Diaries teach the value of reflection and privacy. They allow a young person to develop a personal voice, at a level that can surprise parents and teachers. University of Toronto professor Johan Lyall Aitken notes: "They feel free to use any word in their thinking vocabulary, even if they wouldn't use it in a speech or school assignments. You often find a level of literacy, vocabulary and complexity of sentence structure that doesn't show up in their school work."
Although there are exceptions, few young adolescents are ready to spend time alone each day trying to tease out an entry. At the beginning, the best form is a responsive or dialogue diary, somewhat like the journal many young people now keep for their teachers at school.
This means the parent uses space in the diary to add or respond to what the child has written. Since even very young children need some privacy, you should work out a code---a marker, a corner of the page turned down for entries the child does not want you to see.To ease the task of learning to record events, one expert recommends using the diary as an album. If an adolescent writes that her friends are raving about the movie, the parent's response could include a date to take her, written under a clipping of the ad for the film. Later on the ticket stubs can be added.
There are rules to be followed. The diary is never the place for lessons in spelling and grammar, no matter how glaring the errors. Try to establish a set time for diary writing---perhaps once a week, rather than every day. The book's chance of use and survival are greater if it is attractively bound, and an enticing artifact in itself.
For the adolescent the role of the parent is much smaller than with a child, but, in compensation, the range of literary models is greater. A 12 or 13-year-old is ready for more demanding books, such as The Diary of Anne Frank (various publishers) or Budge Wilson's Thirteen Never Changes (Scholastic-Tab Publications, 1989), in which a contemporary teenager is bequeathed her grandmothers diaries.
For teenagers, privacy is the key issue. Aitken believes some kids deliberately leave the diary out in the open as a form of tacit permission, but most experts disagree. "Maybe they're testing to see if they can trust you," says Lynda Pogue. Hands off is the safest rule for parents and brothers and sisters.
There is little parents can do to encourage an adolescent to keep a diary; personal writing cannot be assigned by someone else. Your best hope is to write one yourself and share parts of it.
Adapted from: Susan Kelman, Canadian Living, December 1991.
© 1996 The Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society PECUSA
This article is from Handbook for Ministries with Young Adolescents, a publication of the Ministries with Young People Cluster of the Episcopal Church Center, New York, NY. Permission is granted for congregational use and use by diocesan youth coordinators. You may order this resource from Episcopal Parish Services.
