This is our first grandchild and we have not settled on what we want to be called. Does that belong in the card?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nOnly as a light aside, if at all. The card is about her and the baby, and a paragraph about your own name pulls the attention across the room. A single clause does the whole job \u2014 signed ‘Granny, apparently’ or ‘still getting used to Grandad’ \u2014 and it tends to be the line she quotes back to people. What is worth doing separately, a few weeks later, is agreeing it properly: the other set of grandparents may have taken the obvious name, children eventually invent their own regardless, and it is far easier to settle before anybody has committed to anything. Raise it in conversation rather than in writing, and let her have an opinion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The card is from both of us, but only one of us ever writes. Should her father add something of his own?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nYes, even if it runs to three lines. A card signed by two people in one handwriting reads as one person’s card with a name added at the bottom, and daughters notice. It does not need to match in length or in tone: a short, practical offer of help in his own words is worth more than a paragraph he has been talked into. If he genuinely finds it impossible, a single line at the bottom in his hand will do, provided it is something he would actually say out loud rather than a borrowed sentiment. The alternative that works well is two cards, one from each of you, given together and deliberately different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The birth was difficult, or nothing went the way she had planned it. What do you write then?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nAddress her, not the delivery. Say that you are glad she is all right, that you are proud of her and that you are available, and leave out any account of how it went, including reassurances that it does not matter. It may well matter a great deal to her, and a card is the wrong place to settle that. Avoid comparisons with your own experience, however sympathetic the intention, because they invite her to measure one against the other at a point when she has no appetite for it. If she wants to talk about the birth she will raise it, probably more than once, and the useful thing then is to listen without supplying a lesson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is a christening or naming day and I have been asked to say a few words. How long, and how is it different from the card?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nA minute, ninety seconds at the outside, and standing up for less time than people expected is always forgiven. The card is private and can be as fond as you like; the words in the room are public, so they thank the guests, name the child and give the parents one sentence of credit before you sit down. Anything you would only say to your daughter alone belongs in the card. Two practical points: say the baby’s name out loud at least once, because half the room is still learning it, and finish on a clear line so that people know to raise a glass rather than waiting for more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How do you tell her you are proud of her without it sounding like a verdict on how she is getting on?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nAttach the pride to something already finished rather than to something in progress. Pointed at the present tense, ‘I am proud of you’ invites her to wonder what you have been observing and whether the assessment might go the other way next week. Pointed at the last year \u2014 the pregnancy, the move, the job she held down, the way she handled bad news \u2014 it is simply a statement about the past, and she can accept it without having to do anything. The same applies to remarks about the baby’s routine or sleeping: they sound like marks awarded, and they set the next conversation up as a report. Praise what she has been through, not how she is performing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Your daughter has had a baby, and the card is far harder to write than it ought to be. Everybody else in the family gets to be straightforwardly delighted. You are the person who has known her since she was the one in the cot, and every sentence that arrives sounds either too big for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":598,"featured_media":3685,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3125],"tags":[],"moimportance":[],"motype":[],"moformat":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3684","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-greetings"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/leedsname.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/leedsname.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/leedsname.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leedsname.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/598"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leedsname.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3684"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/leedsname.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3688,"href":"https:\/\/leedsname.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3684\/revisions\/3688"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leedsname.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/leedsname.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leedsname.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leedsname.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3684"},{"taxonomy":"moimportance","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leedsname.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/moimportance?post=3684"},{"taxonomy":"motype","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leedsname.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/motype?post=3684"},{"taxonomy":"moformat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leedsname.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/moformat?post=3684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}