Curious about your parents’ lives? Get your kids to interview them.

Kids age seven and older can conduct meaningful family history interviews with their grandparents—even from a distance over Zoom or other teleconferencing software.

What you don’t know about your parents’ lives could fill a book. Actually, multiple books, more like it!

Even those of us who are close to our parents—who speak to them every day on the phone, who love spending time with them, and who rely on them for emotional support or perspective—even we take a lot about our parents for granted. It’s the nature of the parent-child relationship, right? On the children’s end: a built-in assumption that our parents will, quite simply, always be there for us. On the parents’ end: an assumption that our kids see us as “mom” or “dad” rather than “Lillian” or “Jonathon.”

The results of those assumptions? For the kids, that we are less likely to feel any sense of urgency around asking our parents for their stories. For the parents, a sense that their grown kids don’t really want to know about their lives before becoming parents.

Trust me, as a personal historian I have seen this story play out far too often. Grown kids who come to me only after their parents have died, haunted by the guilt that they never got around to asking their mother or father about their lives. Parents who come to me unsure if telling their stories will even matter—“No one has ever asked me,” a father might say, or “My kids don’t care about any of this!”

Sure, you can sit down and interview your parents about their lives (I encourage it, for sure!). But I’ll let you in on a secret: Often folks reveal much more of themselves to a stranger. When I interview someone professionally to capture their stories, I have the advantage of not being emotionally attached to the people or the stories. It’s a guaranteed no-judgment zone. Not to mention that having dedicated time and space for someone to tell their story helps clear the mental clutter and get right to the heart of story sharing.

There’s someone else who can get your parents to speak freely, I bet: your kids. Grandchildren who come to their grandparents with genuine curiosity will inevitably tap a rich well of stories from their elders.

free - interview questions to ask the grandparents

Looking at photos, whether in an old family album or on a device, is a great way to prompt memories and get the stories flowing from grandparent to grandchild (and vice versa!).

A few reasons why grandparents are excited to share stories with their grandkids:

TO IMPART LESSONS: By talking about their life journey—including funny missteps and even big failures—grandparents can share some of their hard-earned wisdom with the next generation.
TO CONNECT MEANINGFULLY: How often do your parents get to have real conversations with your kids? This is a rare—and precious—opportunity.
TO REFLECT INTENTIONALLY: Like writing in a journal, being interviewed for one’s life stories provides a chance for reflection that we rarely indulge in during our busy lives. It’s a practice that’s good for our mental health, according to research, but beyond the research, it just feels darn good.
TO HAVE SOME FUN: Sharing childhood memories and grown-up exploits with the grandkids—what could bet better? It’s a chance for the grandparent to pull out some favorite old photos, to get a little nostalgic, and to share a piece of themselves with someone they love unconditionally. Laughs will ensue, I promise!

If you’d like to encourage your child to interview your parents, I hope you’ll download this popular resource that I’ve been giving away for free since the pandemic began—The Kid Kit: Everything You Need to Interview the Grandparents. Originally available for purchase in the Modern Heirloom Books store, I felt strongly that during this time of separation (and newly-found comfort in connecting over Zoom), I wanted as many people as possible to have it.

Inside you’ll get not only interview questions (and those are AWESOME, if I say so myself—they’re designed with kids aged 7+ in mind and cover a wide range of topics), but you’ll also get bonus activities, a history timeline, and tips for how to continue the story sharing post-interview.