Yesterday

As you may know, Mikey brought his journal to school each day and shared his home life with his classmates. This helped him connect with friends and find things in common with the other kids. So, you probably noticed, lots of his journal entries are in the past tense. He’s writing about what he has already done.

The actual concept of the past is still very tricky for Mikey.  If I ask if he has washed his hands, he might say no even though his hands are clearly washed (a little damp, smell like soap – you know the deal). My guess is that he thinks I’m asking him if he wants to wash his hands right now. I don’t think past, present and future are clear to him.

I think he knows that he has lost loved ones (human and canine) and I know he remembers these people because he can still tell me who they are when we look at photos…yes, he can still name the dogs too.

This is all to say that Mikey’s Journal was created by Mikey choosing a photo he wanted to write about. Let’s say it was the photo below. We looked at the photo together. I helped with a sentence starter. I might have written “I went to the…” and pointed to the photo. Mikey might say “rides” and I would say, “Wow, great job! Write it down.” I would write it on the scrap paper and Mikey would copy the sentence into his journal.

I didn’t edit him much.  I wrote what he said and that became his journal. It doesn’t need to be perfect, but instead, just a way for them to share their thoughts. If it wasn’t clear, I might caption the photo as I did above to add clarity for his friends at school.

Autonomy with Support

So, even if your child can’t grasp past tense, you can model that part for them and allow them to build the important part of the journal entry. It still represents their autonomous thoughts. You’re just providing structure to allow the journal to be understood by others and therefore become a tool to increase meaningful social interaction.

Regardless of whether your child is totally independent at reading, writing, building sentences, talking about their day (YET), you can help, model and teach them as you go. It might still be a great choice to jump in and start a journal with your child.