Somewhere around the fourth or fifth year, children start asking questions. What was I like as a baby? What did I do first? Did I like this food? And there you are, searching your memory for something concrete to say, realising you have barely written anything down. Almost every parent knows that feeling. Talking with your child about the early years suddenly carries weight at the very moment you were not prepared for it.

Your memory does more than you think

The first thing I want to say to you is this: you know more than you think. Not in the form of a neatly kept diary, but in loose fragments. The smell of his hair right after the bath. The way she cried when she was tired, a little sing-song. The moment he laughed at you for the first time, not at someone else.

Those things are inside you. They are just not sorted and not written down. That does not make them any less real.

Children are not asking for a complete overview either. They are asking for a feeling, for connection. They want to know that there was someone who saw them. A small story is enough. A moment. A detail.

How to begin when nothing is written down

Talking with your child about the early years does not have to start with an archive. It starts with a conversation. And conversations do not have to be perfect to mean something.

A few things that help when you have recorded very little:

  • Start with what you do still know. Not with what you have forgotten. Say: I still remember that you always... And leave it at that. You do not need to fill in the rest with guesswork.
  • Use photos as a starting point. Not as evidence, but as a hook. A photo stirs something up. That something is the story you tell.
  • Simply say so when you no longer remember something. That is honest, and that is good. Children learn from it that memory is not an archive but something living.
  • Talk about how you felt, not just what happened. That is what stays with them. Not the date, but the feeling. I was so proud. I laughed and cried at the same time. I had no idea what I was doing.

She asked me whether I had been scared when she was born. I said yes. That was the beginning of a very long conversation.

Mother of a seven-year-old girl

It is not too late to start something now

There is a misconception I hear many parents express: that it is too late now. That the baby phase is over, that the first steps were taken long ago, that the moment for keeping track has long passed.

But memories do not have an expiry date. And what you write down now about your four-, five- or eight-year-old will be just as valuable in twenty years as what you might have written in the first year. Perhaps even more so, because your child will already recognise some of it themselves.

Whatever you still remember about the baby days, however vague, you can write it down now. Not as a complete record, but as a memory. A few sentences. How it felt. What you saw. That is enough.

The article what you forget when your child is no longer so small describes how quickly specific memories fade, and why even a small note can mean so much later on. Not an accusation, but an honest look at how memory works.

Talking is also a form of recording

Parents sometimes think that recording means: writing in a book, tracking things in an app, putting together an album. But a conversation with your child about the early years is also a form of recording. Spoken aloud, together, in the present.

Your child will remember the conversation. Not every detail, but the feeling of it. That you told them. That you knew. That you were there.

And when you feel ready to start writing something down, you do not have to do it all at once. No need to pick up a book, no need to figure out where to begin. YearChapter asks a few focused questions each month, based on what you have already filled in, so you are never faced with a blank screen. That makes it easier to keep track of things, even if you are far behind and even if your child is no longer a baby.

But that comes later. First there is the conversation. And that can begin this evening, at the table, with a photo on your phone and a sentence that starts with: do you know what I remember about you?

You know more than enough to begin.