What Journaling Is (and Isn’t)
(Substack Newsletter February 11, 2025)
My friend’s 7-year-old daughter Ashley was a journaler. At home. Almost daily. She had a notebook, pens and markers and wrote or doodled whatever she felt, whenever she felt like it. For Ashley, this was fun. For her mom, it was a tool Ashley used to create agency around her own emotional world. My friend was thrilled about her daughter’s creative self-expression and self-exploration. Then Ashley entered third grade. Every other day for homework, Ashley and her classmates were required to answer a specific question in their school notebook with attention to sentence structure, spelling and penmanship. The next day, it was read by her teacher, evaluated and graded. Her teacher called it “journaling” homework. Ashley soon lost interest in her own journaling practice until she announced to her mom, “I’m not doing my journal anymore. I hate journaling.” She stopped. What also stopped was the evidence-based benefits her home journaling offered to her nervous system and her emotional and physical health.
When I teach kids and adults about journaling, I am specific about what it is and what it is not. Here are 3 important tips for educators, caregivers and anyone who works with kids. They are important for you, too.
Benefits from Journaling Require:
FREEDOM. There is no right or wrong way to journal. No right or wrong thing to journal about. The entire purpose of journaling is to notice and explore who you are in that moment. Journal prompts are just that—a prompt. If you or a child wants to respond to a prompt that’s fine. It’s equally fine not to. Maybe today you want to write, maybe not. It doesn’t matter. What does matter is the practice of noticing what you want and exploring that in whatever way works in that moment. That’s what makes it a mindfulness practice with physical and emotional health benefits. Freedom of expression (which includes choosing not to journal) is key. Every time.
NON-JUDGMENT. Journaling is a way to practice non-judgment. This is essential to accessing any mindfulness benefit. Once you begin to judge —yourself or something else — you are no longer in the moment and are likely launching into a state of heightened stress. This is why grammar does not matter in journaling. Why editing, stopping to re-read or evaluate a drawing, crossing out, or starting over are to be avoided. These are potential sand traps for judgment. Challenge kids (and yourself) to just keep going once they begin. That’s part of the practice.
WRITE FOR YOURSELF ONLY. There is no way to freely express yourself when you know someone else is going to read or evaluate what you produce. Judgment takes over. Including self-judgment. And fear of what someone else will think about what you express. Right and wrong seeps in. Wanting to do a “good” job becomes a driver and/or a stressor. Suddenly, what’s meant to be a mindfulness activity, with all the potential health benefits, becomes an anxiety producing exercise of self-editing and judgment. That’s why sentence structure, spelling and grammar do not matter during journaling. It’s about the expression itself not how it is expressed. Kids (and you, too) need to know that what they say and how they say it is completely up to them. For their eyes only. That’s how they actually gain the health benefits of journaling.
I know. This framework can mean a big mind-shift for adults. Especially in a school setting where teachers are under more and more pressure to meet state requirements, test score thresholds, and curriculum mandates all while supporting a generation of kids who are trying to manage a world of unprecedented challenges.
Yet, when kids are offered even 5-10 minutes a day of complete freedom to practice proven tools to check-in with who they are and what they are feeling, they are building a foundation to better access all the learning (academic, social and emotional) that is coming their way that day. And for a lifetime. (Scroll down to read about mindfulness legislation for schools passed in Illinois.)
My 2 books, Breathe Move Journal for kids and for teens, are designed to offer a simple and accessible format to practice 4 mindfulness options each day. Those include breath and/or movement, a quick feelings and body sensation check-in, a journal prompt, and a positive activity. It takes minutes a day—and kids love it. So do teachers, mental health professionals and caregivers. It is designed to offer kids and teens evidence-based tools they can benefit from today and for a lifetime.
Journaling only offers evidence-based emotional and physical benefits when it is a mindfulness practice that is outside the norms of how we teach academic curriculum. That means freedom to choose and express without judgment and with privacy. (Sharing is totally okay if a child wants to share AND it should always be a choice.) If you would like more clarification or support around how to use breathing, moving and journaling at home or in your classroom, please reach out here:
THIS WEEK IN BREATHE -MOVE -JOURNAL
Journal Prompt: What is one small way you can put love out into the world this week? (Hint: you can start by smiling at everyone you meet or ask kids what they think.)