The one thing I regret about my childhood is that we didn’t take a lot of pictures as I was growing up. In fact, I have very few pictures of myself with maybe the exception of a few schoolday pictures. I don’t have any baby pictures of me at all and then Hurricane Katrina came along (uninvited) and ran off with most of my middle and high school pictures. Although I managed to save all of Tyler’s pictures, I had pictures of myself in my high school memory book and it was too waterlogged and mold-infested to save. After Katrina, I purchased a digital camera so that I could snap as many pictures of Tyler as I wanted to. I want to be able to give them to him when he becomes an adult. It’s also a way for me to see just how much he’s growing.
I’m not the scrapbook kind of mom, but I have found other ways to chronicle his life. I’ve found two more ideas that I will share with you. I found these ideas in the book, 365 Ways To Help Your Children Grow, by Shelia Ellison and Barbara Barnett.
The first one is called, Listening To What Your Children Really Think. What you do is interview your child. If you have a video recorder, you can tape the interview or you can use a tape recorder. It’s a great gift to give your kids when they become adults. You can also interview your kids periodically, asking the same questions, to see how their answers change. Some questions to ask include:
What do you want to be when you grow up?
Do you want to get married? Have kids? Why or why not?
Where do you think you want to live? Why?
What do you think the world will be like when you grow up?
The second idea is called, Most Precious Gift. What you’re going to do is create a journal that , again, you can give to your children when they become adults. You don’t have to write in it daily and it does not have to be anything elaborate. You can use a plain spiral notebook. The authors recommend that you write about what your child is doing at that moment in time. You can also write about any challenges you are having as a parent. Write about anything you feel that your child would be interested in reading about as an adult. We can’t always trust our memories and this is a great way to record, in real-time, what’s going on in your child’s life. You can also tape a few pictures or mementos on the page if something interesting happened that you want to write about.
You can create lasting memories that chronicle your children’s life. You are limited only by your imagination.
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