Staying Connected With Your Kids With A Shared Journal

I shared a journal with my niece once. She was having such a hard time and couldn't express herself verbally. We did this for about a year and at the end I gave her the journal after decorating it with photo's of her and I and other family members.

I also shared one with my sister who passed away 3 years ago. I treasure that now....it truely is a wonderful idea......

this is so excellent, mary.  i'm going to try it with madeleine.

I always want to do this, but I have no teenagers yet. But I still keep my diary from early years....one day I'll pass it to my daughter and we both could write new things.

I used to do something similar with a friedn in high school- it was our letter book. we used to write eachother letters almost every day ( i know, we also spoke for an hour or two on the phone every afternoon, an then on the internet later on!) and i got sick of having the shoeboxes under my bed that housed these letters searched for any 'dirt' my sister could find. so i bought an excercise book, labelled it science and no more probs! :)

I never thought of doing this with my kids though! :) Great idea!

I love it!

   What a lovely idea!  I will have to remember that one for the "future".  Wish I had done something like that with my mother years ago.

We started a journal to keep track of the cute things the kids do. Of course we could be keeping it up to date a little bit more but I'm working on that (on the home computer).

It also comes in handy with our three kids because we can look back at the older kid's journals and see where they were when they were at the stage the younger one(s) are in now for a good comparison (at 1 1/2 he was doing XYZ and she was doing ABC and the young one, who IS 1 1/2 is doing DEF).

It is also handy to keep a record you can refer back to in times of trouble, or if you need references for doctor visits.  It helped us get a clearer picture when we went ot the psychologist and we were able to review the journal and refresh ourselves on possible signs and symptoms that we never noticed before.

But I love the idea of a hand written journal so as to watch their handwriting change.   I think we started with the computer because it was easy to keep and we started before the kids could write so we didn't think of the back-and-forth aspect. 

On a similar note, my parents suprised my borthers and I with a scrapbook of things they've held onto all while we were growing up. Not only was this a convienient way of them clearing out their house (sneaky! sneaky!) but it was a lot of fun to go through pictures, papers and scraps from our past (like one brother and I did a lot of plays while growing up, so my Mom put the playbills and pieces of our costumes in there).

I have been keeping a jounal since the day that my son was born.  It is filled with things that he has been doing and what has been going on in our lives.  I dont write as much as I should, but i do plan on giving it to him when he is older.  It will comein handy when he has his own children and he wants to compare them to himself when he was little.