Most parents start with an email account
The most common version is an inbox. You make an email account in your child’s name, and for years you send things to it: photos, a paragraph about the thing they said at breakfast, a voice clip. When they turn eighteen you hand over the password.
It is a good system, and it is free. It holds text and photos and video in one place. Grandparents can send to it without being invited to anything. Addressing a person is the format’s native grammar, so writing to your child rather than about them comes naturally.
Three things go wrong, and parents who run it name them themselves.
- The account can be deleted for inactivity. The most upvoted reply in that discussion is a warning: log in periodically or the provider closes the account.
- It is a public address. Anyone can send to it. One parent said he should check it more often to make sure nothing is arriving that his daughter should not read.
- Nothing ever comes back. None of them described re-reading what they had written. An inbox is built for triage, so a thousand entries stay a pile.
What to write in a letter to your child
Start small and specific. These are the ones that still read well in twenty years.
- The thing they said this week that you do not want to forget the exact wording of
- What their laugh sounds like right now, described so a stranger could hear it
- The story of their name
- What they are afraid of at this age, and what they do about it
- A day that was completely ordinary, written down on purpose
- Something you found hard this month, told honestly, because they will be an adult when they read it
- Something you have changed your mind about since becoming their parent
- What you were like at the age they are now
- What you hope they keep from this version of themselves
Keeping it for twenty years
A letter is only worth writing if it survives. That is the part an inbox cannot promise, because the account belongs to a company that has no obligation to keep it and closes it if it sits unused for long enough.
Chapter One is built for the long stretch. Your entries are private, they are yours, and the product is designed around the assumption that someone opens it in twenty years and everything is still there and still readable.
Chapter One does not send letters on a future date. You write them, they stay in one place, and you decide when to hand the whole thing over.
Start your child’s letters
Write the first one tonight. It can be four sentences about a Tuesday. Writing is free on Chapter One and there is no limit on entries, so the only thing this costs you is the four sentences.
Questions parents ask
Is it better to email letters to my child or use an app?
Email is a good free system and plenty of parents run it for years. It holds photos and video, grandparents can send to it, and writing to an address feels natural. The three things parents run into are the provider closing an inactive account, junk arriving at a public address, and an inbox that never resurfaces anything. An app like Chapter One is a place built for keeping rather than for receiving. If your inbox is working, keep it, and log in often enough that the provider leaves it alone.
What age should I start writing letters to my child?
Whenever the thought arrives. Pregnancy, the first week, the first day of school, age nine. The first year is the one most parents wish they had written down, because so little of it stays in your memory. Starting late costs you nothing. One letter written today about a seven-year-old beats twenty you meant to write when they were a baby.
What do I write about when nothing interesting happened?
Ordinary days are the ones you forget first, and they are the ones your child will never be able to picture. What they ate, what they refused to wear, the thing they said in the back of the car. Four sentences about a Tuesday reads better in fifteen years than an account of a holiday.
When should I give the letters to my child?
Parents who do this tend to name an age between 15 and 18, often a birthday. There is no rule. Chapter One does not send anything on a schedule, so the timing is yours: you write, it stays in one place, and you decide when to hand it over. Some parents read pieces of it out loud long before then.