How to Interview Your Parents or Grandparents

You might think the hardest part of interviewing a parent or grandparent is knowing what to ask. You'd be wrong! Questions are easy to find. A quick search will turn up hundreds of lists promising to unlock family stories. The real challenge is helping a conversation feel natural enough that someone forgets they're being interviewed.

The best family stories rarely arrive in response to a perfectly worded question. More often, they appear unexpectedly. One memory reminds someone of another. A passing comment about school becomes a story about a favourite teacher, which somehow leads to the neighbour who always kept sweets in her pocket.  By then, you've stopped conducting an interview and are simply listening.

Ask About Everyday Life

The big moments and milestones;  marriage, military service, and others of this magnitude deserve to be remembered, but they're also the stories people have told many times before.  

The conversations that surprise us usually begin somewhere much smaller. What did breakfast look like before school? Who lived next door? How did people spend a rainy afternoon? What happened when someone misbehaved? Questions like these recreate a world and leave you with a fuller story rather than a collection of facts. 

Years from now, your family may care less about the date someone got married than they do about the smell of bread baking in the kitchen or the route children walked home from school.

Let Them Think

Silence has an unfair reputation. There is typically a rush to fill it.  In conversation, a pause can feel awkward, so we reach for the next question before the first answer has really finished.

Older memories don't always arrive immediately. When you ask a question, they answer and the stop.  Allow them room to think. Many times you'll find that after a  few seconds, they remember another detail, then another.  Often the most interesting part of the story begins with a sentence like, "I haven't thought about this in years..." 

If you leave room for silence, people will often keep talking.

Follow the Story

Imagine asking your grandmother about learning to sew. Halfway through the conversation she mentions walking several miles to school because the sewing lessons were held there. Now you have a choice, you either return to your list of prepared questions or ask about the walk.

The second option is almost always the better one. Family stories are rarely neatly organised into categories. Usually they're connected by memory. The conversations that feel richest are usually the ones willing to wander.

Record the Things You Can't Write Down 

Another common mistake is focusing on words. Don't get me wrong, the words matter, but so does everything around them: the laugh that arrives before the punchline, the long pause while someone searches for a forgotten name, the way your grandfather always clears his throat before telling the same story again.

While a written transcript captures what was said, a recording preserves how it was said. Years later, both will matter.

Start Sooner Than You Think 

I haven't met anyone who regrets recording a conversation too early. Conversely I've met multitudes that regret waiting too long. There will probably never be a perfect afternoon when everyone is free, the equipment is ready, and every question has been carefully prepared. Fortunately, meaningful conversations rarely depend on perfect conditions;  an hour over tea, a drive together, an ordinary Sunday afternoon. Those are often the conversations families remember most.

One Conversation Is Enough to Begin

You don't have to capture an entire life story in one sitting, in fact, it's usually better if you don't. One conversation often leads naturally to another. A photograph mentioned today becomes tomorrow's discussion,  a forgotten neighbor becomes the subject of next week's visit, before long, you've built something far richer than a single interview. You've created a family archive, one conversation at a time.

Where to go next 

If this article has convinced you that family stories matter, here are three practical next steps. 

Begin with the stories that are easiest to lose

Ordinary memories often reveal more about a life than the major milestones do. 

→ Why Ordinary Lives Are Worth Recording

Understand why these conversations matter

Family stories do more than preserve the past. They help explain who we are and where we come from.

→ Why Every Family Should Preserve Their Stories

Take the conversation with you

Download 25 thoughtful questions designed to help parents and grandparents begin telling the stories that matter.

→ Download the Free Family Conversation Guide

Start preserving your family's story

Explore our guided journals designed to help families record memories, values, and life experiences one conversation at a time.

→ Browse Heritage Grove Journals 

Keep Exploring Heritage Grove

Discover more thoughtful articles exploring family stories, photographs, traditions, everyday objects and meaningful conversations..

→ Browse the Learn Library