DJC#012 – Going Back to The Start: Journaling to Your Child

The journey to journaling starts at different place for everyone who decides to take up the practice. Some might be teens, others in their young adulthood and then there are those of us who wait until we’re well into adulthood. I had journals from when I was a teenager and into my early 20s. They were sporadic and mostly made of of stories about friends and girlfriends at the time I suspect. At some point I remember throwing a journal or two away. It wasn’t something I really needed, but now I slightly regret having it taken out with the trash. If anything it would be entertaining to see the evolution of my thoughts and experiences.

I started journaling to my son before he was even born. I was thinking it would be a cool way to document my wife’s pregnancy (it was third trimester when I actually started) for him to look back at one day. As I’ve mentioned previously, this has evolved to include other areas of focus. I include something new that I read about and learn, advice I want to pass on that I heard on a recent podcast, an experience he’s gone through and how he handled it or knowing he has similar traits as I do, giving him ideas that might help him in the future. No one said it would be easy. To get you started, here are 4 journaling topics to include.

A Story for The Ages

As I mentioned, telling a story or a memory for or of my son was always the initial intention. My thought was that this would be a collection of memories that he will be too young to ever remember and to fill in any of the gaps from the time the event occurred and when he actually reads about it.

It could be a journal entry about the first time they met their siblings, grandparents, or any other member of the family. When they start crawling or walking you definitely need to write that down and give all the deets as the kids say these days.

Every birthday you need to write how you celebrated, every Halloween what costume they wore, and every Christmas what gift they received. Write it down. Trust me, if you don’t, you’ll eventually forget. There are too many years to remember all of those details. Yes it’s true you probably have photos or videos stored in a cloud somewhere, but this is your keepsake and place to store all of these memories. Here’s my very first journal entry to my son to give you an example –

Bean [his nickname before he was born],

Your SoCal baby shower was a success! We had it at your Tía Erika and Tío Mario’s house. We had some really good food to eat and share with a lot of our friends and family. We played a few games – the guys drank beer from baby bottles to see who could drink it the fastest [not an easy thing to do!]. Tío Willie won that one. The girls had to guess how big Mommy’s belly is with you in her. And then we played a team game that involved blowing up balloons sticking them under your shirts and trying to pop them. The team that popped all of their balloons first won.

We had such a fun time. Don’t worry, we have lots of photos to show you one day when you’re older. We’re so excited for you, Bean. We want you to keep growing and get bigger and stronger, but we also can’t wait to meet you and hold you! We’ve been waiting for a long time for you bud. When you’re born, we have all kinds of cool outfits for you that we got at the baby shower. Also a couple of toys for you to play with. We’re going to have another baby shower in Sacramento next weekend at Grandma Deb and Grandpa 2Pops’ [my dad’s nickname] house. They flew down last weekend to celebrate with everyone else – so did your Auntie Kara – all the way from Maui! I’m telling you Bean, there’s a lot of love for you already. When you’re born, you better get ready to get cuddled hard.

Well, I had to leave you and Mommy and your brothers behind for a couple day for work training. I’m missing rubbing on Mommy’s belly and playing music for you. Hopefully you like the music we play for you. Mommy and I both love music and we hope you will as well.
July 19, 2016

Love Story

So you’ve written about their stories and their memories and now you want to change it up. Tell them one of your stories. This could be from your childhood and tie it into something they did or are going through recently, or maybe it’s a story of your life recently. Sharing your story and your feelings can be a powerful way to express and share at the same time.

Share a memory that has nothing to do with your child. Tell them something about your life that you’ve never told them before – something they might find interesting and think, “Wow, I didn’t know that.” This is secretly a way to impress your children without telling them. Because for whatever reason when you tell them, you just sound old and uninteresting. I don’t have a great example without a long drawn out entry, but you get the point.

Lessons Learned

Here’s your chance to share what you’ve learned in life that you want them to know. The great thing about this topic is that it is so vast and wide. It could be about cooking or barbecuing – maybe even your recipe that the whole family comes over to enjoy. It could be about how to negotiate buying a car or at the flea market.

This could also be a lesson your child learned. An event where they learned a solid lesson and what it taught them. Here’s an example of a journal entry where my son learned a lesson and I’m sharing a lesson I learned –

So this morning I discovered that you had drawn on the our white living room lamp with a red pen. In your defense, this was a dry erase red pen so you thought it could be wiped right off. I asked you if you did it 4-5 times before you admitted it – even saying maybe Milo [his cousin] did it lol. It was a good reminder for you to take responsibility for your actions and admit when you’re wrong/made a mistake, apologize (if necessary…it isn’t always) and then figure out how to fix the issue. Most importantly take what you just learned with you on your journey. It came off with the help of Bar Keeper’s Friend Soft Cleanser, which you’ll want to make sure you have a bottle of that at your apartment/house when you grow up.
October 30, 2022

Good Advice

Show them the way with good life advice. Share your Jedi knowledge with your younglings so that they may one day be wiser than you are. Similar to the telling stories, when I try to give my son advice a lot of times it just doesn’t resonate. I can be a bit wordy, which probably doesn’t help…plus he’s 6 so I lose him at the halfway point.

But being able to write advice down that maybe you tried to explain verbally, but it just didn’t stick can be good for the both of you. You’re writing it down for your in-the-near-future-child so it helps you feel as though you were able to share it. Now whether or not it resonates to their future self is another story, but hey, all you can do is try your best.

I’ve tried to get less wordy with my advice – both in person and in writing. And every situation is different. Some might require some lengthy explanation, while another might be short and sweet. This example is short and sweet –

We don’t control what happens to us. We control how we respond to what happens.
May 8, 2023

White Blank Page…No More

When you remember who you’re doing this for and why you’re doing it, then journaling can be easy…sometimes. I’ve open my journal in the past only to stare at the blank page. What do I want to write about? What do I want to share or say to him? Now I use these 4 topics to help me get going and most days it works – there’s always going to be those exceptions. And when the words don’t come to you some days, I just write something simple like, “I’m proud of you. I love you so much.” Now what child wouldn’t want to hear that?