Our Family Letters

· Our Family Letters

53 questions to ask your mum about her childhood

There are things your mum remembers that nobody has ever asked her about. The smell of her street on a Sunday. The teacher she can still name. What her own mother cooked with her eyes closed.

These fifty-three questions are for drawing those stories out — over a cup of tea, on the phone, or one at a time across a few months. They work best slowly. You don’t need to record anything, and you don’t need them all. One good question, given room, is worth more than an afternoon of interviewing.

How to ask

Ask about things, places and smells — not feelings. “Were you happy?” closes a conversation; “what did your street smell like on a Sunday?” opens one. The feelings arrive on their own, inside the stories.

Let the silences sit. The best part usually comes about ten seconds after you thought she’d finished. And when she tells you a story you’ve heard before, let her — the stories she repeats are the ones that matter most to her. They’re the ones worth writing down.

The house she grew up in

The house she grew up in

Places hold memories that direct questions can’t reach. Walk her back through the front door and the rest follows.

  1. What was the first thing you saw when you came through the front door?
  2. Where did you sleep, and who did you share with?
  3. What could you hear at night, lying in bed?
  4. How was the house kept warm in winter — and was it?
  5. What happened on washing day?
  6. Which room was nobody allowed in, and when was it used?

If the stories start flowing

  • If she mentions sharing a bed or a room — ask what they whispered about after lights out.
  • If she mentions the cold — ask about ice on the inside of the windows, and who lit the fire.

Her street, her world

A child’s world is a few streets wide. Its map is still in her head, shop by shop.

  1. What did your street smell like on a Sunday?
  2. Which shops do you remember, and who ran them?
  3. Who were the neighbours everyone knew — and the ones everyone talked about?
  4. How far were you allowed to roam on your own?
  5. Where did the children gather, and what decided who was in charge?
  6. What was the longest walk you did regularly, and where to?

School days

School days

School is where her world first got bigger than her family. Everyone has one teacher they can still see clearly.

  1. What was the walk to school like, and who did you walk with?
  2. Which teacher can you still picture — and what made them stick?
  3. What were school dinners honestly like?
  4. What were you good at that nobody made a fuss about?
  5. What happened in the playground that the teachers never knew?
  6. Did you sit the eleven-plus? What do you remember about that day?

If the stories start flowing

  • If she mentions a best friend — ask what happened to them, and when they last spoke.

The kitchen and the table

Food is the most reliable memory key there is. Nobody forgets what their mother cooked.

  1. What did your mum cook that she could make with her eyes closed?
  2. What did Sunday dinner look like — who sat where, and who served?
  3. What was a treat in your house? How often did it happen?
  4. What food did you hate then that you’d give anything to taste again?
  5. Were sweets rationed or scarce? What did you buy when you finally could?
  6. Is there a recipe you wish you’d written down before it was lost?

If the stories start flowing

  • If a dish comes up — ask her to talk you through making it, step by step, as if you’d never seen it done.

Play, mischief and the people who raised her

Play, mischief and trouble

Mischief is where her real character lived. These are the stories she’ll laugh through.

  1. What games did you play that children now wouldn’t recognise?
  2. What’s the worst trouble you ever got into — and was it fair?
  3. What dare do you still remember doing?
  4. What did you do on long summer evenings?
  5. What did you and your friends do that your parents never found out about?
  6. Who could make you laugh until it hurt?

The people who raised her

Ask about her parents through details, not verdicts. Hands, routines and sayings carry more truth than “what were they like?”.

  1. What do you remember about your mum’s hands?
  2. What was your dad’s routine — what time did he leave, and how did you know he was home?
  3. What did your grandparents’ house smell like?
  4. What sayings did your parents repeat that you still hear in your head?
  5. What was talked about at your table — and what was never talked about?
  6. Who in the family were you most like, according to everyone else?

If the stories start flowing

  • If she goes quiet on any of these — don’t fill the gap too fast. And if it stays closed, move on gently; there’s no question on this page worth upsetting her for.

Growing up, and the wider world

Growing up

The teenage years are where she starts becoming someone you’d recognise. Music and clothes unlock them fastest.

  1. What was the first record or song that felt like it was yours?
  2. What did you wear that your parents disapproved of?
  3. Where did people your age go to meet each other?
  4. What was your first wage packet, and what did you do with it?
  5. When you left school, what did you want to happen next?
  6. What did you believe at sixteen that makes you smile now?

The wider world, as she saw it

History books have the facts. She has what it was actually like in one house, on one street.

  1. What’s the first news event you remember the adults talking about?
  2. Did your family have a television? What do you remember watching first — and whose house was it in?
  3. When did a car first arrive in your family, and where did it take you?
  4. What did holidays look like — where did you go, and how did you get there?
  5. What arrived during your childhood that changed the house — and which did your parents distrust?
  6. What could you buy for a shilling — and what happened when the money changed?

If she says nothing interesting ever happened to her

Plenty of mums will wave the whole idea away — “oh, you don’t want to hear about all that.” It’s rarely true and almost never final. It usually means the question was too big.

So don’t start with a question. Start with a thing. An object in her hands gives her somewhere to look and something specific to explain, and the story arrives sideways, while neither of you is watching.

Questions that start with a thing

“Tell me about this” is easier to answer than “tell me about your life”. The object does the remembering for her.

  1. Find a photo of her as a girl: where was this taken, and what happened just after the shutter clicked?
  2. A recipe in her handwriting: whose was it first, and when did it become hers?
  3. Play a song from when she was fifteen: where does this put you?
  4. An object she’s kept for decades: why this, of everything?
  5. Her wedding shoes, a brooch, a tin in the back of a cupboard: what’s the story you’ve never told me about this?

When a memory turns sad

Some doors open onto harder rooms — a childhood that was short of money or short of warmth, people missed for fifty years. If that happens, you don’t need to fix anything or say anything wise. “That sounds hard” and a refilled cup of tea do more than any careful speech.

Follow her lead about whether to stay there or move on. A sad story told to someone who listens gently is not a bad afternoon — it’s often the story she most wanted kept. But she decides, not the list of questions.

What to do with the answers

Write them down soon after, in her words — the way she says it is the story. A notebook works. A voice memo works. An email thread works better than you’d think, because it keeps her words exactly, in her own writing, with the date attached.

Whatever you choose, keep it in one place. Fifty answers scattered across your phone is a drawer of loose photographs; fifty answers kept together, in order, is the start of a book.

Questions families ask us

What if she says she can’t remember?
Make the question smaller and more physical. Not “what was school like?” but “what did the classroom smell like?”. Objects, photographs and songs reach memories that direct questions miss. And “I can’t remember” sometimes means “I don’t know where to start” — give her one small place to start.
Should I record her, or write it down?
Whichever means it actually happens. Recording keeps her voice but can make people stiffen; writing afterwards is more relaxed but relies on you doing it. A gentle middle path is asking one question at a time by email or letter, so she answers in her own words and her own time, and every answer keeps itself.
How many questions should I ask in one go?
One or two. A single question a week for a year outperforms a marathon afternoon every time — answers get fuller once remembering becomes a small pleasure rather than an event. The printable kit includes a one-question-a-week page for exactly this.
What if talking about the past upsets her?
Slow down, stay warm, and let her steer. Skip anything she skips. If her memory is changing and the past has become tender ground, keep to the happiest, most distant memories — early childhood often stays clearest — and stop while it’s still nice.

You could ask these questions yourself.

Most families mean to, and never quite do. We send your mum one gentle question a week, by email, and keep every reply — in their words, forever.

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