What chore did you have as a child, and what did you get for doing it?
What did a grown-up say to you as a child that you remember word for word?
What did you and your friends play outside?
What did you do on a rainy day when you were little?
What did you save up for as a child, and did you get it?
What did your street or neighborhood sound like when you were a kid?
What game did you and your friends make up at age ten?
What got you into the most trouble when you were small?
What is your very earliest memory?
What job did you act out when you played pretend?
What toy or game did you play with the most as a child?
What was a rule in your house when you were a child?
What was your bedtime when you were eight, and did you keep to it?
What was your favorite hiding place as a child?
What were you afraid of as a child that seems funny now?
Who read to you at bedtime, and what did they read?
Show all 214 questions (198 more)
Meals and kitchens 15
What did the kitchen you grew up with smell like on a good day?
What did you eat for breakfast on school days as a child?
What dish tastes like your childhood?
What food did you only ever eat at one relative's house?
What food did you refuse to eat as a child? Do you eat it now?
What is the best meal you remember eating?
What is the first thing you learned to cook, and who taught you?
What meal went so wrong that the family still talks about it?
What recipe should this family never lose, and who knows it by heart?
What snack did you eat straight from the package when nobody was looking?
What was a special-occasion meal in your family when you were young?
What was packed in your school lunch?
What was your favorite treat from a shop or a bakery when you were little?
What would you choose for your birthday dinner, then and now?
Who was the best cook in the house you grew up in, and what did they make?
Houses and rooms 15
Describe the bedroom you had when you were ten.
Did you share a bedroom growing up, and with whom?
How many homes have you lived in, and which one felt most like home?
What broke in your house that nobody ever owned up to?
What did you do in the back seat on long car rides?
What job around the house did everyone try to avoid?
What kinds of animals lived with you or near you when you were growing up?
What sound takes you straight back to the house you grew up in?
What was in the drawer where your family kept everything?
What was on the walls of your childhood bedroom?
What was the strangest thing in an older relative's house?
What was the view from a window you remember well?
Where did you go in the house when you wanted to be alone?
Where did your family keep the good snacks?
Where in the house did everyone end up in the evening?
School days 15
How did you get to school each day?
What did you carry your books in?
What did you do at recess?
What did you do on the way home from school?
What did you wear to school, and what did you wish you could wear?
What did your report cards usually say about you?
What game did everyone play in the schoolyard?
What is one thing a teacher said that you still remember?
What is one thing you learned at school that you still use every week?
What school rule made no sense to you then, and does it now?
What was the best school trip you ever went on?
What was the hardest thing you had to learn by heart?
What was your favorite subject, and which one did you dread?
What were you known for at school?
Where did you sit in the classroom, and did you choose the spot?
Holidays and traditions 15
What did summer vacation mean when you were ten?
What did the grown-ups do at family gatherings while the kids played?
What did you do on the first morning of a school break?
What did your birthday look like when you were a child?
What did your family do on the last night of a vacation?
What food has to be on the table for a holiday to feel right?
What holiday tradition did your family have that other families did not?
What is the best present you ever gave someone in this family?
What is the best present you ever got as a child?
What is your favorite day of the whole year, and why?
What song did your family sing, or play too often, in the car?
What tradition from your childhood would you like this family to bring back?
Where did your family go on vacation when you were young?
Which family gathering do you remember best?
Which holiday job was yours every year: the table, the lights or the dishes?
Firsts 15
What did you do with the first money you ever earned?
What do you remember about your first day of school?
What is the first birthday you can remember?
What was the first big decision you made on your own?
What was the first contest, race or raffle you entered, and how did it go?
What was the first living thing you were put in charge of: a pet, a plant or a child?
What was the first meal you cooked for someone else?
What was the first thing you built, sewed or fixed by yourself?
What was the first thing you learned to ride, and who held on?
What was the first thing you made that someone put on display?
What was your first trip away from home without your family?
What were you doing the first time someone treated you as a grown-up?
When did you first stay up past midnight, and what for?
Where was the first place you were allowed to go on your own?
