Fablr

Questions to ask

Questions to Ask Your Grandparents for Life Advice

Ask for stories, not slogans. The best advice comes attached to the moment they learned it.

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A grandfather on a park bench raises a hand mid-sentence as his teenage grandson listens.

Ask when they learned it

Ask a grandparent “What is your advice?” and you will likely get a saying. Ask “When did you learn that?” and you will get a story. The story is the part worth keeping.

Your grandparents have made most of the big decisions you are facing, often with less to go on. They chose work, moved, married or didn’t, raised children, lost people and started over. Ask about a specific choice, then ask what they would tell you now.

Before you sit down

  • Bring a real question from your own life. Advice is better when it is about something specific.
  • Follow every piece of advice with “When did you learn that?”
  • Don’t argue. Ask what they would do in your shoes.
  • Write down their exact words.

Work and money

  1. What was the best decision you ever made about work?
  2. What did you learn about money the hard way?
  3. Did you ever quit something? How did you know it was time?
  4. What would you tell someone starting their first real job?

Love and family

  1. How did you know you had found the right person?
  2. What keeps a marriage, or a friendship, going for decades?
  3. What do you wish you had known before you had children?
  4. How do you make up after a real fight?

Hard times

  1. What is the hardest thing that ever happened to you, and how did you get through it?
  2. What do you do when you are afraid?
  3. Who did you turn to when things fell apart?

The long view

  1. What turned out to matter less than you expected?
  2. What do you wish you had done more of?
  3. What are you proudest of?
  4. If you could put one sentence in a letter to your great-grandchildren, what would it say?

Advice stays with you when you can hear the voice that gave it. Keep their exact words.

To keep those words in their own voice, Fablr holds the conversation, writes it into stories and prints a hardcover with a code on each chapter that plays it back. You might also like these questions to ask your grandparents about their military service.

At the kitchen table, a granddaughter scans the printed code on a chapter of an open Fablr hardcover with her phone camera.

If you would rather someone else asked

A biographer who asks the next question.

Fablr holds these conversations by voice, at whatever pace suits them. It follows up the way a good listener does and remembers what they said last time. The stories become a hardcover, with a code on each chapter that plays it in their own voice.

Conversation
15 hours over one year. No schedule.
The book
Full-color 8.5×11 hardcover, included. Free US shipping.
Price
$149, billed once. No auto-renewal.
Give Their Story $149 See how it works

Questions, answered.

Ask about a decision instead: a move, a job, a hard goodbye. Then ask what they would do the same way again.

Yes. Ask for advice about that exact moment, and if they agree, read their answer aloud at the event.

Write them down as they speak, or record with permission. Fablr keeps the conversation and writes the stories in their own words, and the printed book has a code on each chapter that plays their voice.

Give them a year set aside for stories.

$149 billed once. No auto-renewal. 30-day money-back guarantee.

Give Their Story $149