5 Questions you should Ask Your Grandparents about Their Childhood
Viola McCammon Willocks her children — Fred Raymond, Freda, Brenda, and Carolyn.
Having a relationship with our elders and knowing them deeply is one of the most rewarding feelings in the world.
But it’s easy to forget that they, with all their decades of wisdom and life experience that we look up to, used to be young and impressionable children.
Learning about their childhood can help us understand and better relate to them — to appreciate them as the people they’ve become.
Knowing where to start the conversation can be hard, though. So here are five questions we ask elders in every Living Heirloom documentary.
1. What was it like growing up in your hometown?
It’s hard to say how much impact one’s environment has on the person they become, but surely we can agree it’s significant.
You may know where your grandparents grew up, and maybe even the story of how they got to where they are today.
But have you ever asked them how it felt to live there?
Ask these questions:
Did you enjoy living there?
Was it a cozy or dangerous place?
Did you ever feel like an outsider?
Were you woven tightly within the community?
Do you ever regret moving away, or staying there as long as they did?
What are your fondest memories of home?
If we want to know our loved ones on a deeper level, we should know what kind of connection they had, and still have, to where they grew up.
The Willocks children riding ponies.
2. What was a typical day at home like?
Unearthing the dynamics of your grandparent’s early home life can explain their habits, quirks, way of communicating, and so much more.
Ask these questions:
What were your parents like?
Were they around often, or mostly absent?
What kind of responsibilities did you have as a child?
Who did your family’s cooking and cleaning?
How did you all spend time together?
Was there lots of laughter?
Fred Raymond, Richard, and Fred Willocks.
A quick story:
I spent tons of time with my great-grandmother growing up.
My family and I called her Nanna. Everyone else called her Ms. Bea.
When my parents were away, I’d stay at her house on Signal Mountain, which she and her husband built decades ago for their growing family.
It was a safe haven in the truest sense.
I’d amble through the woods, pick berries from Nanna’s garden, and sit on the porch with her, snapping green beans and shucking corn.
She never dwelt on how difficult life was growing up, the eldest of 10, helping her parents take care of nine little brothers during the Depression.
As an adult, she was always humble about her work in cotton mills during World War II, making materials for our soldiers’ parachutes.
Even more humble about tending a garden large enough to feed her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren well into her eighties.
But her grit and selflessness made a lot of sense considering what life was like for her, growing up. It instilled in her the duty to nurture others and provide them refuge.
She passed away last August. But knowing the role she held within her family, a provider even as a child, helped me better appreciate her impact on my life and many others, even as we aged and our relationship became more distant.
3. What kind of relationship did you have with your grandparents?
Some elders are stern, and some spoil us rotten, as my Nanna would say.
Knowing the role your grandparent’s grandparents played in their upbringing shines a light on the intangible, those non-genetic behaviors we somehow manage to pass down across generations.
Ask these questions:
Were your grandparents in the picture?
How did you spend time with them?
How did they guide you through life's challenges?
Were they old-school, or did they adapt to change quickly?
Were they affectionate, or did they show their love in a different way?
Were they disciplinarians, or did they encourage a little innocent mischief?
Again, we have to remember that our grandparents used to be kids, too. And most kids revere their elders.
Knowing the traits our grandparents looked up to in their own elders helps us see their values and convictions in a new light.
It might explain how, whether they were tough on you growing up, or let you get away with things your parents forbade, they were probably just loving you the same way their grandparents once loved them.
Several generations of McCammons.
4. What did you have an abundance of, and what did you lack?
Quickly — think of something you missed out on as a child.
Now, think about something that filled the empty space. Something you never had to want for, that made hard times a little more bearable.
Those compromises we’re forced to make during childhood determine how much value we place on wealth, how we define comfort, and what kind of support we offer loved ones in their time of need.
Think about this:
Maybe your grandparent’s family could never afford a television, so instead, they filled the silence with lots of jokes and laughter.
Or perhaps their parents had tons of money, but worked so hard there was never time to bond as a family.
What if they never found friends their age, growing up in a rural area?
Did they make up for it and find independence by exploring the vast wilderness, or escape to a lush imaginary world by reading lots of books?
It might be tough for them to talk about, but all our grandparents grew up wanting for something.
Knowing what they lacked and what kept them content with their life can help us appreciate the sacrifices they made to give us what they never had.
An abundance of Willocks cousins.
5. What beliefs did you inherit from your family?
For better or worse, our family grants us our first set of beliefs when we’re young.
Along life’s inflection points, we might rebel against those beliefs and adopt a new set of convictions, or find a deeper connection to the ones we inherited.
Either way, we all have to find truths that give us a sense of purpose and identity.
It’s important to know where your grandparents began their journey socially and spiritually, in order to fully appreciate their growth as people.
Ask these questions:
How important to your parents were their careers?
As important as spending time at home with family?
Did your family believe in the American Dream?
Did they fight for their country?
What was your religious experience like growing up?
Did your family worship openly or behind closed doors?
Were you ever skeptical or resentful of their beliefs?
How has that changed over the years?
Which of your inherited beliefs and values are you most grateful for?
Fred Willocks and his son, Fred Raymond.
You’ll notice that this guide is riddled with the word appreciate.
There’s a good reason for that.
We can respect and love our elders without really knowing their story. To appreciate them, we’ve got to ask the right questions and be ready to listen.
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