I started writing to the children when Lydia was born, and I’m sharing it as an idea to consider for other parents out there who may find it to be a good practice in your families as well. Our family’s collection includes everything from “cherishing you” type of letters from me, instructional advice-types of letters, and cute or special memories for the children of Rich’s and my growing up life as well as our life together with the children. I also have recently started including recipes everyone likes in the family and notes on organization and household management. Finally, there is a big collection of articles from long dead, and not yet dead, wise counselors on every type of subject.
Of course, we are all growing along the way, so if you do this, date your entries so that the children can keep them in perspective :-). There are things I wrote as a new mom that I wouldn’t necessarily find as worthy to write at this point in the game, and I’m sure the same will be true 20 years from now. However, there are enough letters to them that I would repeat exactly over again too, and I could not have written them now as well as I did then. If I hadn’t written to the children at the time we had a newborn and a two year old, or when financial times were particularly lean for us, I wouldn’t remember as well now what it was like then, both the great wonder of it and the difficulties, so it is helpful for them to see how God worked in our life and the blessings and lessons we learned then that we could not transmit in the same way now.
The children don’t always read these regularly. Some of them are more interested than others. But, they have their whole lives ahead of them and I don’t know if Rich and I will be around a year or ten years from now. Our memories fade, too. I don’t know hardly anything about my grandparents and what they think or how they have lived, and that doesn’t mean that my parents didn’t tell me; maybe they did and maybe they didn’t. The point is, it’s nice to refer to something written and tangible, something we can pass along despite the busy seasons of life in which we constantly find ourselves, something that our children can see through new, maturing eyes as they reread the entries during their various stages of life.
Some years my entries have been many and sometimes I go too long without adding to it. Lately, I am adding lots and lots of things! I also started a private blog for the children and this has helped me to keep it up, and also helps the kids read it more often. During this school break, I have been busy copying everything previously written into the blog, and now I will keep only one master copy printed out in a binder, kept with the family albums (previously, each child had a big binder). When the kids leave the house, we can make them a copy of the master binder and they’ll be good to go.
My ultimate goal is to equip the children through these entries. The days are “short and evil,” and anything we can do to give them tools or direction, as well as a sense of the rich heritage they have been given by God’s grace and the love with which we have loved them, seems worth the few minutes it takes to jot something down, or copy over an article. So there’s my little idea and I hope it will be of use to someone else too.