Kids Journaling for Future Insight

[brucethecollie]

Just something I wanted to share because it has been helpful for me as an older sibling and as a parent...I grew up writing in a diary or journal and I marked each based on my age(s) at the time.  When one of my younger siblings had a birthday, I'd read a few pages of my journal from that age and kind of remind myself what my perspective was like.  This was especially helpful when I was 13 and my two sisters who shared the same room with me were around 6 and 7, singing Barney songs all day.  I was able to deter my annoyance and play Barbies with them because I remembered how I wanted someone to do those things with me when I was that age.

 

My kids are 6, the age my journals start and it just occurred to me it will be helpful to use once again as a way of reminding myself what it felt like to be that age.  Here is one entry from that age, "I like when my mom hugs me.  If she did it more I would be even happiest."  I hugged my kids pretty hard after reading that one.  

 

So anyway, I'm appreciating my own (lol) insight and I'm going to encourage my kids to write down a few lines about how they are feeling and what they are thinking about every day or at least once a week.  They might find it interesting or even useful later on.

 

Here's one more but from age 8: "Mom and dad tell me not to yell but they do it a lot and it doesn't make sense because, hey! I'm the kid here!"

 

I now regret having thrown away the teenage years.

[Dermot]

Thanks for sharing bruce. Your sisters were very lucky to have someone play with them. 

[neeeel]

That would be awesome to have a record like that. Does it help you remember, or re-remember things you had forgotten, or bring back the way you felt at that time?

[Tyne]

Thanks for sharing that. What a great idea. I never kept journals as a kid because I didn't trust the people around me with my private thoughts and feelings, but I did keep dream journals from when I was a teen. Maybe there's some introspective gold in those somewhere.

 

I still don't write in journals because I still have trouble shaking this fear of personal intrusion, but I am writing a journal to my son to give to him when he's an adult. When he is old enough to write, I'll encourage him to write in a journal. (I probably should work on my privacy issues until then, if I want to stand any chance of selling this journaling idea to him when he gets older.)

[brucethecollie]

That would be awesome to have a record like that. Does it help you remember, or re-remember things you had forgotten, or bring back the way you felt at that time?

I does.  It really takes me back.  It's been a helpful tool in therapy in the past, too concerning my feelings and the exact scenarios that produced them.   It's funny how sometimes fundamental things about ourselves seem to be very cemented at an early age.

Thanks for sharing that. What a great idea. I never kept journals as a kid because I didn't trust the people around me with my private thoughts and feelings, but I did keep dream journals from when I was a teen. Maybe there's some introspective gold in those somewhere.

 

I still don't write in journals because I still have trouble shaking this fear of personal intrusion, but I am writing a journal to my son to give to him when he's an adult. When he is old enough to write, I'll encourage him to write in a journal. (I probably should work on my privacy issues until then, if I want to stand any chance of selling this journaling idea to him when he gets older.)

I can totally understand having privacy issues.  My brother humiliated me more than once with my diary.  And I think that is why I burned the teenage years at some point.  What a shame, you know?  It's cool you wrote your dreams down.  I bet those are interesting to read through!

 

I like the idea of writing a journal to give to your son when he is an adult.  I wonder if there are ways to journal online with more secrecy?  Or maybe that's not realistic on the internet....

[Spenc]

Interesting thought.  I think it's a great thing to encourage.  I think another benefit of this is to reinforce your child's social skills.

 

When I was in university, I had started keeping a blog with the intention of writing everyday to it.  The primary objective for this was that I am an introvert, but also I have always had the sense of myself not being interesting.  I would struggle to make conversation because I just don't think my experiences are interesting to others, or the things I learn about would be interesting to others unless they ask me what I think about it.  Writing everyday about my experiences and just things that I was thinking about helped a bit for sure, but obviously wasn't life-altering. 

 

Unfortunately, when you're 20-21 years old it's too late to change by just adapting little aids like this.  So I had considered that it would be good at the time to encourage my young niece to write a journal and get started young on expressing herself.

[brucethecollie]

Interesting thought.  I think it's a great thing to encourage.  I think another benefit of this is to reinforce your child's social skills.

 

When I was in university, I had started keeping a blog with the intention of writing everyday to it.  The primary objective for this was that I am an introvert, but also I have always had the sense of myself not being interesting.  I would struggle to make conversation because I just don't think my experiences are interesting to others, or the things I learn about would be interesting to others unless they ask me what I think about it.  Writing everyday about my experiences and just things that I was thinking about helped a bit for sure, but obviously wasn't life-altering. 

 

Unfortunately, when you're 20-21 years old it's too late to change by just adapting little aids like this.  So I had considered that it would be good at the time to encourage my young niece to write a journal and get started young on expressing herself.

 

Thank you for sharing that insight! I totally agree with you.  I'm an introvert, too and would often feel like I couldn't express myself in an interesting way to others.  Writing my thoughts in a journal made them easier to repeat later because I had already rehearsed them in a sense and helped me to feel more prepared when sharing with others.  For extroverts, this must seem kind of funny but for those who deal with social anxiety or being a bit shy, a little more confidence goes a long way in social interactions.  Someone told me this was narcissism but I don't think so.  When a young person, for example, starts putting their thoughts, likes, dislikes, down on paper just for themselves, it guides them on their journey of self-knowledge and even helps them have empathy for themselves when they read over it.