10 Questions to Ask Your Grandparents
If you’re looking for questions to ask your grandparents, it’s probably because you’ve had that feeling. The one where you look at your Gran or Grandad and think: there’s so much I don’t know.
Perhaps you know the big stories. The wedding. The war. The house they bought. But underneath those are hundreds of smaller stories that have never come up because nobody thought to ask.
Here are ten questions that tend to unlock the best ones. I’ve chosen these from the 232 questions in our YourStory books, based on which ones consistently produce the most wonderful answers.
The questions
1. What was your childhood home like?
This one opens everything up. You’ll hear about shared bedrooms, outside toilets, the coal fire, the back garden, the street they grew up on. It puts them right back there. You’ll hear things they haven’t thought about in decades.
2. What do you remember about your school days?
The teachers, the friends, the punishments, the dinners. School memories are some of the most vivid and most entertaining. Everyone has a story about a teacher they loved or one they feared.
3. What was your first job?
The answer usually comes with a specific wage (“three pounds and sixpence a week”), a boss they either loved or couldn’t stand, and a story about being completely out of their depth. It’s always good.
4. How did you meet your husband or wife?
This is the one that makes people go quiet for a moment and then smile. The dance hall. The bus stop. The friend of a friend. However it happened, it’s a story that shaped everything that came after.
5. What was your wedding day like?
You’ll hear about the dress that cost almost nothing, the reception in someone’s front room, the relative who had too much to drink, the car that broke down. Weddings were different then. The stories are wonderful.
6. What do you remember about the day your first child was born?
Dads were usually elsewhere. Mums were usually at home. The stories from this era are incredibly different from today. Your grandparent’s version will probably surprise you.
7. What inventions have had the biggest impact on your life?
This is the one that reminds you how much has changed. Your grandparent grew up without the internet, without mobile phones, possibly without a television. Hearing them describe the arrival of these things is like listening to living history.
8. What’s the bravest thing you’ve ever done?
You might be surprised by the answer. It might be something you’ve never heard about. The quiet acts of courage often make the best stories.
9. What advice would you give your 20-year-old self?
Short, specific, and almost always emotional. This question cuts through everything and gets to what really mattered.
10. What are you most grateful for in your life?
A lovely one to end on. The answer is rarely what you’d expect. And it tells you everything about what your grandparent values most.
How to ask
Don’t make it formal. Don’t sit them down with a clipboard. The best conversations happen naturally… over a cup of tea, whilst doing the washing up, on a quiet afternoon.
Ask one question. Let them talk. Let them wander off topic. The tangents are usually the best part.
And write it down. Or better yet, find a way to keep it somewhere safe. Because memory is a leaky bucket, and the details that feel unforgettable today will be fuzzy in six months.
If you want to keep all of it
These ten questions are a start. But your grandparent has a lifetime of stories, and ten questions only scratches the surface.
YourStory is a made up of guided questions that your grandparent answers at their own pace. They can start with our Perfect Path… 10 popular questions to ease in… and add more as they go. They add photos. And when they’re ready, we print it as a large-format hardback. Nearly A4.
The words in the book are theirs. We don’t rewrite anything. Their voice, their stories, exactly as they told them.
If your grandparent has stories worth keeping… and I promise you, they do… take a look at yourstory.co.uk.
Start with one question. This weekend. See what comes back.
Alyson