Writing a memoir for your children means telling them the part of your life they could not see: the years before they arrived. Your children know you thoroughly as a parent – your rules, your phrases, the way you sound on the phone when you are tired. What they almost certainly do not know is who you were at twenty-two, what you wanted before they existed, and how you became the person who raised them. Start there. Pick one place or one year from before them, write or speak a single story about it, and carry on a chapter at a time. You do not need to be a writer, you do not need to remember everything, and you do not need to finish by a particular date. What matters is that it is in your words, and that it exists before anyone thinks to ask.
In brief
- Your children know you as a parent. The real gift of a memoir is the person you were before them.
- Begin with one place or one year before they were born, not with the day you were born.
- Add their childhood as you saw it – the worries and decisions they were too young to notice.
- Write to them as adults, and decide early what stays private.
- Speaking your story is a perfectly good way to write it, and a first chapter makes a quietly remarkable Christmas gift.
Why write a memoir for your children at all
Adult children tend to discover their parents in fragments. A photograph found in a drawer. A story an old friend tells at a wedding. A name nobody has mentioned before, said once at a funeral. Most of them mean to ask properly one day, and many find that the day comes later than they hoped.
We recently wrote 25 questions to ask your mum about her life before you for exactly those children – the ones trying to piece it together. A memoir is the other side of that conversation. It answers the questions before anyone has to find the courage to ask them.
It also gives your children something a family tree cannot. They can look up the dates themselves. Only you know the reasons: why you left that town, why you took that job, why you married when you did. The reasons are what make a parent make sense.
The years before them: where to begin
Start with a place, not your birth
Beginning at the beginning is the quickest way to stall. Choose somewhere you remember well from before your children – a first flat, an office, a street you walked down every morning – and describe it plainly. What it smelled like, what it cost, who lived next door. Let the story move outward from there.
Go where your memory is strongest
Many people find that their late teens and twenties come back more easily than the decades since. There is good research on why, which we covered in how to write your life story when you can't remember everything. For this book, that is good news: the years your children never saw may be the ones you remember best.
Tell them what you wanted
The most surprising chapters are often the futures that did not happen. The job you nearly took. The country you nearly moved to. The plan you had at twenty that quietly changed. Children are often astonished to learn that a parent once had a different life in mind, and it can explain a great deal about the one they actually got.
Their childhood, from your side
A memoir for your children has a second half that a memoir for anyone else does not. Your children remember their childhood from the height of a child. You saw it from above.
You know what the move to a new house cost, and what you gave up for it. You remember the night one of them was ill and you sat up until morning. You know which decisions you agonised over, which you got wrong, and what you were thinking on the day each of them was born. Your children have lived inside those years without ever seeing them from where you stood.
These are often the chapters that mean most, because they explain things your children have wondered about for decades. Write them to explain, not to settle scores. You can be honest about what was hard without turning the book into an account of who was right.
Writing to adults, not to children
A book for grandchildren has to work for an eight-year-old as well as the adult they will become – we look at that in the most meaningful gift from grandparents to grandchildren. A memoir for your children can assume grown-up readers, which gives you more room to be frank.
A few things help:
- Speak to them directly. "You won't remember this, but…" is a good way into a chapter, and it keeps the voice yours.
- Decide early what stays out. You are allowed private chapters. Leaving something out is not dishonest; it is a choice, and it is yours.
- One book, short letters. If you have more than one child, write a single story and add a short letter to each at the front. It avoids comparisons and keeps the book whole.
If you are not a writer
Most people talk more naturally than they write. If a blank page feels like an exam, tell the story aloud instead and shape it afterwards. Our guide to how to write your own life story covers the practical side, and these life story prompts help on the days nothing comes.
A few prompts made for this particular book:
- Where were you living the year before your first child was born, and what did an ordinary Saturday look like?
- What did you want to be at twenty, and what happened to that plan?
- Who were your closest friends before you became a parent, and where are they now?
- What was the hardest decision you made while your children were small, and did they ever know about it?
- What do you hope they understand about you that they do not yet?
Questions people ask before they start
Isn't it a bit self-indulgent?
No. It answers questions your children will have later, whether or not they have them yet – and it spares them having to piece you together from fragments.
What if my children don't seem interested?
Many are not, until their forties, or until they have children of their own. That is fine. The book waits for them, and it will be there when the questions arrive.
Should I tell them I am writing it?
Either works. Telling them invites their questions, which can shape the book in useful ways. Keeping it quiet and handing over a first chapter at Christmas has its own charm.
Giving it this Christmas
A memoir takes longer than December, so treat Christmas as the start rather than the deadline. A letter explaining what you are doing and why, with a first chapter printed out or read aloud after lunch, is a gift in itself. The finished book can follow when the story is told. If a milestone birthday of your own is coming, that makes a good second date to aim for – a life story turns up on many lists of meaningful 70th birthday gift ideas, and there is something to be said for being the one who gives it.
How Chronicle helps
Chronicle is built for people telling their own story. You work through guided conversations a chapter at a time, speaking or typing, at whatever pace suits you. Each chapter is drafted from what you actually said, and nothing goes into the book until you have read and approved it. You can share a chapter draft with your children at any stage, and when every chapter is finished there is a digital edition for the whole family, with Memoir and Heirloom printed and bound in the UK.
The story only you can tell
Your children will spend the rest of their lives with the parent they knew. A memoir lets them meet the person who came before. If you would like to see how telling your own story works, start with your story – there is no deadline, and the first chapter is the only one you need for now.