Write Emails to Your Children and They Will Be Amazed When Turning Adults

Raising children is a challenging but rewarding “job”. It is also a vast source of happiness. Small incremental changes can make the difference because the parenting role is long-term. If you manage to implement small tricks and use them continuously over time, it can have a lasting impact on your child.

I cannot recall the source of this little parenting trick which goes as follows: you write emails to your child when he or she is still young, knowing that your kid will read it upon reaching adulthood. You can also send pictures, short videos or some melodies. My son just turned four years of age. I tell him in these emails what he likes to play with, to eat or what songs he likes to listen to; I describe a situation where he amazed my wife and me by, for example, being incredibly attentive or intelligent. Whatever you observe about your child, you think your adult child might find it an exciting read later.

The crucial problem you are solving with this is that you see your children develop in tiny increments each week by being with your children every day. Still, once you zoom out and look at a more extended period, you see how your child has progressed a lot. But at that moment, you do not remember the tiny little things you loved about parenting and raising kids. Each day you are aware of the current cute little things you love about being a parent, and you usually think that this is something you will never forget. Fast forward a year, and you have forgotten.

Writing Emails or Taking Photos and Videos

Neither method is superior to the other, but I will point out the advantages of writing emails to your children as opposed to just taking photos. Note that I am not advocating that you should not take pictures; these two methods work very well in parallel.

With photographs or videos you do not catch the emotions of the photographer, of grandparents who were not in the picture but who made your child feel amazing for some reason; or you just might have missed the right moment by a few seconds before you could take out the camera.

Another problem with photos or videos in the digital age seems to be that we like to document a lot, but how often do we go back to them after, say, ten years? You might look at the old ones still on your phone, usually 3 to 4 years old. We also quickly get bored while looking at many old photos where you do not know the context. And in this case, your child most probably will not remember the whole context, so if you are there to explain to her each photo, then yes, this is a good alternative. Photographing and archiving misses another great benefit of this: the journaling effect, the self-reflection on your child, the remembering back and thinking about your child’s important events and moments. That is a benefit you will enjoy while thinking about writing and writing.

The benefits of this practice are

• You relive some joyful moments.
• You are slowly building a potentially fantastic gift that money cannot buy for your adult child, which will make them feel special and grateful.
• Your child will have the opportunity to look at their life from their parent’s perspective.
• Your child will get a gift that it can reuse many times over, whenever it misses its parents while studying abroad, whenever it feels depressed about life. When they have their own kids, they can revisit those emails resembling the age of their own child.
• You will be able to reread and relive the happy moments after many years have passed. You will remember moments and aspects of your child’s young life, which, in the meantime, you displaced from memory.
• You will have the journaling effect.
• Getting away from consuming content to creating content spurs your brain activity differently. It increases brain activity more than just watching TV or just reading.

Frequency of writing

So far, I have written 13 emails in precisely one year since I have started it. But it was not an email a month. It was rather three to four emails over a few days, and then two or three months passed. My son is now four years old. The frequency will depend on your child’s age, on your powers of observation and knack for determining which moments are worth writing about. You will probably not write every day. This would also pose a challenge once your child starts reading them.

In conclusion

Find some quiet time from your daily routines and habits and write few short or a long-form email to your child. You will quickly see the benefits of it and continue doing it.