100 questions to ask your grandparents (and how to record their answers)

If you want questions to ask your grandparents about their life, the list below gives you 100 of them, grouped by topic so you can pick a theme for each visit. After the list: how to interview grandparents without it feeling like an interview, why voice beats writing, and how to keep recordings until your children want them.

You don’t need all 100. Five good questions over a cup of tea can give you an hour of stories. Treat this as a menu, not a checklist.

What are good questions to ask your grandparents?

Good questions to ask grandparents are specific, open-ended and anchored in a place or moment. “What was your childhood like?” gets a shrug. “What did your kitchen look like when you were eight?” gets a story, because it gives memory something to hold on to.

• Ask about senses and places. Smells, sounds, rooms, streets and food unlock memories faster than abstract questions.
• Ask for one example. “Tell me about one time…” works better than “Did you ever…?”
• Leave room for the hard stuff, but don’t push. Some questions below touch on loss, war, illness or money. Let your grandparent decide how far to go.
• Follow the energy. If a question about their first job turns into a story about their best friend, go with it.

Questions to ask your grandparents about their life and family history

Start with childhood: the memories are vivid and low-stakes, and they give your children a picture of a world that no longer exists. Then move to family history, the questions people most often wish they’d asked.

Childhood

1. Where were you born, and what was the house you grew up in like?
2. What did your bedroom look like? Did you share it with anyone?
3. What’s the earliest thing you can remember?
4. What did a normal weekday look like when you were about eight?
5. What did you eat for dinner most nights? Was there a meal you hated?
6. Who was your best friend as a child, and what did you get up to together?
7. What games did you play outside? Can you still remember the rules?
8. What was school like? Which teacher do you still remember, and why?
9. Did you get into trouble as a kid? What’s the worst thing you did?
10. What did you want to be when you grew up?
11. What was your favorite toy, book or radio program?
12. How did your family celebrate birthdays and holidays?
13. Did you have pets? Tell me about one of them.
14. What chores did you have to do?
15. What’s a smell or sound that takes you straight back to being a child?

Parents and family history

Your grandparents may be the last people alive who knew their own parents as real people, not names on a chart. If you’re building a family tree, these fill in the stories behind the dates.

1. What were your parents like? Describe each of them in three words.
2. How did your parents meet?
3. What work did your parents do?
4. Did you know your grandparents? What do you remember about them?
5. Where did our family come from, and why did they move?
6. Are there family stories or legends that got passed down to you?
7. Is there a family recipe? Who taught it to you?
8. What languages were spoken in your house growing up?
9. Who was the character in the family, the one everyone told stories about?
10. Were there any family secrets you found out about later?
11. What did your parents teach you that you still think about?
12. Is there anything about your family you wish you’d asked your own parents?

Questions to ask grandparents about love, work and raising a family

Most grandchildren have never heard how their grandparents met, what they earned in their first job, or what their own mom or dad was like as a toddler. If your grandparent is widowed or divorced, let them choose which relationships to talk about.

Love and marriage

1. Who was your first crush?
2. What was dating like when you were young? Where did people go?
3. How did you meet Grandma or Grandpa?
4. What did you notice first about them?
5. Do you remember your first date together? Where did you go?
6. How did the proposal happen?
7. What was your wedding day like? What went wrong?
8. Where did you live when you were first married?
9. What was the hardest thing about your first year together?
10. What do you think kept you together through the difficult times?
11. What’s the best advice you’d give someone about love?
12. What’s a small, everyday thing your partner did that you loved?

Work and money

1. What was your very first job, and how much were you paid?
2. What jobs did you do over your life? Which did you like most?
3. Who was the best boss or colleague you ever had?
4. Was there a moment at work you were really proud of?
5. Did you ever get fired, quit or take a big risk?
6. How did you get to work each day?
7. What did things cost when you were starting out? Rent, bread, a car?
8. Was money tight when you were raising your children? How did you manage?
9. If you could have done any job at all, what would it have been?
10. What did retirement feel like when it came?

Deeper questions: hard times, beliefs and advice

These questions matter most and need the most care. Ask them later in a conversation, never first, and be ready to simply listen. A grandparent who never talked about a war or a loss may open up to a grandchild.

Hard times

1. What’s the hardest period of your life you lived through?
2. What got you through it?
3. Were there big world events that changed your family’s life?
4. Did you ever have to leave a home or a country behind?
5. Who did you lose too early, and what do you want us to know about them?
6. Was there a time you were really frightened?
7. Did you ever go through a serious illness, yours or someone close to you?
8. What’s a mistake you made that taught you something?
9. Was there a time someone was unexpectedly kind to you when you needed it?
10. Looking back, what do you wish you’d worried about less?

