50 questions to ask your parents about their life

1. Childhood and the native place

• Where were you born, and what do you remember about the house?
• What was your village or town like when you were a child?
• What did a normal day look like when you were ten years old?
• What games did you play, and with whom?
• What food from your childhood do you still miss?
• Who was the oldest person you knew as a child, and what did they tell you?
• What festivals were celebrated at home, and how?
• What was the hardest part of those years that we would not understand today?
• What smell, sound, or place instantly takes you back to childhood?
• If you could visit one day from your childhood again, which day would it be?

2. Family and elders

• Tell me about your mother. What was she like?
• Tell me about your father. What did you learn from him?
• What do you know about your grandparents and where they came from?
• How did our family come to live where we live now?
• Who in the family were you closest to, and why?
• What family story have you never told anyone?
• What was lost when the old house or village was left behind?
• Which relative should I know more about before it is too late?

3. School, friends and first dreams

• What was your school like, and how did you get there each day?
• Who was your favourite teacher, and what did they say to you?
• Who was your best friend, and what happened to them?
• What did you want to become when you were young?
• What was the first book, film, or song that changed you?
• What mischief did you do that your parents never found out about?

4. Love, marriage and building a home

• How did your marriage come to be? Tell the whole story.
• What do you remember about the wedding day itself?
• What was the first year of marriage like?
• What is one thing about your spouse that people never knew?
• What was the first home you set up together, and what did it have?
• What was the happiest ordinary day of your married life?
• What did you both survive together that made you stronger?
• What do you remember about the day each of your children was born?

5. Work, struggle and proud moments

• What was your first job, and what was your first salary?
• What did you do with that first salary?
• What was the hardest period of your working life?
• What decision are you most proud of?
• What risk did you take that others thought was foolish?
• Who helped you when you had nothing, and did you ever repay them?
• What did you build, save, or sacrifice for the family?
• If you could speak to your 25-year-old self, what would you say?

6. Beliefs, recipes and wisdom

• What belief or prayer has carried you through life?
• Which recipe of yours must never be lost? Describe it step by step.
• What proverb or saying of your parents do you still repeat?
• What is something you changed your mind about as you grew older?
• What does a good life mean to you now?
• What song or lullaby do you want the grandchildren to know?

7. Blessings for the generations to come

• What do you want your grandchildren to know about you?
• What mistake of yours should the next generation avoid?
• What is your blessing for each person in the family, by name?
• If this whole conversation became a book, what should its title be?