Moms themselves are often the ones capturing life’s precious moments through photos and video. They treasure every image. Adding audio recordings also adds verbal expressions, accents, tone, and emotion to the memory. Families enjoy the sounds of laughter or even sadness to relive unique feelings.
A collection of audio recordings let children hear the sound of their mom’s voice. And moms can be taken back to the childlike voices of the past and hear their son or daughter’s progression as words, tone, and personalities change over the years. Record Mom telling a favorite story or interview the children to share what they appreciate most about Mom. There are so many ways to honor mothers today and in the future.
Interviewing Mom
Prepare for your recording by creating questions to ask Mom so you can record the answers. Since Moms can be of any age, you’ll have different ideas about the conversation. Choose from the following topics to get started:
- Stories about her childhood
- Favorite memories as a mom
- Hopes for the future
Mothers with young children may want to record things to share over the years. Children will appreciate hearing Mom sing a song, read a story, talk about family events that they can listen to later, or recall the sound of their own voices in a conversation they had with Mom. These audio recordings can become a cherished collection and put together for a milestone occasion or legacy.
Mothers with elementary school and high school age children could record the reason for choosing each child’s name and tell the story behind nicknames that evolved. Talk about each child’s favorite bedtime story, song, or toy and why it meant so much to them.
Mothers of adult children can discuss how they helped determine the path for their education early on and what it was like getting them ready for college. Ask Mom what she thought was the scariest thing about parenthood, as well as the moments she most enjoyed or bring her a sense of pride.
Interviewing Children
As moms do a lot of the work capturing family activities over the years, they will really appreciate having them gathered together as a gift later. Other family members may have also recorded children unaware as they played together, telling a favorite story, singing a song, or reciting a poem. Interview the children about their favorite childhood memories and traditions or what they appreciate most about their mom.
Track and organize these recordings for the future. From my experience as a mom, it is incredible to find out what your children remember and hold dear. It is often something completely unexpected that impacted their lives, and knowing about it fills your heart. The audio will take children and moms back in time and spark more emotional memories.
Audio tools
If you already have some recordings that you want to share, but they are in the form of cassettes or reels, you can get them digitized. We explain how it works in our article on Getting the Most Out of Your Videos: Converting Movies to Digital. If you have audio recordings that are part of a video, we use an app called Otter.ai to:
- Transcribed audio separately
- Convert voice to text
- Identify and label different speakers to group recordings of specific people
- Edit recordings
To create a recording, simply download the Voice Memo application onto your iPhone or Smart Recorder app on Android and press record. There are numerous voice recording apps in your phone’s App Store. Otter.ai is also just one of many transcription apps, but this one comes recommended after trying out a few products.
Honoring Mom on Mother’s Day and throughout the year
Mother’s Day is a great time to honor Mom, but it is certainly not the only time to surprise her with a thoughtful gift. We can help you find and sort your audio from previous cassettes, movie reels, or video collections and digitize them so that your media is easy to access. You can put new interviews together with Mom or the kids to save for the future. Our tips on finding and preserving your favorite photos teach you how to create filenames that make media simple to locate when you want to present a collection on a special occasion. Contact us to help with your audio recording project!