Do you keep a diary of your child’s life? Too busy to keep a diary? I want to suggest that you are too busy NOT to journal. Life goes by like a whirlwind, our memories just can’t keep up. All those great things that happened last week have quickly become your past, lost in all the white noise of our fast-paced, busy lifestyles. Keep a journal, and at some point in your child’s future, your adult child may be able to pull a journal off a dusty shelf and relive an experience, even see connections and patterns in their adulthood and feel the presence of it.
so I can relive it later: I was chaperoning my son’s fifth grade field trip and at snack time I saw him trade the snack I packed for him, fruit leather, for a bag of Doritos. I found out that he had been swapping out the snacks I gave him for fancier things for a while.
Here is an incident I wrote yesterday
Tips for keeping a journal of your child’s life:
* It is not necessary to have perfect handwriting. Look at mine (link to scanned diary page is at the bottom) and that was on a good day. I’ve scribbled worse things in a hurry. If it’s readable, it’s good enough.
* Write about the child, not the event. I could write about the 5th grade field trip: where did we go, where did we have lunch, how many kids were there, but isn’t it more interesting to write about my discovery of this young merchant?
* Keep it brief and sustainable. It is better to write frequently than to write a long journal entry once a year. Look for the Big in the little things. Journaling actually helps you to be a better observer, you see things with your heart. Write a paragraph, write a sentence, don’t feel pressured to write detailed and comprehensive entries or it will become just another “task” in your busy day.
* Draw. If you’re afraid your less-than-perfect handwriting will become permanent in a journal, you’ll sweat more over your drawing. I used to be that. Until I read Daniel Price’s little book, “How to Journal Your Life.” He had us draw a simple object, a spoon, without looking to surprise me that it did look like a spoon. Since then, I have added drawings to my journal pages. It adds a nice contrast to the text and as they say, sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words.
* Rent, rent, rent. Where is the best place where you are least harassed, where you are most likely to be in a more thoughtful frame of mind? For me, it’s her bedroom. While we finish the day, while they are reading in bed, I take the journal and write some things.
* Read past journal entries. Sometimes my biggest motivation for journaling is when I read an entry from 2 years ago. It brings back a long-forgotten memory, made me laugh remembering it, and gives me more resolve to write in a journal more often, knowing how much joy I have in remembering.
You can see a scanned image of what I wrote in my son’s journal here: newspaper page.
Okay, your turn now. Grab a blank book, write something down today, because tomorrow you’ll be too busy running around to remember. A diary is a place of joy remembered.