“Little kids rely on their moms to tell their story. They’re not going to remember.” – Heidi Swapp
This conversation hit me like a ton of bricks when I heard Heidi say it during an interview on the ScrapGals podcast. I’ve been scrapbooking for about 15 years but hearing Heidi talk about scrapbooking led me to a new revelation. It’s up to me to tell my daughter’s story.
This podcast got me thinking a lot more about how I want to document my daughter’s story. I may not always be caught up on my scrapbooks, but I need to continue writing down the stories and printing the photos of those memories. To help document her life, I created a Family Q+A Interview Sheet that you can find at the bottom of this post.
“It doesn’t matter how old a child is. They still love to see their photo. They still love to know things about themselves. And it creates a connection between you.” – Heidi Swapp
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What’s Your First Memory?
She is absolutely right! Can you remember your very first memory? Mine was in preschool when I was about 4 or 5 years old. I remember a bug crawling on my glasses while we played outside. What a strange memory, but that memory is nothing of significance. It doesn’t tell me anything about myself or what I was like as a child. All I know from that memory is that I wore glasses. Even after that preschool memory, things are pretty fuzzy up until I was in 3rd grade.
But, because of my Mom, I know about my favorite toys, trips, and silly things I did when I was a toddler. I know who I was as a child, who I played with, and other random moments from my life. All those memories of my life would be lost if my Mom didn’t take photos and share those stories with me.
Document Your Memories with Photos AND Stories
Our whole family loves to look through photo albums together and talk about all the memories that come up as we flip through the albums. It was one of my favorite things to do as a child, teen, and even now as an adult. I love to hear my Mom, Aunts, and Grandma tell us a stories about our family life.
As a new mom (and most would agree), we are obsessed with taking photos of our kids. They are our pride and joy and the things they do are precious to us. Whether or not I decided to scrapbook the photos, I always thought that those photos and stories were more for my enjoyment. But those photos can also help my daughter learn who she was and what life was like for her. I also want to capture who she is at any given moment using the Family Q+A Interview Sheet that I created. You can get a copy of it from my free resource library – the password is at the bottom of this post.
Why Every Mom Must Be a Memory Keeper
As soon as I heard Heidi talk about the role a mother plays in her child’s personal story – it was like a switch flipped. Scrapbooking was no longer just about the facts. The stories and the memories are important and it had been part of my childhood without really knowing it. Children rely on their mother’s to tell their personal stories. I knew who I was as a child because of my Mom taking photos and sharing the stories of those photos with me as I grew up. I must do the same for my daughter too.
As mothers we need to make the extra effort to print our family photos and document our stories. We must do this to allow our children to know who they were, what life was like, and how much you loved them. Without having those photos printed, you don’t remember to tell all of those stories. There are stories and memories that we remember without needing photos to remind us. But there are so many more memories captured when you have a book full of photos from your past.
Start Now
If you are not sure where to start, you can begin by doing an interview with your kids. Come up with some standard questions to ask them every few months or even once a year. It will be a great way to get the details of their story down on paper. You can also use the interview sheet that I created to get started. You can access the interview sheet and other printables in my free resource library.
So the next time you take pictures of your kids, remember to print them and document those stories. You can use whatever method you want to scrapbook those photos, but you must document those stories to pass onto your children. Your children are depending on you to tell their story!
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Julie
This post was inspired by the discussion on the Scrapgals podcast with Tiffany and Tracie from August 29, 2017 when they interviewed Heidi Swapp – you can listen to it here or find it on iTunes here.
Love your posts. Pls take this w a grain of salt … once a teacher; always a teacher. So, here goes:
The following sentence doesn’t require an apostrophe in the second word. The apostrophe makes it a contraction or stand for ownership – in essence making the word stand for ‘mother is’ or ‘mothers who own.’
‘As mother’s we need to make the extra effort to print our family photos and document our stories.”
Just remove the apostrophe & it’s right!
Again – I love your work! Please keep it up!
Thanks for stopping by and for your comment – the beauty of online content is that if there is something that isn’t quite right, it can be fixed, better than seeing the error in a printed book that you can’t correct 🙂
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