Questions to ask your grandparents about their lives

Grandparents are the family's link to people no one else living remembers, and most of them enjoy being asked. These questions to ask your grandparents are for grandchildren of any age: for a visit, a holiday table, a family reunion or a school project for Grandparents Day. They are numbered and grouped by period of life, so the page can be printed and taken along. Choose ten for a first visit, and come back for more.

A grandparent's questions reach further back than a parent's. Their childhood may lie in another country or another era, and their own parents may be the family's immigrants, so more of these questions ask about people only the grandparent knew. Questions to ask your parents covers the generation between, with questions about you as a child. Questions to ask a parent before they die is written for a parent or grandparent who is ill, with shorter sittings and gentler questions.

How to ask your grandparents, step by step

Smithsonian Education's guide to family interviews warns that a question as broad as "tell me about your childhood" tends to bring back only names and dates. The steps below follow its advice, and the questions after them are written to be particular.

1. Choose about ten questions. Take them from two or three sections and mark them on a printed copy of this page.
2. Bring something to look at. Two or three old photographs, a letter or a document bring back names that a question alone does not.
3. Ask before you record. Say who will hear the recording, then record a minute and play it back to check that every word can be heard.
4. Start with a story you know. A story your grandparent likes to tell is an easy way in, and it often leads to one you have never heard.
5. Ask one question at a time, then one more. Follow each answer with who was there, what year it was, what happened next or how it felt, and let your grandparent wander from the list.
6. Write down every name as it is spelled. Spellings change from one record to the next, and the family's own spelling is the one to search first.
7. Stop at the first sign of tiredness. Older people tire easily, the Smithsonian guide notes. End by asking what you should ask about next time.

Their parents and grandparents

Start with the people your grandparent knew and you never will. Ask for each name in full, and for what people called them.

1. What were your parents' full names, and what did people call them?
2. Where were your mother and father born, and how did they meet?
3. What work did your father do, and did your mother work as well?
4. Did you know your own grandparents? What do you remember of them, or what were you told?
5. How many brothers and sisters did each of your parents have, and where did they all settle?
6. Which languages did your parents speak to each other, and which to you?
7. Is there a story about your parents that the family always tells?
8. Who in the family was the character everyone still talks about?
9. What did your parents tell you about their own childhood?
10. Do you have anything that belonged to your parents or grandparents, and what is its story?
11. Which of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren carry your parents' names?
12. What would your parents think of the family today?

Their childhood

A grandparent's childhood may have been in another country, or in a city that has changed past recognition. Ask about ordinary days, since those are the details no record keeps.

13. What is your earliest memory?
14. What was the house or apartment you grew up in like? How was it heated, and where did everyone sleep?
15. What was your street like, and who were the neighbors?
16. What did you eat on an ordinary day, and what on a holiday?
17. What chores did you have?
18. What games did you play, and with whom?
19. What were you afraid of as a child?
20. What did you get into trouble for?
21. Did you have a nickname, and how did you get it?
22. What did your family do in the summer?
23. Which relatives came to stay, and whom did you go to see?
24. What did a loaf of bread, a bus fare or a pair of shoes cost when you were a child?
25. What was the best present you ever received as a child?

School, work and growing up

26. Which school did you go to, and how did you get there each day?
27. Which subject did you love, and which did you dread?
28. Who was your favorite teacher, and why?
29. What did you do after school and on weekends?
30. What music, books or radio programs did you love as a teenager?
31. Did you have to leave school to work, and at what age?
32. What was your first job, and what did a week's pay buy?
33. How old were you when you left home, and where did you go?
34. Did you serve in the armed forces, and where were you posted?
35. What was the bravest thing you did when you were young?

Questions to ask your grandparents about history

A grandparent in their eighties or nineties has lived through events the grandchildren learn about in school. Ask how those events looked from their own kitchen table, where they were and who was with them. These are the questions to use for a school assignment on history, including one on the Second World War.

