How to Start Journaling With Your Kids
As we plunge into this new year – while we are still making our way through a devastating pandemic – you may be looking for new habits that will help you and your children increase their mindfulness and help us get through the times we live in. If so, now is the time to start a regular practice of journaling with your children.
Journaling has many benefits for all ages. It can improve your writing, remember your experiences, develop your creativity, and help relieve stress. It can also help us become more aware of our emotions and deal with them – and it just so happens that we are all going through a lot now, including our children. As Connie Chang writes for the Washington Post :
Through this process of expressing their feelings, children can begin to understand them, which develops skills for self-awareness and emotion regulation.
Journaling also helps children “think about the present and reflect on what is happening today, what they are going through now,” says Joshua McKivigan, a behavioral health therapist who works with high school students in Pennsylvania. In the context of the current crisis, this awareness can reduce the anxiety that often arises when we are faced with uncertainty.
Get them buy-in
If you want to start journaling with your kids, the first thing you don’t want to do is announce that you’re all about to do it, and that it’s time to sit down and start pouring out your hearts, whether they like it or not. In order for this to be a valuable activity, and not a chore, you will need their participation.
Think about what you need to get carried away with this process. Choosing the right tools is a good start: Let them choose their own journal, stylish glitter pen or writing desk to make it easier for them to journal from the comfort of their couch or bed. And then let them help establish the ground rules – this is the practice you want to do with them, not with them.
Decide on the structure
Talk together about what you want your journaling practice to look like. There is no one way to do this – the best method is the one that you will all enjoy and benefit the most from. Maybe you want to sit down to keep a journal once a week on Friday night, Saturday afternoon, or Monday morning first thing. On the other hand, a reluctant journalist may prefer a micro-diary, writing just one sentence a day.
If younger kids who don’t yet know how to write want to join, they can use pictures rather than words to illustrate their experience, either by drawing pictures themselves or by cutting and pasting pictures from magazines.
And set a few ground rules, such as not having screens while journaling, or an agreement that while you don’t have to share what you’ve written down (if you don’t want to), everyone will sit together to do it.
But don’t be too structured.
Now that you’ve decided exactly what your family journal will look like, be prepared to change course and abandon the rules or adjust expectations as needed. Perhaps your children sometimes want to use writing prompts (if so, you can find them on the Internet ); but maybe sometimes they just want to go about their business. If on some days they want to write and on others they want to paint, that’s fine.
They may want to reflect on what’s going on in their life, or they may want to write a short story. Developing a habit and allowing room for thought and creativity is far more important than the actual structure, so follow their lead.