• 200 questions

Questions to Ask Your Mom and Dad

One life-story question for your mom or dad, with a follow-up behind it.

Questions to Ask Your Mom and Dad

What did you give up when you became a parent?

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What did you get that you did not expect?

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All 200 questions

Childhood and school 36

  • Were you the oldest, the youngest, in the middle or the only one? Follow-up: What did that spot get you?
  • What book, show or record shaped you before you were eighteen? Follow-up: What did it make you want?
  • What did a weekend look like when you were fifteen? Follow-up: Who drove?
  • What did you and your parents disagree about most when you were sixteen? Follow-up: Who was right, looking back?
  • What did you collect, build or obsess over as a kid? Follow-up: What happened to it?
  • What did you promise yourself as a kid that you would do differently as a grown-up? Follow-up: Did you keep the promise?
  • What did you want to be when you were twelve? Follow-up: When did that change?
  • What did your brothers, sisters or cousins think of you growing up? Follow-up: Were they right about you?
  • What did your childhood give you that you only appreciated later? Follow-up: How old were you when it sank in?
  • What did your family do on an ordinary Sunday? Follow-up: Which part of it did you look forward to?
  • What did your parents do for work when you were growing up? Follow-up: Did you ever go to work with them?
  • What language, accent or sayings did you hear at home? Follow-up: Which ones have you kept?
  • What music did you play loudest at seventeen? Follow-up: What did your parents think of it?
  • What nickname did you have as a kid, and who gave it to you? Follow-up: Did you like it?
  • What part of growing up was harder than you let anyone see? Follow-up: Who would you tell now?
  • What sport, club or instrument took up your afternoons? Follow-up: How good were you, honestly?
  • What street did you grow up on, and what number was the house? Follow-up: Could you still walk me through its front door?
  • What was the biggest change in your childhood: a move, a new school, a new baby? Follow-up: How did you take it?
  • What was the biggest day of the year in your town? Follow-up: What did your family do on it?
  • What was the first thing you were truly proud of making or doing? Follow-up: Who did you show it to?
  • What was the name of your first school, and how big was your class? Follow-up: Who sat next to you?
  • What was your curfew, and what happened when you missed it? Follow-up: How often was that?
  • What were you allowed to touch at your grandparents' house, and what not? Follow-up: Did you touch it anyway?
  • What were you good at in school without trying? Follow-up: What did you have to fight for?
  • What were you like as a teenager? Follow-up: What would your parents have said about that?
  • What year did you finish school, and what was the plan for the day after? Follow-up: How long did that plan last?
  • When did you first stand up for yourself or for someone else? Follow-up: What did it cost you?
  • Where were you born, and what have you been told about that day? Follow-up: Who told you that story?
  • Which friend from before you were twenty is still in your life? Follow-up: What has kept the two of you close?
  • Which relative did you most like to visit as a child? Follow-up: What was different at their house?
  • Which summer of your teenage years was the best one? Follow-up: What made it end?
  • Which teacher changed something for you? Follow-up: What did that teacher do that the others did not?
  • Who believed in you first? Follow-up: How did they show it?
  • Who did you spend your lunch hours with in high school? Follow-up: What did you all talk about?
  • Who lived on either side of you when you were a kid? Follow-up: Which of those neighbors did you like visiting?
  • Who was your best friend when you were seven? Follow-up: Where is that friend now?

