How Reflective Freewriting Can Help Us Live Meaningfully Alongside Young Children

Illustration by Micah C., age 33

As both a teacher and writer, reflective writing is a practice that helps me process and understand my role within the life I live with children, particularly freewriting. Whenever I feel most stuck, I write. Not for this blog. Not for my job. But as a way to get clarity about what I’m doing, feeling, and knowing deep inside. And while freewriting is a tool I learned as a creative, freewriting is not just for “Writers.” Freewriting is an accessible way of mindfully checking in with yourself, your thoughts, and your feelings. This article can tell you more about the general practice of freewriting, but to put it simply: You just write. By Hand. For a while. 

But how do you freewrite about life with children?

Set aside some time alone. 5 minutes can be enough. Put your pen to paper and write. Don’t assess, correct, or censor. Start with the idea of the children you live with. Maybe you are having a hard time leaving your child for work each day, putting someone to sleep at night, or worried you’ve got a bully on your hands. Start right there, but don’t stop, even if you have to write “this is silly, this is silly, this is silly” over and over until another thought somes. Follow yourself wherever you are - keeping in mind that you probably don’t know where that really is. A windy road will still lead you back to yourself if you are willing to be found. This process can provide clues and insight about the distance between where you are and where you want to be in many aspects. You just have to follow the breadcrumbs that are hiding in your brain. 

Not sure what any of that meant? 

Well, let me show you.

Below is a transcription of a freewrite I did on this very topic, because what better way is there to write about freewriting than freewriting? Though this exercise was edited slightly for clarity, it is an example of the twisty inner life we all lead, which does not pause when we are caring for children, and which deserves our notice and care. If nothing else, I hope this peek into my mind inspires you to take time to think deeply on your own terms.

”The act of writing is a powerful one. Putting marks on paper puts you in direct communion with your own thoughts. You see your ideas, your feelings, your worries, and your words reflected back to you before your eyes. You think and feel and act on those impulses without the lasting impact they may have at any other time (say, the toy aisle at Target or the last 5 minutes of the children’s lunch time). Instead, you’ve just given special, sacred shape to your innermost self. It’s a shape you can see and content with as you go. Think deeper, do more (writing, thinking), and experience the sense of relief that comes from venting - with the added benefit of having really, truly listened to yourself. When else in your life do you truly remove your self-judgment? Or rather, when do you encounter your own shame, fear, or worry, accept it, and move forward with it. You can’t deny what comes up when you freewrite. There’s no need to. You can just see it and keep going. Maybe you dig a little deeper. Maybe you back off a little. But you don’t have to deny anything you put on the page. It’s for you alone. 

...just don’t stop. Commit yourself to a time or page minimum. Do not stop writing words until that quota is met, and watch what you do with what you’ve seen emerge in real time. When you stop, you censor, and deny yourself the opportunity to really understand what you were getting at, where you were headed. And isn’t that experience a metaphor for living alongside young children? We only stop having an impact when we withdraw --- or rather, when we withdraw from the hard parts, we lose our sense of agency and momentum. We still have an impact, but it becomes unceasingly tangled. Freewriting is a way to practice untangling what we think, feel, and just maybe, glimpse by glimpse, who we are. 

Will your hand hurt? Yes. 

Will your heart hurt? Maybe.

At least you’ll know you’ve looked at your wounds and kept moving anyway. 

Maybe your heart will soar.

When we keep going, we see that things change; even just over the course of three pages, our whole outlook can change, become a new place or a new way of being in the world. When we start to witness the impermanence of our feelings and frustrations, we are freed up to try new things, give ourselves new chances to succeed or to fail - and move on. And when we learn to give ourselves that grace, it becomes much, much easier to gift it to someone else. My ability to witness my own changeability gives me hope and allows me to be confident about the development of everyone around me, child and adult alike. 

But when I don’t write, don’t find some other way of channeling, being watchful and kind to my thoughts and emotions, I am stymied. I feel myself become tense, agitated, and over the course of days or weeks, I make the people around me feel stymied, too. Especially children, who are so inextricably tuned in to the feelings and shifts around them. They haven’t learned to numb or block out all the stimuli that got me into this state in the first place. And I don’t want them to. So I have got to learn to undo the grip I have on my baggage, on the unheard self I’m holding in my brain or gut or wherever it starts to get out via rage or fear or sickness. 

And I don’t have to fix that self. I just have to hear it. That’s really all it needs. And when I muster the courage to do so, I feel good enough to make more healthy, informed decisions about everything in my life. I live in the way I want to teach. I teach in the way I want to live.” 

If you live in or near Los Angeles and want to learn more about freewriting and other forms of reflective writing for parental or pedagogical insight, click here for our next reflective writing workshop.