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The Duchess of Sussex has an impressive bedtime ritual for her children – she pings them an email. She revealed in a podcast this week that she messages her children Archie, five, and Lilibet, three, “almost every night” – like a virtual scrapbook.
While the majority of us exhausted parents are battling bedtime with the four B’s – bath, brush, book, and bed – she is actually bothering to gather random pictures and jot down snippets of their day to create an everlasting memory for her children.
According to Meghan, it could be anything from something funny they said that morning, to a picture of them having breakfast together. She’d been inspired by a mum friend – and created these “secret” email addresses with “names you’d never guess” that her children will get access to when they are 16 or 18.
“At some point in their life, I’ll say, ‘Here’s an email that I’ve been keeping for your whole life,” Meghan said while talking on The Jamie Kern Lima Show podcast about her nightly habit. “Here’s everything and every moment where I wanted to tell you how much I love you and how proud I am of you.”
She added: “For them to be able to look back and go, ‘Oh my gosh, she has loved us so much.’ That’s, I think, the best part about being a mom. It’s not about the grandeur of a gesture, it’s about ‘I see you.’”
Her emails are the one thing she has seemingly got right lately, in a long list of criticisms including her beige Netflix cookery show, With Love, Meghan, and then this week’s shock outrage when a printed card with her “defunct” HRH title was spotted in a gift basket containing ice cream and homemade strawberry cream, shown on the podcast as a gift to her hosts.
Lima said Meghan’s comments about the emails gave her “full-on chills” and people online have been blown away by it because it is, without a shred of a doubt, an amazing thing to do for your children.
For me, though, it's the line: “I see you” that really crushes me. As only this morning, I barked at my six-year-old Liberty: “What is it now?” after she’d asked me a million things since 6.45am.
The poor child was only trying to ask me when we could get the photos developed of her and her school teddy, Pam, a sheep that all the class have to look after for a week, and then add photos to a class scrapbook. I’m already a week late. But I was hectically trying to make the pack lunches and find the PE kit when I dismissed her and her life with one comment as if she was a burden. It kills me. So, I’m taking her to Snappy Snaps after school today pronto – and making a full apology.
I’m also trying to write my children a satire about a penguin, but I don’t get past the first page despite their desperate pleas for me to get the stories I’ve been making up for years down on the page. Lola, 8, even handed me a stapled pile of blank A4 paper with the title of the book on the front – as if I could just fill in the rest of it. The trouble is, I often fall asleep with my children – and that rules out any extracurricular rituals.
My mum friends have all sorts of “magical bonding time”, as they often call it, and touchy-feely bedtime routines like baby massage, dimming all the lights in the house hours before it is bedtime, or even playing classical music to educate the kids as they “sleep”. I tend to stick The Lion King or Paddington on the Toniebox and make a sharp exit out of the bedroom just to get 20 minutes for myself – and that’s if I’m still awake.
I find it almost impossible for me to stop myself from the dreaded “compare and despair” when thinking of all the wonderful things some other parents tell me they do for their children. It might be moving – it could also be humble bragging. Either way, it’s so hard not to buy into the perfect family shots on Instagram and the nurturing language so many parents like Meghan use, like, “I love being able to see your growth”. When it’s not set against a backdrop of reality, such as bad days, mess, and intolerance, it sets unrealistic parenting standards that can make us feel less than.
I feel terrible about the half-done baby books and the drawers full of photographs that I haven’t managed to stick in with the Pritt Stick. Even that is often unusable as it’s dried up with a lost lid – but that’s no excuse. At least I tried.
My children hopefully won’t ever accuse me of not loving them but they will remember me for being quite stressed out a lot of the time as a working, single parent. However, they seem happy and balanced – and calm. Like many other parents doing the big juggle, I need to give myself a break.
In fact, I need to email myself a memo every day: “Give up the mum guilt.” It should be like a loving daily affirmation that I also stick all over the bathroom mirror on Post-it notes. Bedtime is exhausting. Sometimes the best thing a parent can do for a child is nothing – and get some sleep. You can always do a photo dump in one email once a year with “memory captions.” At the end of the day, it’s a wonderful gift for them and it’s never too late.
English (US) ·