In the sleepless daze of my daughter’s first few months of life I opened an email account for her and I truly believe it is one of the most genius ideas I have ever had as a new Mom.
My intention for creating the email account: capturing our family’s real-time life events and current world happenings for our daughter’s future reading pleasure. I have optimistically wondered, could this possibly encourage future dinner time discussions with our daughter during her teenage years when she wants nothing to do with us?
Maybe that’s a little too optimistic, but at the very least maybe it is a good way for her to someday understand her parents a little better.
Kids think that hearing about their parents past lives are cool.
Our children will get to read about how much we enjoyed going to music venues in Los Angeles (after we put them to sleep!).
Have you ever wondered what was going on in your parent’s lives when you were just a baby? What was the political environment like? What were the major life events going on at the time? How was the day-to-day living and what kind of things were your parents into doing for f
Sure, you could ask them when you’re old enough to think about it. But so much information gets lost and forgotten in the abyss of time.
Email letters are our way of giving our daughter a connection to her (and our) past lives.
The first years of our daughter’s life have been turbulent as far as current events go and yet simultaneously such an amazing time to be alive. My goals are to share some history and give her an idea about how I and her father felt about the current events going on in the world.
Growing up I would’ve loved to read letters about exactly what was going through my parent’s heads the day John Lennon or President Regan were shot, for example. Or, how cool did they think Micheal Jackson was when Thriller was released? Or even, what was it like when the Challenger exploded?
I have asked some of these questions and many others and I sort-of know how they feel about some of those things now. But it’s not the same thing as reading about things that were written in real time. Memories fade and feelings can change over time.
Benefits to opening an email account to send your child letters throughout their childhoods:
- Give real-time information with a date and a time stamp
- Have an opportunity to write diary-like letters
- Get letters from both Mom and Dad
- Talk about milestones they are reaching and how incredibly awesome they are
- Communicate about current events and attach news articles
- Write at anytime of the day or night without having to keep track of papers (God knows I don’t need any more paperwork around!)
- Grandma and grandpa or other family/ friends can write (if you choose to give them the address)
- Attach photos of them or projects/artwork they created
- Write about anything you feel like sharing at the time.
This email account is for us to send letters to our children.
My sole purpose for creating this email account is so my husband and I can send our daughter letters throughout her childhood. We will open another for our son after he is born so we can do the same for him.
Warning: I have read that opening a gmail account for your child to use for themselves when they’re older violates their terms of service. It could even result in the closing of the account.
Sending my daughter emails for her to open some day is like giving her a modern day “time capsule” of information.
About once or twice a month I’ll send her a new email. I talk to her about whatever I feel like talking about at the time. For example, I tell her how amazing she is, what current events are happening in the world today, or how she’s going to get a new little brother soon (yay!).
Email writing is so easy to do, but sometimes hard to remember in the business of parental life. So I make a point of putting a monthly reminder in my phone at least once a month to send her a new email.
It will be fun for her to read some day but I secretly think it will be really fun for her Dad and me too. And who knows, maybe it will make for some really great conversations at the dinner table someday too!
Sarah, Mother Nurse Love