Who was the first famous person you were a fan of?
Then and now 15
How did you keep in touch with a friend who moved away?
How did you listen to music as a teenager, or how do you now?
How did your family find its way on a road trip when you were young?
How did your family take photos, and where did the pictures end up?
What cost so little when you were young that it sounds made up now?
What could you do as a kid that kids are not allowed to do today?
What did a phone look like when you were ten?
What did you do after school when you were twelve?
What did you do when you were bored and there was nothing to watch?
What do kids have today that you would have loved at their age?
What invention changed your daily life the most?
What is better about being a kid today, and what was better back then?
What slang did you use that nobody says anymore?
What was on TV, or on your screen, on Saturday mornings?
What was the fashion when you were sixteen, and did you wear it?
Kids ask the grown-ups 18
Did you like school when you were my age?
Were you ever sent to your room? What for?
What did the grown-ups always say to you that you now say yourself?
What did you and your brothers, sisters or cousins fight about?
What did you and your friends do after school when you were my age?
What did you get in trouble for at school?
What did you think being a grown-up would be like?
What do you wish you had learned sooner?
What games did you play when you were my age?
What is the best thing about being a grown-up?
What is the bravest thing you did when you were my age?
What is the funniest thing I ever said when I was little?
What is the hardest thing about being a grown-up?
What was I like as a baby?
What was the naughtiest thing you did as a kid?
What was your favorite candy when you were my age?
What was your favorite cartoon or show?
What were you like when you were my age?
Grown-ups ask the kids 15
What did you do this week that you are proud of?
What do grown-ups worry about too much?
What do you think I was like when I was your age?
What do you think you will tell your own kids about this family?
What family tradition would you start if it were up to you?
What game do you wish the whole family would play with you?
What is something you can do that you think I cannot?
What is something you wish grown-ups understood?
What is the best part of your day, most days?
What is the best thing we have ever done together?
What is the funniest thing that happened at school this month?
What is the kindest thing someone in this family has done for you?
What rule in this house would you change, and what would replace it?
What would you cook if you made dinner for everyone?
Where should this family go on its next day out?
Moms and daughters 15
What did you want most at my age, or what do you think I will want at yours?
What do I say so often that you could say it along with me?
What do the two of us always end up laughing about?
What do we have in common that nobody else in the family shares?
What do you remember about a day that was just the two of us?
What is a habit of mine that you have picked up?
What is one way the two of us are completely different?
What is something about me that you understood better as you got older?
What is something I taught you without meaning to?
What is the funniest thing that has ever happened to the two of us?
What is your favorite thing the two of us do together?
What meal should the two of us learn to cook together?
What part of my life do you know the least about?
What song will always remind you of me?
What would our perfect Saturday together look like?
Sisters 15
What did the two of you get in trouble for together?
What did the two of you play together as kids?
What did you borrow from your sister and never give back?
What did you envy about your sister growing up?
What did you fight about most, and who usually won?
What family rule did one of you break for the other?
What is the kindest thing your sister has done for you?
What is your first memory of your sister?
What is your sister better at than you, if you are honest?
What room, trip or back seat did you have to share, and how did that go?
What secret language, joke or signal did the two of you share?
What song, show or movie belongs to the two of you?
What would your sister say you were like at thirteen?
When did your sister have your back?
Which of you got away with more?
Family stories 15
How did your parents, or the people who raised you, meet?
What did an older relative teach you to do with your hands?
What did the oldest relatives you knew do for fun?
What is the oldest family story you know?
What job did someone in the family have that would surprise the kids?
What object in this family has been handed down, and what is its story?
What saying gets passed down in this family?
What story about you gets told at every family gathering?
What talent runs in this family?
Which family photo would you save first, and what is happening in it?
Which relative do people say you take after, and do you agree?
Who are you named after, or how was your name chosen?
Who in the family could have been famous, and for what?
Who in this family tells the best stories?
Who is the funniest person in this family, and what is their best moment?
Funny 15
What did someone here cook, build or fix that turned out nothing like the plan?
What did someone here say by mistake that became a family phrase?
