Parents, carers, social workers, family support workers and contact supervisors may find this printable parent book useful when a child needs gentle ways to ask about a parent’s life, childhood and family story. The booklet is built around short questions, drawing spaces and fill-in lines, making it suitable for children and young people who benefit from a clear, friendly structure rather than a long written activity.
The pages invite the adult to share details such as their birthday, where they were born, whether they were a big or small baby, what they would take travelling, and what animal they would compare themselves to. There are also prompts about favourite toys, things kept from childhood, childhood fears, and memories of growing up, which can support life story work, family identity activities and parent-child conversation.
Family history is covered through questions about parents’ names, when and where they were born, brothers and sisters, siblings’ names, and parents’ jobs. Later prompts explore feelings and hopes, including what makes the person laugh, what makes them sad, what they want to do in the future, and five things that make them happy. These questions could be used slowly over several sessions rather than completed all at once.
The workbook style makes it practical for supervised contact, family time, parenting support, kinship care conversations, fostering or adoption-related life story work, and therapeutic sessions where a child is building a clearer picture of a parent or important adult. The simple choices, such as summer or winter, snow or sand, talking or silence, ice cream or chocolate, and TV or music, give children easy starting points for discussion.
There are also prompts about the kind of house the adult lived in when younger, nice memories of that house, how often they moved, what their bedroom looked like, and what kind of family they were. Designed and printed by Parenting Matters, Barnardo’s NI, the booklet has a warm, informal layout that supports memory sharing without making the activity feel too formal.
