Family
Parenthood Journal
A journal about who you're becoming as a parent — not a record of what they did.
Before you start
There is no right way to complete this journal, and no week you can fall behind on. It is organised by stage, not by date, so you can answer a page years after the stage it belongs to.
My son is six. I kept almost nothing from the years before that, and I’ve stopped feeling bad about it — the albums I never finished were never the point.
What I wish I had kept is the other half of those years: who I was while he was becoming himself. I can tell you he was once the length of my arm, and that holding him was enough even though we couldn’t talk yet. I couldn’t tell you what I was afraid of that month, or what I’d decided about the kind of father I wanted to be, or which of my daily ideas for helping him I actually managed to carry out.
So this is about you, not about them. Three questions repeat in every stage, because the interesting thing is not any single answer but how far your answers move between one stage and the next.
It isn’t a record you can fall behind on. There is no week to catch up, and nothing here needs a photograph.
You can read every prompt here and write on screen, or print the PDF and fill it in by hand. The questions are the same either way.
What's inside
Before they arrived
The only stage you can never go back and observe, and the one that shapes everything after it. Worth writing even years late, from memory.
3 prompts
- What kind of parent did I think I'd be?
- What did I promise myself?
- What was I afraid of?
The first months
The months most often photographed and least often described. What is worth keeping is rarely what they were doing — it is what was enough for you, back when there was no conversation to be had.
4 prompts
- What felt like enough between us, even before there were words?
- What am I teaching without meaning to, just by example?
- What am I saying yes to, and what am I saying no to right now?
- Something I meant to do differently — and what actually happened instead
When they started moving
The stage where you stop being able to control the room. The recurring questions start to diverge from your answers in the previous stage.
4 prompts
- What did I stop being able to control?
- What am I teaching without meaning to, just by example?
- What am I saying yes to, and what am I saying no to right now?
- Something I meant to do differently — and what actually happened instead
When they started talking
Conversations that make no adult sense are the ones worth writing down word for word. They tend to put your feet back on the ground.
4 prompts
- Something they said that made no adult sense at all
- What am I teaching without meaning to, just by example?
- What am I saying yes to, and what am I saying no to right now?
- Something I meant to do differently — and what actually happened instead
When they started deciding
The stage that asks the most of you, because helping them is no longer the same thing as doing it for them.
4 prompts
- What did I have to let them get wrong?
- What am I teaching without meaning to, just by example?
- What am I saying yes to, and what am I saying no to right now?
- Something I meant to do differently — and what actually happened instead
Now
The stage you are actually in. Answer it today and it becomes the page you compare everything against later.
4 prompts
- What am I trying to prepare them for right now?
- What am I teaching without meaning to, just by example?
- What am I saying yes to, and what am I saying no to right now?
- Something I meant to do differently — and what actually happened instead
What I brought with me
Nobody raises a child from nothing. You raise them through your own childhood, and through everything you did and didn't do with what you were given. These two questions are not asked anywhere else, and they are not written for anyone else to read.
2 prompts
- What am I carrying from how I was raised — the parts I want and the parts I don't?
- What was available to me that I didn't make use of — and why does that matter to me now?
Raising them with someone else
Almost every parenthood journal is written as though one adult existed. When two people raise a child together, they bring two different childhoods into the same room. This section is for whoever that other person is — a partner, an ex, a grandparent, anyone doing it with you.
2 prompts
- Where do we see this differently, and where do those differences come from?
- Do they relate differently to each of us right now? What does that bring up in me?
What this has made of me
The page that finally asks the question everything above has been circling around. All of it was evidence for this.
3 prompts
- What am I in less of a hurry about than I used to be?
- When did I last forget to be the adult and simply join them?
- Who am I becoming, at this stage, as their parent?
Print it
The full template as a clean PDF, laid out for writing by hand.
Download the PDFFree. No email required.
What to do with these pages
- Keep these pages where you'll find them at the next stage, not where they'll be safe.
- Nothing here is finished. The repeated questions are only worth answering more than once.
- The private pages are yours. Decide separately, and later, whether any of it is theirs.
Keep the story going
Deeditt is a place to document the experiences, changes and moments that matter to you — privately, and publicly only when you decide.
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