Raising their children

1. What do you remember about the day your first child was born?
2. What was my mom or dad like as a little kid?
3. What’s the naughtiest thing my mom or dad did growing up?
4. What was the hardest part of being a parent back then?
5. What did you do differently from your own parents?
6. What’s a family tradition you started?
7. What did you used to sing or read to your kids at bedtime?
8. Is there anything you’d do differently as a parent if you could?
9. What surprised you about becoming a grandparent?
10. What do you hope your grandchildren remember about you?

Beliefs, values and advice

These answers often become the ones families replay most. If faith was central to your grandparent’s life, give it room; some families also save prayers or blessings, as we describe on our faith page.

1. What do you believe in most strongly?
2. Has your faith or outlook changed over your life? How?
3. What do you think makes a good life?
4. What are you most proud of?
5. What’s something you changed your mind about as you got older?
6. What do you think the world gets wrong about getting old?
7. What’s the best advice anyone ever gave you?
8. What advice would you give your grandchild on their 18th birthday?
9. What would you say to them on their wedding day?
10. What do you want to say to them if they’re ever having a really hard time?
11. What does our family stand for, in your view?
12. If you could tell your 20-year-old self one thing, what would it be?

Fun questions to ask grandparents, and questions for kids

Quick questions are good for warming up, filling a short phone call or lightening things after a heavy answer. Children under ten are natural interviewers because they ask without filters.

Fun and quick

1. What’s your favorite song of all time?
2. What’s the best meal you’ve ever eaten?
3. What invention changed your life the most?
4. What slang did you use as a teenager?
5. What’s the most trouble you’ve ever been in with the law, or with your mother?
6. What’s your secret talent?
7. What was the first film you saw at the cinema?
8. What’s a fashion you wore that you now regret?
9. If you won a lot of money tomorrow, what would you do first?
10. What’s the best trip you ever took?
11. What makes you laugh every time?

Questions for kids to ask

Let them hold the phone and record both voices. Years later, hearing their own small voice asking is half the magic.

1. What were you like when you were my age?
2. What did you have for lunch at school?
3. Did you have a TV? What did you watch?
4. What’s the silliest thing you ever did?
5. Were you scared of anything when you were little?
6. What did Mom or Dad do when they were my age that was funny?
7. What’s your favorite thing to do with me?
8. What’s one thing you want me to always remember?

How do you record your grandparents’ stories?

The simplest way to record grandparents’ stories is a voice recording on your phone during a relaxed conversation. You don’t need a microphone or an app; the built-in voice memo app is fine. What matters is that you press record and keep it running.

Why voice beats writing it down

Notes capture facts. A recording captures the person: the pause before a hard answer, the laugh halfway through a story, the way your grandmother says your name. When my daughter was born, I wanted to save things for her and started by writing emails to an address I made for her. I stopped because it was too much effort to keep up. A voice note takes ten seconds and holds more than any paragraph I’d have typed. More in how to save your child’s voice.

Tips for the interview itself

• Keep sessions short. Twenty to forty minutes is plenty; older people tire.
• Sit side by side, not across a table. It feels like a chat, not a deposition.
• Kill the background noise. TV off, fridge door closed, phone on airplane mode so a call doesn’t cut the recording.
• Start each file by saying who, where and when. “It’s Sunday the 3rd of May, I’m with Grandpa Joe in his kitchen.” Future listeners will thank you.
• Use follow-up prompts. “What happened next?”, “Who else was there?” and “How did that feel?” turn an answer into a story.
• Bring an object. A photo or recipe card gives them something to hold.

How can grandchildren receive these stories later?

The best way to keep grandparent recordings for grandchildren is to store them in at least two places and decide, now, which stories each child should receive and when.

• Back up the same day. Copy each file off your phone to cloud storage or a computer.
• Name files clearly. “2026-05-03 Grandpa Joe on meeting Grandma.m4a” is findable in twenty years. “New Recording 47” is not.
• Match stories to moments. Grandpa’s advice on love belongs with a wedding. His story about his first job belongs with a first paycheck. Grandma’s message for an 18th birthday should arrive on that birthday.
• Let grandparents record their own messages too. Beyond answering questions, ask them to speak directly to each grandchild: “This is for you, Mia, when you turn eighteen.”

This is exactly what we built TrueKin to make easy. You can save a voice note, photo, video or letter and choose when each grandchild receives it: a date, a birthday, an age like 18, or a moment like graduation. Grandparents can be invited as co-writers, so they add their own recordings to the same delivery from their phone, without installing anything. On the day, it arrives by email as a private link that opens in any browser. If you ever want your files elsewhere, you can export everything in open formats.

What should you avoid when interviewing grandparents?

Avoid waiting for the perfect “proper interview”. Many families plan one for years and it never happens; a five-minute recording this weekend beats it. Don’t read questions off a screen, and don’t interrupt to fix a detail. For a bigger family project, see our family time capsule ideas and guide to writing a legacy letter.

Published October 21, 2026