Imagine the version of you that was ten years old. Picture them clearly — their hair, the shoes they always wore, the kitchen they sat in, what they were quietly worrying about. This prompt asks you to write them a kind, short note that they could carry into the years ahead.
Keep it simple. Ten-year-olds don't read advice columns.
Writing to your ten-year-old self softens the harder voice you sometimes use on yourself today. The tone you'd never use with a real child is one you don't actually need to use with you. The exercise also reconnects you to early loves and gifts — what was already in you at ten is usually still in you, possibly buried.
Lovely on birthdays, after meeting a real ten-year-old who reminded you of yourself, or in healing periods when you're revisiting childhood. Also useful when you've been too harsh on yourself this week — the prompt re-tunes your inner voice.
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Picture them clearly — one specific scene, not a montage.
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Use short sentences a ten-year-old could understand.
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Tell them one thing they don't need to worry about.
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Mention something they're already good at.
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End with one warm sentence they can keep.
Other ways to ask the same thing
“Write a short, kind note to the ten-year-old you used to be.”
“What do you wish you'd known at ten that you can tell them now?”
“If you could pass one message back to your younger self at ten, what would it be?”
Two traps: writing 'instructions' that no ten-year-old could use, or projecting current adult worries onto them. Stay in their world. Their day was bounded by recess and dinner; your sentences should sit comfortably inside that scale.
Hi. I see you on the swings, alone, pretending you wanted to be alone. You don't have to. You can ask. It works most of the time. The thing the older kids said about you isn't true; you already know that. You're really good at drawing dogs — keep doing that, even when grown-ups call it a hobby. You're going to be okay. You're going to be more than okay. I love you. Eat the snack your mum packed; it's the good one.