Questions to Ask Your Parents: 40 to Capture Their Life Story (Before It's Too Late)

Easy questions get a conversation going before you ask about anything heavier.

1. What's the best meal you've ever eaten?
2. What song takes you straight back to being young?
3. What was the first thing you bought with your own money?
4. Which film could you watch again and again?
5. What's the most trouble you got into at school?
6. If you could live anywhere for a year, where would it be?

7. What's your earliest memory?
8. What was the house you grew up in like, room by room?
9. Who were your closest friends as a child, and what did you do together?
10. What did your parents do for work, and what did you think of it then?
11. What was a normal Sunday like in your family?
12. What were you afraid of as a child?
13. Which grown-up outside your family did you look up to?
14. What did you want to be when you grew up?

Many of these work for either parent, but they are written for a conversation with your father about work, fatherhood and what he would pass on.

15. What was your own father like, and what did you take from him?
16. What was your first job, and what did it teach you?
17. How did you feel the day you became a dad?
18. What did you find hardest about being a father?
19. What's something you wish you'd done differently with us?
20. What are you proudest of that you've never told anyone?
21. Which friend has been with you the longest, and why have you stayed close?
22. What advice would you give me about money, work or getting older?

These ask about your mother as a person in her own right, before and beyond being your mom.

23. What was your mother like, and how are you like her?
24. What did you want for your life when you were my age?
25. How did you meet the person who mattered most to you then?
26. What was the hardest decision you ever made?
27. What was it like when you first became a mom?
28. What did you give up that people might not know about?
29. What's a family recipe or tradition you'd want us to keep?
30. When in your life were you happiest?

These are deeper questions for a longer, recorded conversation about family history and the shape of a whole life.

31. Where were you born, and how did your family come to live there?
32. What do you know about your grandparents' lives?
33. Which big events in the world do you remember living through?
34. How has your hometown changed since you were young?
35. What was the biggest turning point in your life?
36. Which beliefs or values have guided you, and where did they come from?
37. Who had the most influence on the person you became?
38. What has changed most about what you think matters?
39. What do you hope your grandchildren know about you?
40. How would you like to be remembered?

The Oral History Association publishes best practices for this kind of interview. A few of its recommendations translate directly to a conversation with a parent:

• Ask for their consent to record before you start.
• Prepare an open-ended outline of themes rather than a rigid script.
• Ask follow-up questions that invite more detail and reflection, rather than moving on after a short answer.
• Record somewhere quiet, with as little background noise as you can.
• Respect their right not to talk about some subjects.

Start with the light questions, and stop while it still feels good. You can always come back for more.

Save each recording in more than one place, and name the file with the date and who is speaking, so it is easy to find later. Our guide to planning a digital legacy covers how to make sure files like these can be found and passed on.

It is worth answering a few of these questions yourself, too. If you would like your own family to hear your answers one day, that is the idea behind Echo, which we are building for Phi Journal.