First jobs and leaving home 28

  • How did you choose your line of work, or did it choose you? Follow-up: What else did you nearly do?
  • How did you get to work in those days, and how long did it take? Follow-up: What did you do on the way?
  • What did work teach you that school never did? Follow-up: When did you need that lesson most?
  • What did you do right after school finished: study, work, travel or something else? Follow-up: Whose idea was that?
  • What did you live on when you first moved out? Follow-up: Which of those meals do you still make?
  • What did you wear to your first real job? Follow-up: Who told you what to wear?
  • What did your first job pay by the hour or by the week? Follow-up: What would that buy back then?
  • What did your parents think of the work you chose? Follow-up: Did they ever see you do it?
  • What did your work cost you that never showed on a payslip? Follow-up: Was it a fair trade?
  • What furniture did your first place have, and where did it come from? Follow-up: What did you sit on?
  • What is the day at work you are proudest of? Follow-up: Who knew about it?
  • What job did you want and not get? Follow-up: What happened instead?
  • What tool, machine or program did you use every day at work? Follow-up: Could you still use it?
  • What was the biggest mistake you made at work? Follow-up: How did you fix it?
  • What was the first bill or lease with your name on it? Follow-up: How did it feel to sign?
  • What was the first place you lived after leaving home? Follow-up: Who did you share it with?
  • What was the hardest part of being out on your own? Follow-up: Who did you call?
  • What was the worst job you ever had, and how long did you last? Follow-up: What made you stay that long?
  • What was your first car, or how did you get around without one? Follow-up: What went wrong with it?
  • What was your very first paid job, and how old were you? Follow-up: How did you get it?
  • What went wrong in your first week at your first real job? Follow-up: Who covered for you?
  • What work did you do that I know nothing about? Follow-up: Why did you leave it?
  • What would you do for work if you were starting out today? Follow-up: What would you tell a beginner to avoid?
  • When did you first feel good at your job? Follow-up: What had changed?
  • Who taught you the most about doing your job well? Follow-up: What was their best piece of advice?
  • Who was the best boss you ever had? Follow-up: What did they do that you copied?
  • Who was the worst boss you ever had? Follow-up: What did you learn from putting up with them?
  • Who was your closest friend at work? Follow-up: What did the two of you get up to?

Becoming a parent 32

  • What advice from other parents was useless? Follow-up: What advice was gold?
  • What caught you off guard in the first weeks of being a parent? Follow-up: Who helped you through them?
  • What did I break, lose or ruin as a kid that you still think about? Follow-up: Have you forgiven me?
  • What did I get up to at sixteen that you knew about all along? Follow-up: Why did you never say anything?
  • What did my teachers tell you about me that you never passed on? Follow-up: Were the teachers right?
  • What did we do on a normal Saturday when I was little? Follow-up: Which part did you like best?
  • What did you and I argue about most when I was a teenager? Follow-up: Who should have given in?
  • What did you copy from how your parents raised you? Follow-up: What did you do the opposite way on purpose?
  • What did you do just for yourself when I was small, if anything? Follow-up: What would you have done with one free day?
  • What did you give up when you became a parent? Follow-up: What did you get that you did not expect?
  • What did you keep from when I was little: a drawing, a tooth, a shoe? Follow-up: Where do you keep it?
  • What did you lose sleep over when I was small that never came to anything? Follow-up: What should you have watched instead?
  • What did you sing, read or say to me at bedtime? Follow-up: Do you still remember the words?
  • What did you tell people about me when I was not in the room? Follow-up: What did you leave out?
  • What do you hope I say about how I was raised? Follow-up: What do you fear I say?
  • What do you remember about the day I arrived? Follow-up: What was the weather like?
  • What is a day with me as a kid that you would live again? Follow-up: What were we doing?
  • What is one thing you would do differently as a parent? Follow-up: What would you keep exactly the same?
  • What other names were on the list before you settled on mine? Follow-up: Who argued for which?
  • What part of you do you see in me? Follow-up: Which part are you glad I missed?
  • What rule did you swear you would never make, and then made? Follow-up: When did you hear yourself say it?
  • What was it like when I left home? Follow-up: What did you do with the quiet?
  • What was my first word, and who was I looking at? Follow-up: How long before the second word?
  • What was the first place you took me that you had loved as a kid? Follow-up: Did I love it too?
  • What was the first thing you bought or made for me? Follow-up: What did I do with it?
  • What was the hardest age of mine to parent? Follow-up: What got you through it?
  • What was the scariest moment of raising me? Follow-up: What did you do?
  • When did you first feel you knew what you were doing as a parent? Follow-up: How long did the feeling last?
  • When did you first see me as a grown-up? Follow-up: What had I done?
  • When were you proud of me and did not say so? Follow-up: Why not?
  • Where were you when you found out I was on the way? Follow-up: Who did you tell first?
  • Who looked after me when you could not? Follow-up: What did I call them?

