Children and Youth

Helping Children and Youth Write Personal Histories

It can be easy and fulfilling to help children and youth write their personal histories. Because memories always change over time, it is best to make a permanent record now of what is happening in their lives.

I sent this material to the teacher of my fifth grade child last year. After a few weeks, my son came home with a wonderful history of his life through the fifth grade.

Using a slightly modified version of the questions I sent to my son's fifth-grade class, a number of young women in our area wrote their personal histories during a three-month period. We met for approximately one hour each week during this period, and at each meeting the participants in the project answered five questions. Community volunteers arranged for notebook computers to be available at these meeting for use by those interested in typing their responses.

Once all of the questions had been answered, the responses were assembled with the questions serving as subheadings in the compiled work. In order to help make the histories more interesting, we arranged to scan three photographs for each participant (those who wanted more than three photographs included in their histories were allowed to do so by paying the additional costs).

In addition, the parents of the participants were asked to provide the first five pages of the history by writing about the first five years of their child’s life. After all of these materials were gathered together, the histories were coil bound.

The project was very effective. Every youth in our group completed the project (with a little prodding), in three months. I recommend this activity. It made a difference in the lives of many of the youth as they realized how important their lives really are, and many parents of the youth commented that this activity helped them appreciate their child and grow closer to them.

Please see From Shoeboxes to Books: Writing Great Personal Histories for additional ideas.