Memory book for parents to fill out: a printable page
Give a parent a book they answer in their own words: a bought fill-in journal, these printed question pages, or an online book where they answer each question with a photo or a voice recording.
Start with 40 pages free. No card needed.
A fill-in memory book turns the job round. You are not making a book about your parents; they write it, one question at a time, and you keep the answers.
Three ways work. Shops sell bound journals with the questions printed. You can print the page below and post it. Or send the questions online and have the answers come back with photos and recordings.
Pick by how your parent likes to answer. Some want a pen and a quiet afternoon. Some will talk for an hour and never write a line.
See also: the memory book questions list, a memory book made about your parents, a grandparents' memory book from conversations, the printable contributor page, the memory book maker, Start a shared memory book.
Make the memory book together
Invite people to send photos and their own words, then choose what goes in the book. Make a memory book for parents online.
Twelve questions a parent can answer in their own words
- Where did you live when you were ten, and what could you see from the front door?
- What did your parents do all day, and what did you think of it then?
- What was the first thing you bought with money you had earned?
- Who was your closest friend at school, and what did the two of you get up to?
- How did you and Mum, or Dad, first meet, and what did you notice first?
- What did the kitchen smell of on a Sunday?
- Which trip do you still think about, and who was with you?
- What was the hardest year, and what got you through it?
- What did you want to be, and what did you become instead?
- Which object in the house has been with you longest, and where did it come from?
- What do you wish somebody had told you at twenty-five?
- What would you like us to keep doing when you are not there to remind us?
A bought journal, a printed page or an online book
A bound journal sold for the job has sixty or so questions in sections and lines to write on. One example has six sections of ten questions and names no photo space. Easy to give, hard to change.
The printed page here is one question per sheet. Post ten, get ten back, add the photos yourself and scan the lot into a book.
An online book sends the same questions as an invitation. Your parent answers each one on a phone, with a photo from their own album or a recording of their voice, and you arrange the answers.
Questions that get an answer
Ask about one place, one object or one day. A parent asked for their favourite memory stalls; asked what the front door looked like, they start talking.
Send three questions at a time, not forty. A journal that arrives with every page blank can sit on a shelf for a year.
- One question a page, with room for a photo.
- A date and a place on every answer.
- Let them skip any question without saying why.
When writing is hard
Arthritis, eyesight or a plain dislike of writing stops many parents at page two. A recording does the same job. In tbf scrapbook a contributor can send audio or video with the photo.
If you record them yourself, ask the question, then stay quiet. The pause is where the story is.
Putting the answers into a book
Keep each answer with its question and the date it was answered. Put the photo they chose beside it, not a better one you found.
Read the finished pages back to them before anyone else sees the book. Some answers were for you alone.
Pages to make
Choose the way they will answer
Pen, typing or voice. A journal for a writer, printed pages for a parent who likes post, an online invitation for one who talks.
Send the first three questions
Start with places and objects. Add the next three when the first answers come back, and skip any they leave.
Collect and keep the originals
Scan handwritten pages. Keep recordings as files with the question in the filename. Nothing is retyped until it is safe.
Arrange, read back, then share
One question and its answer to a page with the photo they chose. Read it to them first; give copies to the family after.
Questions
Is there a free memory book for parents to fill out?
The page on this site prints free. Online, the free tbf scrapbook plan holds one book of 40 pages and 250 MB; contributions and reading are included, and downloads need a paid plan.
How many questions should a memory book have?
Twelve good ones beat sixty. Bought journals often carry fifty to seventy, and most stay unanswered. Add questions once the first ones come back.
What if my parent will not write?
Ask the questions out loud and record the answers, or send them online so they can reply by voice. The words matter more than the handwriting.