Family history and traditions 32

  • What did you and a grandparent do together, just the two of you? Follow-up: What did they teach you without saying so?
  • What did your family believe about hard work, school or manners? Follow-up: Which of those beliefs did you hand on to me?
  • What did your family do when someone had good news? Follow-up: What did they do with bad news?
  • What did your parents go through that shaped how they raised you? Follow-up: How did it reach you?
  • What do you know about how your own parents grew up? Follow-up: What did they never talk about?
  • What do you understand about your own parents now that you did not at thirty? Follow-up: What would you say to them about it?
  • What happened to the house you grew up in? Follow-up: Have you been back?
  • What heirloom do you wish had not been lost or sold? Follow-up: Who had it last?
  • What is the story behind a ring, a tool or a dish we still use? Follow-up: Who will tell it after you?
  • What is the story of our family name: where it comes from, how it was spelled? Follow-up: Has anyone changed it?
  • What languages did your grandparents speak? Follow-up: What words do you still know?
  • What object has been in our family the longest, and who had it first? Follow-up: Who should have it next?
  • What should the great-grandchildren know about where this family came from? Follow-up: What should they not repeat?
  • What was the hardest year for your family when you were growing up? Follow-up: What pulled everyone through?
  • What was your family's big move: a country, a city, a farm to a town? Follow-up: What was left behind?
  • What was your mother's or father's proudest possession? Follow-up: Where did it end up?
  • What were your grandparents' names, and what did you call them? Follow-up: What did they call you?
  • What were your parents like at a party? Follow-up: Who did they invite?
  • What work did your grandparents and great-grandparents do? Follow-up: Which of them would you have liked to work beside?
  • Where are the family's old photographs, and who can name the people in them? Follow-up: Which photo should we label first?
  • Where did your grandparents come from, and how did they end up where they did? Follow-up: Which of them told you the story?
  • Which aunt, uncle or cousin did the grown-ups whisper about? Follow-up: What had they done?
  • Which family tradition nearly ended, and who saved it? Follow-up: What would have been lost?
  • Which of the things we do every year began with you? Follow-up: What were you trying to copy or fix?
  • Which relative has the most interesting story that I have never heard? Follow-up: Who knows the rest of it?
  • Which towns or countries should I visit to see where we come from? Follow-up: What should I look for there?
  • Which tradition from your childhood did you decide not to pass on? Follow-up: Does anyone miss it?
  • Which two relatives could never be seated together, and why? Follow-up: Did they ever make it up?
  • Who held the family together when you were young? Follow-up: Who does that job now?
  • Who in the family did you lose touch with, and how did it happen? Follow-up: Would you write to them now?
  • Who keeps the family's dates, letters and family tree? Follow-up: What have they found?
  • Whose handwriting is on the oldest recipe in the house? Follow-up: When was it last cooked?

