
21.What was it like the first time you became a grandparent?
22.What do you see in your grandchildren of the people who came before?
23.What is different about being a grandparent than a parent?
24.What subject did you pretend to understand?
25.What has changed in the world that you are glad about?
26.What has changed that you mourn?
27.What did your generation know that ours has forgotten?
28.What did you carry in your pockets in your twenties?
29.Where did our family come from, as far back as you know?
30.What family names, places or stories should we not lose?
31.What are you proudest of in a long life?
32.What does money mean to you now?
33.What advice would you give someone starting out today?
34.What do you want your great-grandchildren to know about you?
35.What did your family live on?
36.What recipe did you change, and why?
37.What did you have to do at home that children today never would?
38.What was the biggest thing that happened in your lifetime?
39.What did you think the future would look like?
40.What are you still stubborn about?
41.What was courting like when you were young?
42.How did you and your husband or wife meet?
43.What was the first home of your own like?
44.What do you let people believe because it is simpler?
45.What work did you do, and what was it like?

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Questions to answer about your grandparents

Ask the rest of the family these. Grandchildren, children and old friends each remember a different person.

46.What was it like being at their house as a child?
47.What does that house look, smell and sound like?
48.What do they always give you, feed you or slip into your pocket?
49.What do you wish you had asked them earlier?
50.What did they let you do that your parents did not?
51.What stories did they tell over and over?
52.What did they say about the old days?
53.When did you realise they mattered to you?
54.What do they teach you with their hands — cooking, mending, growing, making?
55.What did they wear, and what did they always carry?
56.What do their voice sound like on the phone?
57.What is your favourite memory of the two of you together?
58.What do they think of the modern world?
59.What did they tell you about your own parent as a child?
60.What do they live through that you can hardly imagine?
61.What do you argue about?
62.What did they keep from the past that mattered to them?
63.What tradition of theirs is still in your family?
64.What do they call you?
65.What makes them angry?

Collect the answers in one place

Go Family Story sends three of these questions a week by private link. The person answers with a free account, and every answer, photo, video and voice recording is kept in one private archive that only your family can see.

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Common questions

What are good interview questions for grandparents?: The best ones are about everyday detail: the house they grew up in, what a normal school day looked like, what their parents did for work, and how they met their partner.
How do I record an interview with my grandparents?: A phone voice memo works. If they would rather write, Go Family Story sends questions by private link and keeps the written answers, photos and recordings together.
How long does it take?: At three questions a week, a hundred questions takes about eight months — and nobody has to sit through a long interview.