How to Journal Your Kid's Life

Description: Tips for keeping a journal to document special moments in your child's life.

Do you journal your kid's life? Too busy to keep a journal? I want to suggest that you are too busy NOT to journal. Life goes by in such a whirl, our memories just can't keep up. All those neat things that happened just last week have quickly become your past, lost in all that white noise of our fast-paced, harried lifestyles. Keep a journal and sometime way out there in your kid's future, your grown child will be able to pull a diary down from a dusty shelf and relive an experience, even see connections and patterns to his adulthood and feel your presence.

Here's one incident I journaled yesterday so I can relive it down the road: I was chaperoning my son's 5th grade field trip and at snack time, I saw him trade up the snack I packed him, fruit leather, for a bag of Doritos. I found out that he had been trading the snacks I give him for fancier stuff for a while.

* You don't need to have perfect handwriting. Look at mine (link to scanned journal page is at bottom) and that was on a good day. I've scribbled worse in a hurry. If it's legible, it's good enough.

* Write about the child, not the event. I could write about the 5th Grade field trip - where we went, where we had lunch, how many kids were there, but isn't it more interesting to write about my discovery of this young trader?

* Keep it short and sustainable. Better to write frequently, than to write one long journal entry once a year. Look for the Big thing in the little things. Journaling actually helps you be a better observer, you see things with your heart. Write a paragraph, write a sentence, don't feel pressured to write detailed, complete entries or it will become yet another 'chore' in your busy day.

* Draw. If you are afraid your less-than-perfect handwriting becomes permanent in a journal, you'll sweat more about your drawing. I used to be that. Until I read Daniel Price's little book, "How to Make a Journal of 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've added drawings to my journal pages. It adds a nice contrast to the text, and like they say, sometimes, a drawing is worth a thousand words.

* Location, location, location. Where's the best place where you are least harried, where you are most likely to be in a more reflective mood? For me, it's their bedroom. As we wind down the day, while they are reading in bed, I pick up the journal and scribble a few things.

* Read past journal entries. Sometimes, I get my biggest motivation to journal when I read an entry from 2 years back. It brings back a memory long forgotten, it made me chuckle to remember, and it gives me more resolve to journal more frequently, knowing how much joy I get remembering.

You can see a scanned image of what I wrote in my kid's journal here: journal page.

Ok, your turn now. Grab a blank book, write something today, for tomorrow you will be too busy running around to remember. A journal is a place of joy remembered.

Myrtha Chang is Author of http://www.JoyRemembered.com - the popular Memory-Keeping blog for Busy Families. For a free 21-page guide on Birthday Traditions for Busy Families, email bday_traditions@aweber.com.

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