Funny 28

  • What band or show were you obsessed with that you would rather I did not look up? Follow-up: How many posters were there?
  • What dance did you think you were good at? Follow-up: Will you show me?
  • What did the two of us do that we agreed never to mention? Follow-up: Is it time to mention it?
  • What did you and your friends think was the height of cool? Follow-up: How does it look now?
  • What did you do at my age that you would have grounded me for? Follow-up: Did you get caught?
  • What did you get away with as a teenager that your parents still do not know about? Follow-up: Would you tell them now?
  • What did you get completely wrong about what I would grow up to be? Follow-up: What gave you that idea?
  • What did you pretend to like because I made it or picked it? Follow-up: How long did you keep that up?
  • What did you say to a teacher, a boss or an official that you cannot believe you said? Follow-up: What happened next?
  • What did your own parents do that embarrassed you most? Follow-up: Do you do it to me?
  • What do you eat or watch only when the house is empty? Follow-up: Who nearly caught you?
  • What fib did you tell me as a kid that I believed for years? Follow-up: When did I work it out?
  • What food did you serve for years without ever liking it yourself? Follow-up: Why did you keep making it?
  • What house rule did you break yourself when I was not looking? Follow-up: How did you hide it?
  • What is the best excuse you ever gave a parent, a teacher or a boss? Follow-up: Did it work?
  • What is the most useless thing you ever bought and defended? Follow-up: Where is it today?
  • What is the silliest argument you and I ever had? Follow-up: Who won?
  • What is the strangest thing you ever found in my room, my pockets or my school bag? Follow-up: Did you ask me about it?
  • What is the worst advice you ever gave me with a straight face? Follow-up: Did I take it?
  • What is the worst present you ever had to say thank you for? Follow-up: How convincing was your thank you?
  • What is your most ridiculous injury, and how did you explain it? Follow-up: What really happened?
  • What is your worst driving story? Follow-up: Who was in the car?
  • What party or outing of yours fell flat? Follow-up: Who still teases you about it?
  • What piece of technology has defeated you most thoroughly? Follow-up: Who came to the rescue?
  • What prank did you pull, or have pulled on you, that people still bring up? Follow-up: Who started it?
  • What song do you sing badly and loudly anyway? Follow-up: Where did you learn it?
  • What was your most embarrassing moment as a parent in public? Follow-up: What was I doing at the time?
  • What was your worst attempt at fixing something in the house? Follow-up: Who fixed it in the end?

Deep 24

  • What advice would you give me for the decade I am in now? Follow-up: What did you get wrong in yours?
  • What are you proudest of that has nothing to do with work or children? Follow-up: Who knows about it?
  • What are you still hoping to do? Follow-up: How can I help?
  • What decision do you still turn over in your mind? Follow-up: What would let it rest?
  • What did you believe at thirty that you no longer believe? Follow-up: What changed your mind?
  • What did you have to forgive someone for, and how long did it take? Follow-up: What changed when you did?
  • What did you sacrifice that nobody noticed? Follow-up: Would you like it noticed now?
  • What do the two of us keep putting off that we should do together? Follow-up: What is stopping us?
  • What do you hope the family remembers about you? Follow-up: What would you rather we forgot?
  • What do you know about friendship now that you did not at twenty? Follow-up: Which friend taught you?
  • What do you wish you had worried about less? Follow-up: What deserved the worry instead?
  • What have you done for this family that never got a proper thank-you? Follow-up: Who owes it?
  • What in your life turned out better than you dared to hope? Follow-up: What had you been bracing for instead?
  • What is one thing you wish you had asked your own parents? Follow-up: What stopped you asking at the time?
  • What part of your story do you think I have wrong? Follow-up: What is the true version?
  • What should I do for the next generation that you did for me? Follow-up: What should I skip?
  • What skill of yours should I learn from you while we have the time? Follow-up: When do we start?
  • What was the hardest stretch of your life, and what got you through it? Follow-up: What did it teach you that nothing else could?
  • What would you do with a free month and nobody to look after? Follow-up: Where would you go first?
  • What would you tell yourself at twenty-five if you had five minutes? Follow-up: What would your twenty-five-year-old self have said back?
  • When were you happiest, and did you know it at the time? Follow-up: What would take you back there?
  • Which decade of your life suited you best? Follow-up: What made it fit?
  • Which fork in the road are you gladdest you took? Follow-up: How close did you come to going the other way?
  • Who shaped you most outside the family? Follow-up: What did they give you?

