Keep Regular Records and Notes About Your Kids
Hi, everyone! This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video I'll give you my one big recommendation after being a mom for 16 years -- take notes!
If there is a running theme throughout my YouTube channel, it's that I have a world-class terrible memory and most of my systems are built to help me remember things or prevent my life from dissolving into entropic chaos. Because I know this about myself, I take notes. I take notes about processes I've figured out, events I've hosted, and articles I've read. Chances are, I'm not going to remember these things later, so I am constantly reaching back to my notes to prevent myself from making the same mistakes over again or to remember things that might be important. This note taking process falls into the latter category -- remembering things that might be important.
As moms, we are all really good at taking notes about our first born babies. We all were gifted a baby book at a baby shower or we bought one for ourselves to take notes on this glorious occasion. We promised ourselves we would write in it faithfully and some even managed to fill out the whole thing. Kudos to those of you who managed that. Here's mine. I got about 1/8 of the way through with my first child and didn't even bother with the second. To be honest -- it's not really my style. A little too flowery, and a lot too "hard copy" for me. So, here is what I did instead.
Record
Every month for each of my two kids, I recorded some things. You know how a doctor who is making rounds has to write note about each patient to consult later? Doctors have too many patients to trust their memories entirely. Well — hopefully you don't have that many kids, but even with just two, the specifics start to fade given enough time. So, what kinds of things do I write?
Content
The first couple of months were all weight, dates of major events (like coming home from the hospital, first smile, rolling over, first head cold). At around a year, I started a template with some categories: Sleeping, Eating, Movement, Verbal, Sicknesses, Nicknames. I would use these categories as a reminder on what to write about. Plus I starting making notes a little less frequently, like once every 2-3 months. I switch out the categories when they stop being relevant. Sicknesses become Potty Training at one point and I added Discipline and Interests. Once my kids entered elementary school, I dropped some categories and added Academics and Friendships. I also record stories, nicknames, achievements, defeats, challenges, and hilarious sayings. I’m down to once every 4 to 6 months now since they are teenagers. But there is still a lot to capture -- now it is less measurements and milestones and more friend stories and sports achievements.
Details
You should determine the way this works best for you. You could write in a journal, send emails to yourself, create Evernote notes, etc. I do this in Google Drive in one big long document per kid. I put the most recent entry at the top with a date and an age. I paste in the template from the entry prior, delete all of the text, and dictate in the contents using Siri. I dictate so that I can do it quickly. Doesn't need to be perfect -- just get the information down. I try to make this take less than 15 minutes per kid per entry.
So, every 4 months, I take 30 minutes to record some stuff about the kids and now I have _____ pages of details and memories. I've taken to reading a couple of these over dinner, which even my teenagers love. Who doesn't love to hear the story the 3 year old who used red, pink, and purple markers to write all over herself, all of her clothes, her walls, and her dresser and then attempted to clean it up using several giant and soggy rolls of toilet paper? Or about my son who when he wanted to be picked up used to say “Hold you!” None of these stories are entertaining for anyone that is outside of our family, but these are the inside jokes that sustain families for generations.
And here is the thing — it’s never too late to start! My kids at 16 and 14 still have lots of stories and recordable events left in them. Let me know what you think! Comments are always appreciated and thanks for watching!
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