Journalling or documenting key stuff from everyday life aka ‘maintaining a diary’ is a habit that is best taught at a young age. Journaling does have health benefits as well as positives for psychological well-being. Discover these 5 surprising benefits of journaling for kids.
I remembered a popular adage while reading an article on the contribution of data scientists in making the world aware of the dangers of the coronavirus epidemic. ‘What cannot be measured cannot be managed‘.
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The Importance of Journaling
Lack of journaling hampers decision making
This holds so true in our everyday life. Often we find ourselves paralysed when a decision needs to be made. Dig a little deeper and 9 out of 10 times, it is due to insufficient data. Insufficient data is again a consequence of laziness to properly document or journal important stuff in our lives.
Consider a simple decision on limiting unnecessary expenses. Let’s say a family needs to decide on how often they wish to eat out. The family ends up not taking any decision because of lack of data. While the husband might argue that the family is spending too much on eating outside, the wife may disagree. If only they had documented or journaled every visit to a restaurant for a month…
Journaling is a simple way to imbibe new habits
New habits fail to take root in us partly because we fail to see the positive outcomes. Often, the initial positive outcomes are like young tender shoots – Very small but nevertheless very important. We tend to not notice these small yet encouraging developments and end up hanging our boots.
Consider walking for weight loss. We walk and walk and walk. 2 days pass, then 4 and finally after a week, we still haven’t noticed any big change in the mirror. We give up.
All that was required was to methodically journal our weight loss every day for one week. Even if the loss was just 100-200 grams, that small offshoot of change when recorded acts as a powerful motivator.
Journaling helps Parents promote positive change among kids
Journaling is a simple yet effective mechanism to track, identify and promote positive behaviour among kids.
Let’s say you take a snapshot of your child’s handwriting every week. Compare and highlight the little improvements you had asked your child to make and how he or she is actually doing it with every passing week.
This keeps your little one motivated and more resolute in going the full haul in developing beautiful handwriting.
Journaling allows teachers to give individual attention to kids
A teacher committed to bringing change among the kids of her class will be tracking the kids via some form of journaling. It could be in the form of detailed traits of kids in her diary or as key anecdotes that are a reflection of the individuality of the kids.
Consider a kid who is attention-seeking versus another kid who is an introvert. If the teacher has journaled these traits, then she knows instinctively the kind of behaviour on her part that will get the kid to be receptive to her lessons.
Kids develop confidence when they journal
Kids who are taught the art of journaling at any young age develop unique confidence in their ability to put forth their opinions without hesitation. This is due to the simple fact that journaling gives them the necessary data to fall back upon when their opinions are being questioned.
A few simple things I have asked my daughter to journal on are
- Write 3-5 new words you encounter each day with their meanings
- Write the name of every movie you watch and enjoy along with its language and chief actor
- Jot down riddles, puzzles and facts that catch your attention.
- Write down the name of the storybooks that you read along with a brief synopsis.
- Note down every new recipe you learn.
Each of the above may seem random and not really useful, but journaling helps her
- commit things to memory
- develop confidence in the knowledge she gains
- cross-link facts she has picked up with observations she has made
- allows unique brain synapses to develop at an early age that might prove useful later in life.
