KEEPING A CHILD JOURNAL
Our children are now in their thirties, but back when they were very young we took a blank book for each of them and wrote about them.
We had seen some books which had the parents fill in certain information that was specified: Baby's first outing, Baby's first tooth, Baby's first this or that. We tried such a book with our first daughter, but found the formatting too confining.
We replaced the highly formatted book with a very simply lined bound book. It had no words, no structure apart from what we brought to it.
We kept such books for several years for each child when they were very young and those books, twenty-five years later, are as precious possessions as we have.
I am advocating a very open, not-so-structured approach to keeping a journal, but I will offer some suggestions based on our experience. And that refers to the experience of keeping the journal and the experience of the parents or the children looking at the journal some years later.
First, in this age of so much written on the computer, there is something more personal and more emotionally evocative to have the journal entries written by hand.
When the child is very young, preverbal, the journal will focus on what the parent sees and hears, observations of what the child is doing. Usually along with the description there will almost inevitably be the emotions of wonder, joy, perplexity that come from being so closely involved in the day to day evolution of this unique being.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with keeping a journal in a word processing program on the computer…..nor is there anything wrong with writing milestones on a calendar….nor having picture albums or home videos. They are all valuable, but this basic and low-tech way of documenting a child’s development has some particular qualities of richness that I will try to elaborate on.
When you write in the child’s journal you are writing and you have your own distinctive handwriting. When you or your child looks at it years later it is more personal to see the handwriting as well as the content.
I encourage parents not to wait for startling insights or great achievements to write about. If a parent writes about the ordinary in a six month old’s life, ten years later that description will be extraordinary. At the time of the writing it does not seem worthy of great note that there is a sequence of back and forth interactions while feeding the child, but ten years later, when that six month old is no longer there and the memories of that child are not so distinct it is extraordinary to read the details of what that child did, said and evoked.
I recommend that the parents keep the journal nearby and be able to write in it more frequently. Of course the journal will not be around when there is something special done or said. Here I recommend that parents take a scrap of paper and write down what struck them. Perhaps a wonderful and surprising comment that the child made….at a friend’s house or at a restaurant……And then when a few scraps have accumulated I suggest they be re-copied into the journal I realize that not all of the observations on scraps of paper will then be entered into the journal but some will.....If ten or twenty percept get in that’s great! Aren’t we familiar with these “famous last words: "this is so great, so vivid" that I'll never forget it.” …and guess what?.....you forget it.
It has also been very rich to have others write in the journal. One parent may do most of the writing, but the other parent is welcome to write in the journal as well. Also it is particularly rich to have grandparents write in the journal as well.
Why the 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 format? It’s not a strict requirement but rather a recommendation. small enough to be portable. Also I recommend lined book. The lines add a little bit of structure.
There are no rules for what can be written and how it should be written. There are many baby journals that have a lot of structure: first steps, first haircut, first solid food, first friends, first day at school. This kind of journal is much looser. One structure that I do recommend is the simple one of putting in the date of any entry. Later on that allows you to know how old the child was….which house you were living in, etc.
When the child is old enough to talk it’s very special to document brief bits of dialogue. To do that simply put who’s saying what: Dad: Blah blah, Eva: Blah Blah. What I mean by that is you write or paraphrase a line from the parent and a line from the child.
The journal grows by accretion. Do not get excessively worried by starting it “late”. No matter what age you start the journal at is the perfect time. You can’t make it retroactive and why wait until later?
Details....names.....places.....
Pre-verbal.....observations of what they do and how they do it.....
Verbal.....what they say.....the invented words that they use......
This is not instead of the verbal story telling tradition....
This is not instead of video's....
It has its own strengths and charms.
There is a great telescoping.....vs....having a half hour of a particular family event on a videeotape.
Over the years since we actively created these journals….and the children grew older….we noticed them coming back to the books or to the photo albums, especially when they are being stretched developmentally....when they are facing some challenge......by dipping back to a past when they were younger and more directly supported and loved they often get recharged....like Harlow's monkeys.....
Writing refines your capacities for noticing, attending.....having to put into words.....
These are public writings....things that you'd allow access to a number of people over the years....not a great place for the really heavy stuff...."I hope I'm not a terrible mother like mine was!!" "I'm scared that Timmy isn't all there."
It may be very important to be aware of these darker feelings, but this particular journal is probably not the place for them
It is a judgment call about what to put in.....just like the photograph reflects what the photographer points at.....what is included, what's not included. One guideline is to consider how the child might feel years from now reading the journal.