Just for Mom 10

  • What did you call your mother, and what did she call you when you were in trouble? Follow-up: What had you usually done?
  • What did you understand about your mom only after you became one? Follow-up: Did you ever tell her?
  • What did your mom teach you to do that you still do her way? Follow-up: What do you do your own way on purpose?
  • What did your mother always carry in her bag or her pockets? Follow-up: What did she hand you from it?
  • What did your mother tell you about her life before you came along? Follow-up: What did she leave out?
  • What is the best Mother's Day you remember, as a daughter or as a mom? Follow-up: What made it that one?
  • What is the hardest thing about being a mom that nobody warned you about? Follow-up: What is the best thing nobody mentioned?
  • What song, smell or place will always mean your mother to you? Follow-up: When did it last stop you in your tracks?
  • What was your mother's laugh like, and what set it off? Follow-up: When do you hear it in your own?
  • Who were you before anyone called you Mom? Follow-up: What part of her is still around?

Just for Dad 10

  • What did you and your father do together without having to talk? Follow-up: When did the talking start?
  • What did you stop doing on weekends when you became Dad? Follow-up: When did you last do it?
  • What did you want to do differently from your own father when you became a dad? Follow-up: How did that go?
  • What did your dad say to you the day you left home, or what do you wish he had said? Follow-up: How often do you think of it?
  • What did your dad teach you about work? Follow-up: Did you pass it on to me?
  • What did your dad's friends call him, and what did he call you? Follow-up: Which name stuck?
  • What did your father do with his hands that you can still picture? Follow-up: What did he let you help with?
  • What do the dads in our family find hard to say? Follow-up: Could you say it now?
  • What is the best Father's Day you have had so far? Follow-up: What did we do?
  • What was your father's chair, car or corner of the house? Follow-up: What happened if someone else used it?

How it works

You know your mom as a mom. These 200 questions to ask your mom or dad go back further: the street she grew up on, his first boss, the names on the list before yours. Pick a Chapter, press Next question and listen.

Read the full guide

Start with facts, end with reflections

Easy (60 cards) asks for a fact, Medium (106) for a story and Hard (34) for a reflection. That order follows the interview tips StoryCorps gives: open with warm-up questions, ask follow-ups, end with reflective questions, and use your list as a guide, not a script. This site is not connected with StoryCorps.

Eight chapters, two of them for one parent

Six chapters fit either parent: Childhood and school (36), First jobs and leaving home (28), Becoming a parent (32), Family history and traditions (32), Funny (28) and Deep (24). Just for Mom and Just for Dad hold 10 each, such as Who were you before anyone called you Mom? Used as life interview questions, one chapter a visit is plenty.

  • For questions to ask parents about their childhood, stay in Childhood and school and let one answer run; a street name often leads somewhere.
  • Funny has no Hard cards and Deep has no Easy ones, so a wary parent can start with the fibs and the bad dancing.
  • No card asks how your parents met, or about health, faith or politics. Add those yourself if they are happy subjects in your family.

Questions and answers

What are funny questions to ask your parents?

Funny holds 28, such as What fib did you tell me as a kid that I believed for years? and What dance did you think you were good at? All work as funny questions to ask your mom or funny questions to ask your dad.

What are deep questions to ask your mom?

Deep holds 24 reflections, such as What is one thing you wish you had asked your own parents? and What part of your story do you think I have wrong? Ask them late in a visit, after the facts and stories.

Are there 100 questions to ask your parents here?

Twice that. The list under the deck holds all 200 in eight chapters, and Print, on the end card, gives the chapter you picked as slips, up to 120 at a time. There is no keepsake sheet with lines for the answers.

Do the mom questions work for a mum, a stepparent or a grandparent?

Mostly. 180 of the 200 say you and never name the parent, so they read as mum questions unchanged. The other 20 say mom, mother, dad or father on the card. Questions about raising you suit whoever raised you.

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