What Happens When You Let Your Grandchildren Ask the Questions?

The idea came to Maria's daughter as an experiment: instead of preparing questions herself for her mother's recording session, she asked her nine-year-old daughter Sophie to prepare the questions. Sophie took this seriously. She spent two evenings at the kitchen table writing out her questions in her most careful handwriting, occasionally asking for help with spelling. When the recording session arrived, Sophie sat across from her grandmother with her list and a very businesslike expression.

The session lasted two hours. It was, according to Maria's daughter, the best recording they had made.

This is not an isolated experience. When grandchildren are given the opportunity to interview grandparents — with real questions they have developed themselves, and with adults present but deliberately quiet — something extraordinary tends to happen. Children ask things that adults have been socialized not to ask. They follow up in ways that adults consider impolite. They are interested in things that adults assume are not interesting, and they find boring the things that adults assume are the important points.

Sophie asked her grandmother what her bedroom looked like when she was little, and what she kept in it. She asked what the biggest difference between now and when her grandmother was young was. She asked whether her grandmother had ever been in trouble at school, and what for. She asked whether she believed in heaven. She asked what she was afraid of.

None of these questions appeared on the prepared list Maria's daughter had been keeping. All of them produced material that was specific, personal, and emotionally alive in ways that more formally prepared questions often don't. The grandmother, responding to the genuine curiosity of a child she loved, told the truth in ways that adult interviewers often negotiate her away from.

Involve the children. Let them ask. The answers they get will be some of the most valuable material your family has ever produced.