Has Your Child Ever Interviewed Their Grandparent?

This month’s moral focus at National Heritage Academies is Wisdom. While wisdom is most associated with old age, kids can demonstrate it too! For instance, children exhibit wisdom when they:

• Prioritize their time
• Finish homework or dinner before playtime
• Evaluate opportunities, and say yes to the right things
• Try new things
• Do things the hard way
• Ask an adult for help and listen
• Stop and think before they react

Each day we’ll be tackling different aspects of what it means to exercise wisdom in the classroom and giving your scholar practical, age-appropriate illustrations. But we thought it could be fun this month to expand the topic beyond our school and your home — all the way into a conversation with your child’s grandparent or older loved one.

Grandparent interviews help your child get an idea of what it was like to be a kid when they were small, and gain wisdom on the importance of relationships and living well. Help your child by scheduling time for the two of them to sit down and share a special interview. Here are 20 sample questions your child could tee up:

1. What’s the oldest memory you have?
2. What’s the best thing about being my grandparent?
3. Tell me about the house/neighborhood/city you grew up in.
4. Did my mom or dad do anything funny when they were a kid?
5. Do you remember the day we first met?
6. Did you have a best friend when you were a child? What did you do together?
7. Tell me about your parents.
8. Did you have any nicknames when you were small? How did you get them?
9. Do you have a favorite Christmas memory?
10. What jobs have you had?
11. How did you meet Grandma/Grandpa? How did you know you wanted to marry them?
12. Tell me about a favorite memory from when you were raising your kids.
13. Do you have a favorite song?
14. What advice do you want me to know?
15. What’s the most important lesson your parents taught you?
16. Do you practice a faith tradition? What impact has it had on your life?
17. Did you ever fail at anything? What happened? What did you learn?
18. What could you tell me that I would be surprised to learn about you?
19. What makes you happy?
20. How is it different growing up today than when you were young?

We truly hope your child and family member enjoy this time together. Interviews like this have the potential to become a memory they’ll both cherish. Feel free to take notes, or even better, record audio or video of the exchange you can all listen to or watch for years to come.