300 Questions to Ask Your Parents before It's Too Late

By Shannon Alder

Reviewed by Kathleen Dalton-Woodbury
On 5/15/2011

Horizon (an imprint of Cedar Fort, Inc.), 2011 Paperback:
144 pages
ISBN-10: 0-88290-978-9
ISBN-13: 978-0-88290-978-3 Price: $11.99

Reviewed by Kathleen Dalton-Woodbury for the Association for Mormon Letters

This book is more than what the title promises. While it is great for asking your parents questions about their lives and memories, it is a resource for so much more.

The questions in this book are intended to help us go deeper than just where our parents went to school or what their favorite foods were when they were children. They are arranged in seven sections:

What I Learned from My Youth
The Wisdom I Gained from My Family Life
My Views on Marriage, Relationships, and Love
The People and Things that Influenced My Life
My Philosophy about the World
My Beliefs about Spirituality and Religion
What I Want You to Know

These are things that can help us and our descendants really get to know our loved ones. As the author encourages in the introduction:

"Do not let those great lessons and bits of wisdom from your parents be forgotten. More often than not, old family stories and great experiences are lost forever because they are not written down. Because of this, most of us live without a sense of deep roots. We know little about our parents and what they learned in life. We all have camcorders and scrapbooks to record special occasions in our lives, but the photographs and videotapes cannot tell what we felt, how a moment changed us, or why it matters."

But this book is more than a list of questions that can look into the lives of our parents and other loved ones still around to ask. This book is a guideline for us to provide the same kinds of information about ourselves, our own lives and thoughts and turning points. As the author urges, also in the introduction:

"Fill the pages of this book with all the thoughts you want your children to learn from you. When you're done with this book, you will hold in your hands a marvelous keepsake filled with memories, wisdom, stories, opinions, and feelings that made up every step of your life. You will be able to say, 'This is all my wisdom. This is my story--my legacy to my children.'"

We are directed, as members of the LDS Church, to write our own life histories, and all too often, we shrug our shoulders and say something like, "I don't know where to start." This little book is the perfect way to go about it. As a genealogist, I am so excited by the approach given and the questions offered. And as the daughter of a man who loved history, but didn't get around to finishing his personal history before he died, I can even use these questions to call to mind the things he taught me, so that I can share his wisdom with my children and grandchildren, even though he's no longer around for them to know.

I join with the author in urging people everywhere to get a copy of this book and begin recording the answers from yourself as well as your loved ones. It will be one of the greatest and most valuable investments you can ever make.


Copyright 2011