Letters from the First Six Years
Seven letters. The moments that matter. What to do in them. What you can stop worrying about.
Seven letters on the things your child will still need at thirty, and the ordinary moments in which they begin.
Written for the parent whose time is short, whose standards are high, and who doesn't need more parenting advice.
Most parenting content adds to your list. The Letters do the opposite.
They show you what matters in the first six years, where it shows up in everyday life, and what to do when those moments come.
Almost everything else works on what your child is doing.
The Letters work on what your child is concluding about themselves while it happens.
Seven Letters · The Eighth Letter for you to write · The Other Parent Edition · Delivered to your inbox instantly
Read in one evening. Or one letter a night over a week.
GIVE YOUR CHILD THE ONE ADVANTAGE THAT LASTS A LIFETIME: EMOTIONAL STRENGTH.
Please be happy. It is the truest wish most parents ever have.
And the one nobody can promise.
The world our children are growing into will look very different from ours. We can prepare them with good schools, skills and opportunities. But we cannot prepare them for every change, failure or decision they will face.
It will not only matter what they know. It will matter who they are when they get there and how they handle life.
Please Be Happy is about what we can give our children in these early years that they will still need at thirty: the ability to trust themselves, handle hard things and stay themselves while building a life of their own.
What matters most does not begin later.
It begins now.
By the age of six, a child’s brain has reached roughly 90 percent of its adult size.
But what is being built in these years goes far beyond what a child can learn.
It is whether the world feels safe. Whether feelings can be handled. Whether they feel worthy of love. Whether they learn to trust themselves.
These early foundations stay with us.
They shape how we build relationships, deal with setbacks, make decisions and move through life.
It can be worked with later. It is simply easier to build now.
Children cannot be protected from the future. But they can be prepared for it.
And that is what Please Be Happy means.
Not a wish for an easy life. A wish that they are ready for a real one.
It’s about planting what matters, while it matters most.
And that is the most powerful legacy we can leave.
A line that changed everything.
When I was pregnant with my first child, there was a song I couldn't stop listening to.
A father, writing a love letter to his unborn baby.
One line stayed with me:
"Please be happy."
Not: be the best. Not: be the smartest. Just: please be happy.
I had spent fifteen years working in international media, close to people who were extraordinarily successful.
And I had seen how little success on the outside tells you about how someone feels inside their own life.
That contrast stayed with me when I became a mother.
It made me look further ahead and ask what we can give our children early that no success can give them later. The search for that answer kept leading me back to the first six years, and to the small, ordinary moments in which so much of it begins.
That answer became Please Be Happy.
For my own children first. Then for yours.
Where it all began — a moment, a song, and a promise.
When I was pregnant with my first child, there was one song I couldn’t stop listening to: “Musketiere” (eng: "Musketeers")by Mark Forster — a love letter to his unborn baby. One line stayed with me more than any other:
"Please be happy."
That simple sentence became my deepest wish — and the beginning of my journey.
Like many new parents, I read the books, followed the advice, and tried to “get it right.”
But what no one really tells you:
True happiness isn’t something we can give, buy or organise for our children.
It’s something we have to grow within ourselves.
The real work wasn’t about learning how to raise a child — but about becoming the kind of person I wanted my child to grow beside.
As an executive coach, I already had all the powerful tools: mindset work, emotional intelligence, leadership, self-awareness. But becoming a mother gave all of it deeper purpose. I began to see how my understanding of emotions, needs, and psychology helped me truly connect with my children — and how that inner clarity brought more peace into our family, including the relationship with my husband.
Not because the struggles disappeared — but because something stronger took root:
Real connection.
And that’s why I created Please be happy as an invitation to strengthen ourselves, so our children can grow strong too.
At Please be happy we don't wait for problems to arise, we help to build the emotional foundation before it's ever shaken.
To become the kind of parent we once needed — and the one our children will always remember.
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About the founder
Mareile Menninger is a German entrepreneur, journalist and founder of Please Be Happy, based in Dubai.
She spent fifteen years as a senior executive in international media and worked closely with leaders in business, politics, sport and public life. What she kept observing in those rooms, and in her own home, was the same pattern: the people who struggled most were not lacking intelligence, skill or ambition. They were missing a stable emotional foundation. And much of that foundation begins in the earliest years of life. Not in one culture or one industry, but across continents, boardrooms and backgrounds.
Her work on Please Be Happy draws on years of professional training and study in human development, identity and the patterns we carry into adult life. She trained specifically in resilience for children and adolescents, with work grounded in neuroscience, psychology, behaviour and early childhood development.
What interested her most was how the same ideas kept appearing across fields that rarely speak to each other, and how consistently they led back to the first years of life.
Please Be Happy brings those ideas into the ordinary moments of raising a small child.
