Write letters to your children to read when they're older
In short
Famileze has a Letters & Cards space where you write to your children now, for them to read when they're older. Each letter can carry a photo, be typed or dictated, and be kept private to you or shared with your co-parent. Letters are encrypted on your iPhone before they leave, so only your family can read them.
Why write to them now?
Most of what you know about your child this year you'll have forgotten in ten. The way they mispronounce "spaghetti". The friend they talk about every night. What you were worried about, and what turned out fine.
A letter keeps that. It doesn't need to be long or polished. Written at the kitchen table on an ordinary Tuesday, it will mean more at eighteen than anything you could buy them.
Where do letters live in Famileze?
Tap the ☰ menu and choose Letters. The screen is called Letters & Cards, and it holds two kinds of keepsake:
- Letters you write: to your children, for later.
- Cards they receive: Nan's birthday card, the note from their first teacher, photographed so the paper can finally go.
While you have no letters yet, the home screen may show a small card, Write your child a letter. Tap Write one to start.
How do I write a letter?
- On Letters & Cards, tap Letter.
- Under For (child), choose who it's for, or Family for a letter to all of them.
- Give it a Subject / title, such as "The year you turned four".
- Write in Letter text (optional). If typing feels like work, tap Tap to dictate the letter and just talk. Tap again to stop. Your words land in the box, where you can edit them.
- Add a photo if you like: tap Take photo or Library. A picture of the two of you that day turns a letter into a moment.
- Check who can see it (more on that below), then tap Save.
A note on dictation: on iPhone it uses Apple's speech recognition, and Apple may send the audio to its servers to turn it into text. Famileze never receives the audio. If you'd rather it didn't leave the phone, type instead.
How do I keep letters organised?
Tap New folder to make one for each child, or each year, or each occasion, then Create folder. Folders can sit inside folders. Each letter shows the date you wrote it, and Move files it somewhere else if you change your mind.
Letters are searchable too, so years from now you can find "the one I wrote the night before school started".
Are letters private?
Every letter is encrypted on your phone before it leaves, and we can't read it.
Between you and your co-parent, you choose. Each letter has a button that reads Shared with co-parent or Private to you. Tap it to switch. A new letter starts shared, unless you're writing inside a private folder, in which case it starts private. You can also make a whole folder private, so everything new you add there stays with you.
One honest limit: if a letter has already been shared and you make it private later, a copy may already be on your co-parent's device. Famileze tells you this before you switch. If a letter is for your eyes only, make it private before you save.
Is there an "open on their 18th birthday" setting?
No. Famileze doesn't lock a letter until a date, and it doesn't deliver letters to your child by itself. Children don't have accounts in Famileze; it's an archive kept by parents. The letters simply wait in your family's archive, and you decide when to sit down and read them together.
What could I write?
If you're staring at a blank box, try one of these:
- What they're like right now. Their favourite food this month, the song they make you play on repeat, what they call their toes.
- The day they were born. The weather, who visited, what you thought when you first saw them.
- Something you hope for them. Not a career. A kind of person, a kind of happiness.
- A hard thing, and how you got through it. A move, an illness, a sad year. They'll want to know you were human.
- What your family was like. Who lived in the house, what Sunday mornings looked like, the jokes that only make sense to you.
- Something you'd tell them at 18 if you could only say one thing.
One letter a year, on their birthday, adds up to eighteen by the time they're grown.
Can I keep the cards they receive too?
Yes. Tap Card, photograph it, and add From (who) and an Occasion such as Birthday or Christmas. Adding a new card from Library lets you pick several photos at once, and each one is saved as its own card.
A card that arrived by email can be forwarded to your family's Famileze address and filed from the Inbox. Email is the one route that isn't end-to-end encrypted on the way in: it waits in readable form until your phone collects it, and is deleted after 30 days at the latest.
What it doesn't do
- It doesn't seal a letter until a date, or send it to your child later.
- It doesn't give children their own account to read letters in.
- Saving your photos into the phone's camera roll brings the photos only, not the letter text. The free desktop companion brings the whole archive home as ordinary files.
Questions parents ask
- Can my co-parent read the letters I write?
Only the ones you share. Each letter is Shared with co-parent or Private to you, and you can switch it before you save.
- Can I add a photo to a letter?
Yes, one photo per letter, taken there and then or picked from your library.
- What happens to the letters if I stop subscribing?
Your letters stay on your phone and you can still read them. Cancelling never deletes them.
- Can my partner and I both write to the same child?
Yes. Each of you writes from your own phone, and shared letters appear for both of you.
Related
- Childhood is an archive, not content
- A private family photo timeline
- Co-parenting with one shared family archive
Famileze is about to arrive on iPhone. Join the waitlist to hear the day it's ready.