Erin writes about the intersection of frugality and green living
at The Green Phone Booth and The Sustainable Triangle. She lives in Raleigh, NC with her four favorite fellows (her husband
and three sons). I love this post for multiple reasons; I have stacks and stacks of journals chronically every stage of my life and have found them such a valuable resource both in sorting through issues as I encounter them and in reflecting later on, I love family traditions and this sounds like such a fun and valuable one, I also love all the inherent benefits like increased literacy, family time and sharing thoughts and feelings together, learning to stick with something etc. etc. This reminds me that I need to bust out my journal and start recording some of the important things that have been happening around here lately!
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"Journal time!" I call to my husband and three kids.
My husband
gathers up paper and pens while I gather the the boys around the table.
"What
day is it?" one kid asks. "What did I do this week?" says another.
And
then the quiet of concentration settles upon us as we each record the
events of the week - some in drawings, some in words, some with more
words than others. When everyone is done, I'll gather up the papers and
store them away in a three ring binder, our family journal that the boys
can flip through at will to relive the events of the past year.
This
is our Sunday night ritual, a tradition my own parents started when I
was little and that I revived with my family nearly a year ago. My
parents did it a little differently, providing each of us with our own
hardcover journal to write or draw in each week, and to this day, I love
to look back at the silly drawings and simple stories from my
childhood. And although my parents abandoned the journal ritual after
just a few years, I had developed a personal journaling habit that I
kept up into adulthood.
Why Start a Family Journal Night?To
keep a recordThe year I met my husband, I wrote my journal
on the computer and saved the files on a floppy disk (remember those?).
Right after my husband proposed, the disk malfunctioned, and I lost the
entire record of our courtship. So many times since then, I've wondered:
What did I think of my husband when we first met? What did I think
after our first kiss? How did I know I was in love? Even simple
details like where we went on our second date have disappeared from my
memory after nearly ten years.
This is not to say that you
shouldn't save your journal digitally (but make sure you keep a backup
copy!) Instead my point is that we forget so much so quickly when we
don't write it down. And these years while my children are young - I
wish I could capture every moment! I want to remember all of the cute
things they said and the fun things we did, but I also want to remember
what
they found important and how
they felt.
"What
did you do this week that you want to remember?" my husband and I ask
our boys every week. And how fun to see their answers!
To
practice writingIn just a year, I've seen my oldest's
writing develop from four or five word sentences to four or five
sentence paragraphs. "What else could you write?" my husband and I ask
him after each sentence. "Is there anything more you could say? What
details can you add?"
My five-year-old has gone from dictating to
me or his father, to asking us to spell out each and every word, to
writing simple sentences on his own.
Even for me as an adult, I
find value in attempting to record my thoughts in a cohesive way and to
capture my voice on paper. Writing is such an important skill to
acquire, and one we can continue to develop throughout our lives.
To
value art and creativityIn my own childhood journal, the
drawings, not the journal-writing, are definitely the real gems. I
remember as teenagers my siblings and I would occasionally pull out our
journals and compare scribbles and stick figures (with ridiculous labels
like "Grandma doing a somersault"). My own boys labor meticulously over
their drawings, and I love to see their creativity in action. And then
at the end of each evening, the journal pages go into our three-ring
binder, to be oohed and aahed over for years to come.
To be
together"What's that?" my oldest asks his two-year-old
brother, pointing to a scribble on the page.
"Daddy's backpack,"
the two-year-old replies.
"What's that?" my oldest points to
another scribble.
"Daddy's backpack."
"What's that?"
"Race car."
The
five- and six-year-old dissolve into laughter, and I can't keep the
smile off my face. These are moments that are priceless to me, moments
that I want to preserve as long as I possibly can.