What did you believe as a child that turned out to be completely wrong?
What family disaster would make the best movie scene?
What family trip went wrong in a way that is funny now?
What is the funniest thing anyone here did while half asleep?
What is the funniest thing that ever happened at this table?
What is the strangest thing a pet of ours ever did?
What is the worst haircut you ever had, and who was responsible?
What outfit from an old photo would you never wear again?
Who in this family is always the last one ready to leave?
Who in this family laughs the loudest, and at what?
Who in this family tells the same joke every year?
Who is the worst at keeping a surprise secret?
Who takes the longest to tell a short story?
Looking ahead 15
What do you hope the youngest person here remembers about tonight?
What family tradition do you hope is still going in fifty years?
What game should we play after this one?
What job in this house would you like to take over, or hand over?
What place should this family visit together one day?
What should the next family photo look like?
What should this family do more often?
What should we write down before everyone forgets it?
What skill should each person here learn from someone else at this table?
What will the kids at this table be telling stories about in thirty years?
What would you like the family to say about you at your ninetieth birthday?
What would you like to be doing when you are as old as the oldest person here?
What would you like to learn about someone at this table?
What would you put in a family time capsule tonight?
Who in the family should we call or visit soon, and what would we do there?
How this list was compiled: Written for this site on 2026-09-18, with 26 cards added on 2026-09-20 so that every set holds at least 15; no list was copied from anywhere. Every card asks for a memory or a story that a child, a parent and a grandparent can each answer in their own way. No card states a fact, so there was nothing to check against a reference. Every card was screened line by line: nothing sexual, no alcohol or drugs, nothing frightening, and no question about a player's body, health, religion or background, or about what anyone earns, owns or owes today. Three cards touch on money as a childhood memory: what you saved up for, what you did with the first money you earned, and what used to cost very little. No card asks for the name of a pet, a childhood friend or a teacher, a first car, a first job or a childhood nickname, the answers accounts use as security questions. No card assumes one kind of family: where a parent might be meant, the card says the people who raised you or an older relative, and no card asks about a loss. Levels are ours: an easy card can be answered in a sentence by anyone aged about six or older, a medium card needs a particular memory, and a hard card asks for a longer story or some reflection, which suits teenagers and adults. Licence: own work
How it works
A family questions game works when the ten-year-old and the grandparent can answer the same card. These 214 family dinner table questions ask for memories, not opinions: a rule in your house, how you got to school each day.
Read the full guide
At the dinner table, or printed as cards
Press Next card and read it aloud. The oldest person answers first, then the youngest, and anyone may pass. For family dinner conversation cards on paper, pick a set and press Print on the end card: the questions print as slips to cut apart, one beside each plate.
Sets for stories, for kids and for two
When you were little and School days pull out stories the children have not heard: "What did you save up for as a child, and did you get it?" In Kids ask the grown-ups, the child reads the card: "What was I like as a baby?" Moms and daughters plays as a mother daughter questions game for two, and Sisters as a sister questions game.
Let the youngest reader deal. Reading aloud is a job, and a child with a job stays at the table.
For family reunion questions, print Family stories and Then and now and put a slip at every place.
Record a grandparent's answers, with their permission. The list under the tool doubles as an interview sheet.
Questions and answers
What ages does this family questions game suit?
Easy cards work from about age six: a favorite hiding place, how you got to school, where the good snacks were kept. Medium and Hard need longer memories. No card assumes one kind of family; several say the people who raised you.
How many cards fill a meal?
About ten. Ask one follow-up before the next card, such as who else was there, and a single card can run for several minutes. The second answer is often the better story.
Are the family dinner questions printable?
Yes. Pick a set and press Print on the end card for conversation cards for families on paper: questions only, as slips. On All it prints 120 at a time, and a second press the rest. Copy the list copies them for a document.
Can we play with relatives on a video call?
It is a family talk game, so nothing has to be seen: one person opens the page, reads aloud and calls on a relative by name. A grandchild reading "Were you ever sent to your room? What for?" hands a faraway grandparent the floor.