36. What is the first big news you remember, and where were you when you heard it?
37. What do you remember of the war years? Where was the family, and who served?
38. How did your family manage when money was short?
39. When did your family get its first car, and where did you go in it?
40. What did your mother's generation expect of women, and what did you expect?
41. What changed most in your neighborhood while you lived there?
42. Which change in your lifetime surprised you most?
43. When you were twenty, what did you think the world would be like now?
44. Which leader or public figure did your parents admire, and why?

Love, marriage and raising a family

45. How did you meet my grandmother (or my grandfather)? Who introduced you?
46. If it was a shidduch, who made it, and what did your parents ask about the other family?
47. How long did you know each other before you married?
48. Where was the wedding, who came, and what was served?
49. Where did you live when you were first married, and what did the rent cost?
50. What work did you do over the years, and which job did you like best?
51. What was my mother (or my father) like as a child?
52. What did my parent do as a child that made you laugh, or drove you to distraction?
53. What was the hardest part of raising a family in those years?
54. Which dish, song or saying has been in the family longest, and where did it come from?
55. Of all the homes you have had, which did you love most?

Faith, customs and the Jewish year

Most lists of questions for grandparents leave these out, and in many Jewish families they hold the most. Any family with a faith of its own can ask them, with the words changed to fit.

56. What is your Hebrew name, and your Yiddish name if you had one? Whom were you named for, and what do you know about that person?
57. Which shul did your family belong to, and who was the rav?
58. Did you go to cheder, a yeshiva or a Bais Yaakov, and who were your teachers?
59. What language was spoken at home, and what did the grown-ups speak when they did not want the children to understand?
60. What was Friday night like in your parents' home?
61. Which Yom Tov did you love most as a child, and how did your family keep it?
62. Which relatives did your parents remember each year on a yahrzeit, and how were you related to them?
63. Is our family kohanim or leviim?
64. Which customs did your family keep that other families did not?
65. Who lit the candles on Friday night, and whose candlesticks were they?
66. Did anyone write letters home in Yiddish, or receive them, and where are those letters now?
67. Which seforim came down from your father or grandfather, and is anything written inside the covers?

Customs can show where a family came from. My Jewish Learning notes that three hours between meat and milk is the custom of German Jews, that some Dutch communities wait one hour, and that most Sephardim and some Ashkenazim wait six. A grandparent who says the family always waited three hours may be pointing to the country it came from.

Naming customs differ too. Ashkenazim usually name a child after a relative who has died, and Sephardim usually after a grandparent, living or not, so the answer to question 56 can reach back another generation. Old letters in Yiddish often name the town and the relatives who stayed behind; old Yiddish and Hebrew letters explains how to have them read.

Family history questions that lead to records

These are the questions whose answers can be checked, because each names something an archive holds. Ask them slowly, and write down exactly what your grandparent says, including any doubt. Family history interview questions goes further into how to phrase them.

68. What was the full name of each of your grandparents, including the women's family names before marriage and any name used before they came to this country?
69. What was the town called when the family lived there, and what did they call it in Yiddish?
70. Which country was the town in at the time, and which is it in now?
71. Who came to this country first, and who stayed behind?
72. In what year did the family come, and from which port did the ship sail?
73. What was the name of the ship, and whom did they come to join?
74. What was the family's first address in this country, the street and the neighborhood?
75. Did they become citizens, and in which city?
76. Where did the weddings take place, and who performed them?
77. Where are the family's graves, and did they belong to a landsmanshaft, a society of people from the same town?
78. Did your father or grandfather serve in an army, here or in Europe?
79. Is there a cousin, here or abroad, who kept the family's papers?
80. Do you still have any of the family's naturalization certificates, passports or ship tickets?

Checked October 2026 against the National Archives, the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, JewishGen and the FamilySearch Research Wiki.

The town is often the hardest answer to pin down, because its name changed with the borders. Vilnius, for example, was Vilna to most Jewish families and Vilne in Yiddish, and on Polish papers from the early 1920s until 1939 it appears as Wilno. A search under the wrong name can miss it. How to trace your ancestry shows how the American records lead to the town, and from the town to the archives abroad.

