The phone rings. Your parent picks up. You ask how they are, they say "fine," and then — what? For many adult children, especially those who live far away, conversation with an aging parent can feel like a series of pleasant but slightly hollow check-ins. It doesn't have to be that way.
Why conversations with elderly parents can feel difficult
There's a common pattern in adult-child/aging-parent conversations: health updates, practical concerns, brief weather reports, and a gentle goodbye. It covers the essentials but doesn't always leave either person feeling much closer than before.
The problem isn't usually a lack of affection. It's a lack of good questions. Most of us default to asking about how someone is doing, rather than asking about who they are — the stories, opinions, memories, and passions that make them interesting. Research consistently shows that older adults are especially vulnerable to loneliness not from a lack of contact, but from a lack of meaningful contact. The difference is in the depth of the conversation, not the frequency.
The good news: asking better questions is a learnable skill, and your parent almost certainly has decades of fascinating material to draw on.
Life stories and memories
This is often the richest territory. Most older adults haven't been asked about their lives in depth — and reminiscing has real benefits beyond nostalgia. Research published in Neurology has linked engaging in cognitively stimulating activities, including recalling and narrating memories, to slower rates of cognitive decline in later life.
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What's your earliest memory?Open-ended, sensory, and almost always surprising. Most people haven't been asked this since childhood.
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What was your neighborhood like growing up?Streets, shops, neighbours, how far you were allowed to roam. Invites a whole world.
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How did you meet [your partner / their closest friend]?The origin story of their most important relationships is almost always a good one.
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What job did you want when you were a teenager?Often funny, sometimes revealing. Usually very different from what happened.
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What's a moment from your life that you're really proud of?Lets them relive something meaningful — and tells you what they value.
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Is there a decision you made that changed everything?Could be big (a move, a job) or small (a chance encounter). Usually opens a long story.
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What was the hardest period of your life, and what got you through it?This one requires some trust and timing, but the answers are almost always worth waiting for.
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Who was the most interesting person you ever met?A teacher, a stranger on a train, a colleague. Everyone has someone.
Their opinions and perspective — things they know
One of the most underused gifts an older parent has is a lifetime of opinion, taste, and judgment. They've watched things change that you were born into. Ask them to compare, evaluate, and advise — not just report.
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What do you think is better now than when you were young — and what's worse?Usually generates a genuinely interesting comparison rather than pure nostalgia.
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What's the best advice anyone ever gave you?And did you take it? The second question is often more interesting than the first.
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What do you wish someone had told you at 30?Gives them the chance to be wise — and gives you something to think about.
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What do you think people get wrong about growing older?Their answer will often surprise you. Many older adults find aspects of later life that are genuinely better than younger years.
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What's something you understand now that you didn't when you were raising us?A question most parents have thought about and rarely get to answer out loud.
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What do you think about [something currently in the news]?They've watched the world long enough to have real perspective. Ask for it.
Books, films, music, and culture
Shared cultural touchstones are one of the most reliable routes to genuine conversation — and often to laughter. A shared book or a film you've both watched gives you something outside yourselves to react to together, which takes pressure off the interaction itself.
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What's the best book you've ever read?And what made it the best? The reasoning matters more than the title.
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Is there a book or film from when you were young that really stayed with you?Often opens a window into who they were at a particular age.
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What kind of music takes you back somewhere?Music and memory are unusually intertwined. This one rarely leads to a short answer.
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Have you read anything good lately?Simple, but opens a rich thread if they're readers — and if they've stopped reading, finding out why is worth knowing.
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Shall we read something together?This is the question A Chapter Together is built around. Reading the same book — even a chapter at a time — gives every future conversation a shared reference point.
The present, not just the past
It's easy to fall into treating elderly parents as repositories of history while forgetting that they have a present too — things that interest them today, irritate them, make them laugh, or that they're looking forward to.
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What's been the best part of this week?More specific than "how are you" and more likely to get a real answer.
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What are you looking forward to?Having something to look forward to is closely tied to wellbeing. The question also quietly checks in on whether they have one.
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Is there something you've been meaning to try but haven't yet?A food, a programme, a place, a class. More revealing than it sounds.
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What are you watching or listening to at the moment?A good entry point. You can follow up by watching or listening to the same thing.
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What's annoying you lately?Light-hearted, usually funny, and gives them a chance to vent rather than just report.
Family and connection
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Tell me about your parents — what were they like?Your grandparents through their eyes. Stories you may have never heard.
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What's something about our family that you think the younger generation doesn't know?History, traditions, old stories. This one tends to go somewhere unexpected.
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Who in the family do you think I take after most?Almost always interesting, sometimes startling.
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What do you hope your grandchildren will remember about you?A deeper question than it seems. Give it space.
A few practical tips
Good questions are only part of it. How you ask matters too.
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Don't rush to fill silence.Older adults sometimes need a moment to locate a memory. Comfortable silence is a sign you're not in a hurry — which is its own kind of gift.
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Follow their thread, not your agenda.The best conversations go sideways. If they start on one question and end up somewhere entirely different, follow them there.
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Share something of your own first.Questions can feel like interrogations. A brief story about yourself before asking the same of them levels the ground.
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Write things down.With permission, keeping a note of stories — names, dates, places — is a gift to the whole family that becomes more valuable over time.
If finding topics to talk about is the challenge, reading a book together between calls gives every conversation a ready-made subject — the characters, the plot, what happened last chapter. It's one of the simplest ways to keep the conversation going week after week. See our guide to books worth reading aloud →