A guide, with the questions

Video messages for grandchildren: 40 questions to ask

Getting them to agree isn’t the hard part. The hard part is that once the camera is on, they don’t know what to say, and thirty seconds later they want to stop. Here are the questions to ask, sorted by the day each video will open, and how to run an afternoon without turning it into a ceremony. You ask, they answer. It’s the only thing that works.

By Fabrizio D’Urso, who created Lumideo. Written October 2026.

Why you have to bring the questions

Asking someone to say something to the grandchildren doesn’t work. It’s a huge request with no edges, and whoever gets it hears one thing: this has to be important. Important things, on demand, come out badly. You get advice and goodbyes, and advice ages in about two years.

A specific question gets answered without anyone noticing. Describe the house you grew up in runs four minutes, and inside it are the names, the yard, the dog, something their father used to say. That’s what an eight-year-old will watch again at twenty-five. The advice won’t be.

How to run the afternoon

1. Pick the dates first, not the topics. Ten videos are ten specific days: one child’s eighteenth birthday, another one’s graduation, a Christmas six years out. The date picks the question, and it takes away the weight of having to say everything at once.
2. Print the questions and hold them yourself. The person recording shouldn’t be reading anything. They look at you, not at a page.
3. Phone propped up, not handheld, about two feet away, at eye level. Put the window behind you, not behind them, or everything comes out backlit.
4. One question at a time, then stay quiet. The pause after the answer is where the good part shows up. Don’t fill it.
5. Stop at five. An afternoon gives you five good videos. From the sixth on you can hear the tiredness, and you can see it.

40 questions, sorted by when the video opens

Pick three per video. Three real answers beat twenty questions rushed through.

For the next birthday or the next Christmas

1. What present do you still remember from when you were their age?
2. What’s going on in your life right now, as you record this?
3. How was this year, told to someone watching a year from now?
4. What makes you laugh about them these days?
5. What’s the thing you always tell them that they never listen to?
6. How was Christmas done in your house when you were a kid?
7. What do you want the two of you to do together this year?
8. What was your birthday like at their age? Who was there?

For a day that already has a date: eighteen, graduation, a wedding

9. What were you doing at eighteen? Where did you live, who did you go out with?
10. What’s the first thing you bought with your own money?
11. What job did you want, and how did that turn out?
12. What was your first day of work like?
13. What advice did your parents give you that you only understood years later?
14. What’s the most reckless thing you did at that age that worked out anyway?
15. What were you afraid of at twenty that makes you smile now?
16. How did the two of you meet? Tell the day, not the summary.
17. What was the hardest decision you ever made?
18. What would you do the same way again, and what wouldn’t you?
19. What surprised you most about growing older?
20. If you could have asked your own grandfather one thing at eighteen, what would it have been?

For a day far out, with no occasion attached

21. Describe the house you grew up in, room by room.
22. What did your parents do for work, and what did their days look like?
23. Where does our family name come from? Who’s the furthest-back relative whose name you know?
24. What’s the recipe you can make without measuring? Talk it through as if you were making it.
25. What music did you listen to, and where did you listen to it?
26. What was the neighborhood like then? What stood where things stand now?
27. Which trip do you remember best, and why that one?
28. Tell us something about yourself we’ve never heard you say.
29. What was the best stretch of your life?
30. What do you not want this family to forget?

The direct ones, one per grandchild

31. Say their name and how old they are right now. They’ll see themselves small in the way you talk about them.
32. What were they like as a newborn? Who did they look like?
33. What’s the first thing they did that made you think: that’s him, that’s her?
34. What are they better at than you?
35. What do you hope doesn’t change in them as they grow up?
36. What’s something you were proud of and never told them?
37. What do you want them to know about you that they can’t understand yet?
38. What’s the one place you’d want them to go back to at least once?
39. If they could hear you only once, what should stay with them?
40. Finish by saying what day it is, what time it is, and who else is in the house.

Why video and not a letter

A letter keeps what they thought. A video keeps how they were: the voice, the hands, the kitchen behind them, the moment they stop to laugh at themselves. Those are the things nobody writes down, because it never occurs to anyone to write them down.

And people who don’t like writing are usually happy to talk. A blank page stops almost everyone. A question from you stops no one.

That’s what Lumideo does: you record a video, pick the person and the day, and it stays sealed until then. Nobody can open it early, not even the person who recorded it, because the date is checked on our servers. On the day, whoever receives it gets an email with a link, and the video plays in their browser. They don’t have to install anything.

Four mistakes that end it in half an hour

1. Asking for a message instead of an answer. Say something to the grandchildren gets you thirty seconds of goodbyes. A specific question gets you four minutes of a story.
2. Making it a ceremony. Good clothes, good room, everyone sitting around: that produces a speech, and the speech is the part nobody rewatches. A kitchen in the afternoon is better.
3. Going straight for the furthest date. The first video isn’t for somebody’s eighteenth birthday. It’s for the Christmas that’s coming. Watching one arrive makes recording the rest feel normal.
4. Leaving the files on a phone. A video meant for when they’re older, sitting in a folder, lasts exactly as long as the phone does. The date and the person get decided now, once.

Questions

How far ahead can the date be?

Two years with the free app. Twenty years with Premium, and also during your first thirty days after signing up, which count as Premium for dates. A video for the eighteenth birthday of a baby born today fits. One for their graduation at twenty-five does not.

Can it be opened early?

No. Once a capsule is sealed it doesn’t open before the date, not even for the person who recorded it. The date is checked on our servers, so changing the clock on a phone does nothing.

Does the person receiving it need the app?

No. On the day it opens they get an email with a link, and the video plays in their browser. The app is for the person recording.

How long can a video be?

Two minutes with the free app and during your first thirty days, ten minutes with Premium. From the browser, sixty seconds.

Can you record ten videos in one afternoon?

Yes, each with its own date and its own person, in a single sitting. That’s when it works best: one afternoon now, and those videos arrive one at a time over the years.