Letters for a Child at the Ages They'll Reach Without You

There is a particular kind of letter that parents think about and rarely write. Not the birthday card. The letter for later: the one your daughter opens on the morning she turns eighteen, or your son reads the night before his own child is born. A letter from you, at the age you are now, to the person they will become.

Some parents write these because they are ill and know they may not be there. Most write them simply because they have realised that the version of themselves their child will remember is not the one doing the school run today, and they want to leave something truer. Either way, the letters are the same, and they are among the most treasured things a person can inherit.

Here is how to write them, age by age, and how to make sure they are read.

First, choose the ages, not the number of letters

Do not set out to write twenty letters. Set out to write four or five, for the moments that will matter most, and add to them over the years if you can. The moments that work best are the ones where a person naturally stops and looks backwards:

• Ten. Old enough to read a real letter, young enough to still believe most of what you say.
• Sixteen. The age at which they will be sure you never understood them. A letter that proves you did is worth a great deal.
• Eighteen or twenty-one. Leaving home, in one form or another.
• Their wedding day, or the day they decide there will not be one.
• The day their first child is born. The moment they finally understand what you felt.
• A day when things are hard. Undated. “Open this when you need it.”

Pick the ones that feel like yours. A letter for a milestone you care about is better than a letter for every birthday.

What to put in each one

The mistake is to write the same letter five times: “I love you, I am proud of you, be kind.” True, and worth saying, but a ten-year-old and a thirty-year-old need different things from you.

For ten: who they are right now, in detail. What they laugh at, what they are frightened of, the thing they said last week that you have not stopped thinking about. Children have no memory of themselves at this age. You are the record.

For sixteen: what you were like at sixteen, honestly. The mistakes, the certainty, the thing you wish someone had told you. Not advice; company. “I was like this too, and it turned out all right.”

For eighteen or twenty-one: permission. To leave, to choose differently from you, to fail at something and try again. Say the plain words: I trust you.

For their wedding day: what you saw in them that made you sure they could love someone well. A memory of them being kind when nobody was watching. And a blessing, in whatever words are yours.

For the birth of their first child: what it was like the day they were born. What you felt. What you got wrong in the first year and how little it mattered. This is the letter they will read at three in the morning with a baby on their chest.

For a hard day: short. One thing you know about them that they will have forgotten. And the reminder that they have been here before and came through.

How to write them without freezing

Write one at a time, and write the easiest first. The wedding-day letter is usually the hardest, so leave it. Start with the age-ten letter, which is really just a description of a child you love, and let the others follow.

Keep each to a page. Use your own words, the ones you actually say at home. If you would never write “cherish”, do not write it. If there is a joke between you, put it in; it will mean more than any sentence you could polish.

Date it, and say where you are and how old you are. Part of what makes these letters precious is that they come from a fixed point in time.

If writing is hard, record yourself instead. A child who was small when they lost a parent will play a two-minute recording a thousand times. Your voice is the thing they will be least able to hold on to and most want back.

The part people forget: how the letter gets there

A letter written and never delivered is the most common outcome, and it is worth planning against.

The traditional way is to give the letters to someone you trust with instructions, or to leave them with your will. Both work, with two weaknesses. The trusted person has to still be around, and still remember, in fifteen years. And a letter left with a will is read early, in the worst week, by whoever opens the envelope, rather than on the morning it was written for.

Whatever route you choose, decide it now and write it down: who holds each letter, and on what day it is to be handed over. If you would rather not rely on anyone's memory, this is exactly what Everlasting Email is for: it holds each letter and delivers it on the date you set, whether or not you are here to send it. The letters themselves are what matter; just make sure the plan for them is as concrete as the letters.

Start this week

You do not need to be dying to do this, and you do not need to finish. One letter, for one age, written this week, is already a gift that most children never receive. The rest can follow as life gives you the time. Pick the age. Pick a quiet hour. Start with “By the time you read this…” and see where it goes.