My favourite piece of advice to give new parents

You'll thank me if you follow this!

Spend a single day watching your children with an eye for things they do or say that are hilarious or interesting, and what you'll quickly realize is that almost everything they say and do is hilarious or interesting.

One March afternoon about seven years ago my two eldest children were sitting around debating how magnets work.

Isaiah, six-years-old, offered his theory. “Well," he said with furrowed brow, "my guess is, a whirlpool of air forms beside the magnet and then shoots away to another magnet that has its own whirlpool, and those whirlpools clamp together and BANG, the magnets clamp together too.”

Claire, five-years-old, was unconvinced. "My guess," she offered with squeaky enthusiasm, eyes wide and pigtails flying ,"is that a big big BIG lump of air that has INVISIBLE EYES sees the magnets and it comes soooooo quickly and it PUSHES the magnets down against each other, bang, bang, bang.”

A few months before, Claire, wandering through the kitchen, stopped and earnestly put the following question to my wife: "We live on Jupiter, right?"

Then there was the time my wife and the kids were milling their way through a store and Cass (my wife) saw Isaiah pocketing a necklace out of the corner of her eye. “Isaiah!" she exclaimed in shock. "You can’t put things in your pockets that we aren’t paying for! You need to put that back!” In response to which Isaiah burst into tears: “You weren’t supposed to see that Mom! It was supposed to be a surprise for your birthday!”

Now, maybe it's just me, but I find these anecdotes hilarious. But, more than hilarious. They provide vivid snapshots of my children. Better than any photograph. Better even than any video. Little, impressionistic brushstrokes that capture memorable details and aspects of their personalities at a certain age.

Over the past decade my wife and I have collected hundreds of quotes and anecdotes like these. We write them down in a journal, titled "Things the Kids Say", that we keep on Google Drive. That document - a scattershot, erratic, occasional record of our children's doings and sayings - has grown over the years to some forty-five pages.

I don't remember exactly when or how we decided to keep such a journal. Presumably, one of our children said something we found especially cute or hilarious, and we just had to write it down. In any case, the very first entry is from December 2013:

Baby number four was fast approaching.  One afternoon Isaiah, absorbed in some task, mused aloud, “Mom, we should make sure we give our baby a flower name.” 

“A flower name?” Mom asked.

“Yeah,” he said dreamily.  “Like Daisy.  Or Rose, or Lily.“

“Well, those are lovely, “ Mom said encouragingly.  “But what if our baby is a boy? I don’t think there are any flowers that make good names for boys.”

“Yes, there is, Mom,” he answered at once.  “There’s Michaelmas Daisy.”

Isaiah was four at the time. In retrospect, this makes sense. It was just a few nights ago, in fact, that my wife and I were discussing the fact that children seem to hit peak quotable-ness at age four. Evidence of which is that our youngest, Gabe, who turned four in December, almost completely dominates recent entries, shuffling his five older siblings to the margins. (“But why did God make the dinosaurs?" Gabe asked recently. "Maybe just so he could watch them fight? Hm. … You never can tell with God.”)

When four-year-olds aren't raging against the limitations and rules that they are learning to their chagrin lurk around every corner, they're coming up with the most penetratingly philosophical, or hilariously lunatic questions. When Isaiah was four, he used to wake us up at two or three in the morning, yelling "mom!" When Cass went into his bedroom, he would pepper her with questions (e.g. "But how can we stop the cookie from crumbling???"). When an exasperated Cass, after patiently answering a few of them, refused to answer any more, he would wail after her, "But, I just wanna knoooow!"

A few months ago, Cass wrote down a selection of Gabe's screwball bedtime questions, which pour out of him, stream-of-consciousness style, the minute he is in the prone position in bed with his mom snuggling next to him. (e.g. “Mom, what’s one good thing about sharks? They eat octopuses. What’s one good thing about dinosaurs? They only lived in the olden days. What’s one good thing about Darth Vader? Hmmmm..... I know! He kills other bad guys.”)

After thirteen years of parenthood, and six children, I suppose I'm starting to be qualified to offer advice to new parents. And one of the pieces of advice I consistently give is this: Keep a journal of the sayings and doings of your children. Create a Google doc so both you and your spouse can access it from any device. Or buy a journal that you keep by your bedside and write down your memories at the end of the day.

It doesn't have to be a big deal. And it doesn't matter if days, weeks or even months go by in which you don't write anything down. Cass and I are far from regular in our efforts. Forty-five pages might seem like a lot, but that's over ten years! A thousand thousand memorable sayings and doings have slipped by in the flood of time, preserved only (if at all) in the impressionistic generalizations of which our memories are mostly constructed.

But the little we have preserved is precious. Every so often of an evening, lying in bed, we will read old entries to one another. Hilarity inevitably ensues, often of the sort where you're left gasping for breath and wiping tears from your eyes. And a whole lot of gratitude. Gratitude for a life that, when you come to think of it, is richer, more interesting, and more filled with love and laughter than we often have the presence of mind to stop and appreciate in the moment.

One of the most remarkable (and distressing) things is how often we find we have completely forgotten what we wrote down. It might have taken place just a few months ago. And yet, zero recollection. Which is the first reason for keeping such a journal: i.e. to stand athwart the tracks of time and yell "stop!"; to jealously seize hold of the occasional grain of the sands of time as the rest pours through our fingers.

But there is another reason.

I've noticed that when parents of young children get together, they often immediately begin trading complaints and commiserating about the struggles of parenthood. ("I haven't slept in five days. How are you doing?" "Not bad, now that I managed to find a shirt that isn't permanently stained with baby vomit".) And I get it. I really do. Raising kids is hard. However, personally I find that if I'm not careful, I quickly fall into the trap of merely tolerating rather than enjoying my children, or even of allowing a low-level, simmering resentment at the various ways that they throw off my groove to grow.

In my experience, keeping a journal of our children's sayings and doings has created a framework for enhanced attention - one that, as a bonus, selects only for all the best and most rewarding parts of parenthood. Because the point of the journal is to keep track of the hilarious and the heart-warming, the mere act of keeping it keeps me primed to notice such things when they occur. Which, as it turns out, is pretty much all the time

Indeed, spend a single day watching your children with an eye for things they do or say that are hilarious or interesting, and what you'll quickly realize is that almost everything they say and do is hilarious or interesting. Children are, after all, just little drunk adults.

And then there's this: By filtering for and proactively preserving only the good stuff, we not only change our relationship with the present for the better, but also with the past.

In recent years my older children have started occasionally reading through the journal. They seem to find it quite as entertaining as we do to read about their antics. One unanticipated result is that some of the anecdotes have now become akin to family lore, with our children sometimes reminding us of things that were said or done before they were even born. And because we've only ever bothered to write down the really good stuff, this family lore is only constituted of the really good stuff.

Sure, sometimes we get on each other's nerves, or fight, or fall into a funk, or get sick, or worry. But none of that makes it into the journal, because when it comes down to it, none of that is all that important. That’s the forgettable, uninteresting stuff. What the journal reminds us is that we are, fundamentally, a family of quirky, hilarious, kind, thoughtful, and happy humans, who all look out for and take immense interest and pleasure in one another, and who, when all is said and done, are deeply grateful for the cosmic chance that threw us all together into a single, uproarious, fun-loving, neverendingly-fascinating household.

That, at least, is what I learn as I read through the journal. And that seems like a good thing to me.