Questions to Ask Your Grandparents as an Adult: 40, With the Follow-Ups That Get the Story

You asked your grandfather what his childhood was like, and he said, "Oh, normal. We didn't have much." Then he asked if you wanted more cake. That's not a failure. That's what a first question gets: the summary he has given a hundred times.

The story is one question further in. "What did you not have?" "Shoes that fit, mostly. My brother got them first." Now you're somewhere. This list gives you forty questions to ask your grandparents, and with each group, the kind of follow-up that turns a short answer into the thing you'll want to hear again in twenty years.

It's written for grown grandchildren - the ones who can drive over on a Sunday, sit for an hour and ask about the hard years as well as the funny ones. If a young child is doing the asking, these 30 questions kids can ask are written for them. If you're planning a full life-story interview with a parent, start with 50 questions for a life-story interview.

How to use this list

Don't bring all forty. Pick three that fit the person, and plan to spend most of your time on what comes after them. A few things help:

• Ask about things they can picture. A street, a kitchen, a uniform, a boss. Concrete questions get concrete answers.
• Listen for the odd detail. The word they repeat, the name they mention once and move past, the laugh before a sentence. That's your follow-up.
• Let silence sit. Count to five before you fill a pause. Older storytellers often take a run at the good part.
• Agree on recording first. Ask if it's all right to record, and put the phone where neither of you has to look at it.

There's good evidence behind the follow-up habit. In a set of conversation studies, people who asked more follow-up questions were liked more by the person they spoke with, because a follow-up shows you were actually listening (Huang et al., 2017). Your grandmother doesn't need a study to notice. She'll just keep talking.

Where they started: 8 questions about childhood

1. What did the home you grew up in look like from the street?
2. Which room was the warm one, and who was usually in it?
3. What did you eat on an ordinary weekday?
4. Who was the neighbour everyone talked about?
5. What were you allowed to do that children aren't allowed now?
6. What did you get in trouble for?
7. Which grown-up outside your family did you love being around?
8. What sound or smell takes you straight back there?

The follow-up that matters: go back to a noun they used. "You said the warm room was the kitchen. Who was cooking? What were they talking about?" One concrete thing, asked about twice, is worth more than five new questions. If the childhood home opens up, 25 questions about the house they grew up in will keep you there.

School, friends and growing up: 7 questions

9. How did you get to school, and who did you walk with?
10. Which teacher do you still think about?
11. Who was your best friend at twelve, and what did you do together?
12. What did you want to be when you grew up?
13. What was the first thing you bought with your own money?
14. What did teenagers do on a Saturday night where you lived?
15. When did you first feel like a grown-up?

The follow-up that matters: "What happened to them?" Friends and teachers in a story often vanish mid-sentence. Asking where they went opens a second story, and sometimes a reunion.

Work and the years that built a life: 7 questions

16. What was your first real job, and how did you get it?
17. What did a normal working day look like, hour by hour?
18. Who taught you the most at work?
19. What was the hardest year you had, money-wise?
20. Was there a job you nearly took?
21. What were you quietly proud of that nobody noticed?
22. When did you stop working, and what did you miss?

The follow-up that matters: "Show me with your hands." Ask how they actually did the thing: sorted the post, cut the cloth, balanced the books. The physical detail is where a working life comes alive. There are more questions about their working life here.

Love, family and home: 8 questions

23. How did you meet Grandma or Grandpa, and what did you notice first?
24. What did your parents think of them?
25. Where did you live when you were first married?
26. What do you remember about the day my mum or dad was born?
27. What did a family holiday look like when your children were small?
28. What did you argue about as a couple, and how did you make up?
29. Which of your children is most like you?
30. What family tradition did you start yourself?

The follow-up that matters: "What did you say back?" Love stories are often told as summaries ("We just knew"). Ask for the actual words of the first conversation, the proposal, the phone call to their parents. They usually remember more than they expect.

Places, moves and the wider world: 5 questions

31. Where have you lived, in order, and why did you leave each place?
32. What did you bring with you when you moved?
33. Which news event do you remember exactly where you were for?
34. What changed most in your town while you lived there?
35. Which place would you go back to for one day?

The follow-up that matters: "Who said goodbye to you?" A move is a story about the people left behind as much as the place. If your family came from another country, this is often where the biggest stories are waiting.

Looking back, looking forward: 5 questions

36. What do you know now that you wish you'd known at thirty?
37. What are you glad you didn't worry about?
38. What do you hope the grandchildren keep doing in this family?
39. What's a story about you that nobody in the family has heard?
40. What do you want to ask me?

The follow-up that matters: "When did you learn that?" Advice is a summary of a story. Asking where it came from usually brings the story out.

That last question, number 40, is not a trick. Conversations work best when they go both ways, and grandparents often have things they've wondered about you for years.

When a question lands somewhere hard

Every long life has chapters people don't open easily: a war, a parent who left, a child who died, a move that wasn't chosen. A question about a ration card or a house can lead there without warning. If it does, slow down. You can say "We don't have to talk about that," and mean it. You can also simply listen, without steering towards more detail than they offer.

Let them decide how far to go. Some people have waited years for someone to ask; others will change the subject, and that's an answer too. If they want a part left out of the recording, leave it out.

How to hear the follow-up in the moment

The follow-ups above are patterns, not a script. The best one always comes from what your grandparent just said, in their words. Three habits make it easier:

• Repeat their word back. "The shed?" is a complete follow-up. It tells them you heard, and asks for more.
• Ask for the scene, not the opinion. "What was it like?" invites a summary. "Where were you standing?" invites a memory.
• Keep a list for next time. You'll hear more threads than you can follow. Jot them down afterwards; they're next week's first questions.

For a deeper look at the craft, our guide to asking a good follow-up walks through it step by step.

Keeping what they tell you

A recording on your phone is a good start, though an hour of audio with no names in it is hard to come back to. Glow's Living Room Stories is made for exactly this kind of conversation: you sit together and ask, one phone on the table, and afterwards Glow splits the conversation into stories, labels who said what, tags the people, places and years, and suggests follow-up questions for next time. Your grandparent needs no app. Both of you agree before it records, your grandparent hears it first and can remove any part, and nothing is ever generated in their voice. The rest of the family can add questions for next time, too.

Whatever you use, write the date and who was in the room, and keep the threads you didn't get to.

One thing to do this week

Choose three questions from this list. Under each, write one follow-up you'd like to ask. Then call your grandmother or grandfather and ask when you can come round for an hour. You don't need the other thirty-seven yet. You only need to start.