Memory and the records seldom match exactly, and both are worth keeping. How to check that a record belongs to your family explains how each find is tested.

Funny and lighter questions for any age

Not every question has to be serious. These suit a holiday table, or a grandparent who has had enough of the past for one day, and they often bring out stories the serious questions miss.

81. What is the funniest thing that ever happened at a family wedding?
82. What was the worst meal you ever cooked?
83. What did you and your friends do that your parents never found out about?
84. Which fashion from your youth do you hope never comes back?
85. If you could sit down to dinner with anyone from the family who is gone, who would it be?
86. What is the silliest thing you ever bought?
87. What would I have been like as a child in your day?
88. What advice did you receive that turned out to be wrong?
89. What was the most expensive thing you ever bought, and was it worth it?
90. What were you known for in your family?

Questions for young grandchildren and Grandparents Day

National Grandparents Day in the United States falls on the first Sunday after Labor Day, which in 2027 is September 12. President Carter proclaimed the first one in 1978, writing that "a family learns and is strengthened by its understanding of preceding generations." Many schools mark the day with a project, and these questions suit it.

Children of about five to ten ask well when the questions are short and about things they know. Let a parent sit with them, and let the child do the asking.

91. What was your favorite toy?
92. What did you eat for breakfast when you were my age?
93. Did you have a pet?
94. What games did you play at recess?
95. What was your bedroom like?
96. What were your mom and dad like?
97. What did you want to be when you grew up?
98. What did you do on your birthday?
99. Were you ever naughty, and what happened?
100. What do you know how to do that you could teach me?

If a grandparent lived through the war years

For a grandparent who lived through the war in Europe, questions about those years need a different pace. Let them decide what to talk about and when, and begin with the years before the war: the town, the family, the shul and the school. Ask about the people by name, with the places they lived, since a grandparent's memory may be the only record of relatives who left no papers. Stop whenever they want to stop.

Relatives who were killed may be recorded on Pages of Testimony, the forms families filled in for Yad Vashem's Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names, and a grandparent who remembers a relative missing from it can still submit one.

Recording the answers

A recording keeps a grandparent's voice, which the family often values most in later years. How to record a parent's or grandparent's stories covers the details. These are the results to aim for:

• Every word can be heard, in a quiet room with a test played back before you begin.
• The start of each recording gives the date, the place and who is speaking, and the file is named the same way.
• Every name and town is written down as your grandparent spells it, with any other spelling they mention.
• At least two copies are kept, in places as far apart as practical, and checked once a year, as the Library of Congress advises. Every cousin who wants a copy gets one.

Young children can make the recording with a parent's help, and the child's own voice asking becomes part of the keepsake. Note each photograph shown, and keep it with the recording; what to do with old family photos and papers explains how to name and store them.

What the answers lead to

The names, towns and dates a grandparent mentions in these conversations are what the archives need. A commissioned book starts from them, and the recordings become part of the family's history. When grandparents are in their late eighties or nineties and the family wants the whole history set down, a Zichronos commission includes the interviews with relatives, the written requests to archives in the countries the family came from, the translation of what comes back and the finished book, with five hardcover copies and a PDF. Archive, copy and translation fees are included, and most commissions take three to four months.

Family history book examples shows what a researched book holds, what a family history book costs compares the prices of each kind, and How we work sets out the steps. More guides are in family stories and keepsakes.

Sources: President Carter's Proclamation 4580 of 1978 and 36 U.S.C. 125 on Grandparents Day; Smithsonian Education's guide to family folklore interviews; the US National Archives on the 1950 census, the 1907 passenger manifest, naturalization records and military service records; the FamilySearch Research Wiki on naturalization after 1906; the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation; JewishGen's burial registry, its InfoFile on names at Ellis Island and its translation of Pinkas Hakehillot on Vilna; In geveb on the city's names in Yiddish; My Jewish Learning on waiting between meat and dairy and on naming children; Yad Vashem on Pages of Testimony; the Library of Congress on keeping personal audio recordings and its Veterans History Project. Checked October 2026.