Questions to ask your grandparents

The questions that get the best stories from grandparents are small and specific. “What did your kitchen look like?” works much better than “tell me about your life”. Below are questions to start with, grouped by topic. After them, I explain how to send one to a grandparent who lives far away and get the answer back in their own voice.

Questions to start with

Childhood

• What is the first home you remember? Who lived there with you?
• What did you do on a day with no school?
• What did your mother cook that nobody makes any more?
• Who was your best friend, and what did you get up to?
• What were you afraid of as a child?

Their parents and grandparents

• What were your parents like when you were small?
• What did your father do for work? Did you ever go with him?
• Do you remember your grandparents? What did they call you?
• Is there a family story everyone told at gatherings?
• Who is in this photo, and when was it taken?

Growing up and work

• What was your first job, and what did you spend your first wages on?
• What did you want to be when you were young?
• Who taught you the most, outside your family?
• What was the hardest year you remember?

Love and family

• How did you meet my grandfather? What did you think of him at first?
• What was your wedding day like?
• What do you remember about the day my parent was born?
• What do you hope your great-grandchildren know about you?

Places and changes

• Where did the family live before here, and why did they move?
• What has changed most since you were young?
• Is there a place you would go back to, if you could?

Ask one question at a time, and don’t interrupt when they go off on a tangent. The tangent is often the best part.

How to ask when they live far away

Plenty of grandparents live in another city or another country, and many won’t install an app or create an account. So I made the answer a link they can open in a browser, with nothing to install:

1. In Shijro, choose Ask on your grandparent’s page and write the question. Pick the language they should answer in, and tap Get the link.
2. Your phone’s share sheet opens. Send the link however you usually message them: WhatsApp, a text, an email.
3. They open it, tap, and talk.
4. The recording comes back to you, written out and translated into your language. It waits until you or a family admin let it in, and only then does the rest of the family see it.

If your grandparent already uses Shijro, the question shows up in their app instead, and they answer it there.

Where the answers go

Each answer becomes a story on your grandparent’s page, in their own voice, in order with the rest of their life. Dorothy Moretti’s page in the Hartleys, the sample family the app opens on, shows how this looks after a few questions. If you ask one question a week, you’ll have about fifty of their stories by the end of a year.