How old do you have to be before you start preserving your life story? Most people don’t even think about it until after retirement age but there is no reason someone can’t start much earlier than that. Would you think it was crazy if I said 4 or 5 year olds could start recording their life stories? You probably would, but let me explain.
In this crazy busy world we live in parents may find it difficult to fit that essential one-on-one time with their kids into the family’s hectic schedule. Unfortunately all those meetings, after school activities, nights full of homework, big work projects, and everything else that fills a family’s home, leaves little time for the most essential activities; connecting with each other. There are always so many things to do, the moment we have some free time the void is instantly occupied by one of countless activities lined up waiting to steal our time. It is up to us to create activities that are not only going to fill our time but also make that time fulfilling. It is also up to us to make room in our schedules for the activities that allow us to actually connect with our families and build the relationships that will last forever.
One of the best activities I’ve found that gives us a space to connect with our kids, give them our full attention, make them feel special and loved, and that also helps them preserve their memories and life story is Kid Interviews.
Kid Interviews are exactly what they sound like. They simply involve you, your kid, and a recording devise. The idea behind kid interviews is to create a moment in time where everything is put aside except for your relationship with your child. It is a moment where all the noise is silenced, all the distractions removed, and you are left with space where you can just communicate and connect. There doesn’t even have to be an agenda, you can simply sit down and start talking. You don’t have to record the session, but if you do you’ll have it forever so you and your child can go back and have a glimpse into what their life was like when they were 5 or 8, or 10 years old.
It is a moment where all the noise is silenced, all the distractions removed, and you are left with space where you can just communicate and connect.
Connecting with each other is the whole point of doing kid interviews. Your children crave your attention and want to know that your focus is on them. Kid interviews is a great way to make that clear for them. It is the perfect way to help them feel like you care, want to listen, and value them more than anything. Starting this practice when they are very young can help build the solid relationship you will want as they get older and less reliant on you.
There is a great sub benefit of doing kid interviews; preserving life stories. When you record your kid interviews you are preserving moments of introspection and connection that you and your child will be able to look back on forever. How much do you remember about your thought processes, ideas, and feelings when you were a child? Probably not much. By recording your kid interviews your child will have a window into their mind as a child that they probably wouldn’t have any other way. Regular home movies typically don’t capture a lot of deep thought, introspection, and personal interaction. They usually consist of some moment running around, blowing out birthday candles, or jumping over waves at the beach. Saving these one-on-one moments could prove to priceless to your family story in the future.
If you choose to record your kid interviews you can either video record it, or audio record it. Here are some tips for both approaches.
Whether you record it as video or just audio, try to create a special setting. Don’t do it in your car as you drive to tee ball practice. Set it up in a room or at a table and make it clear that this time is set apart from your usual day to day lives. It is a special time for you to focus on your child and make them feel special.
If you video record it, make sure you are in good lighting and there isn’t any distracting background noise. You can use a tripod for the camera, or you could simply hold the phone or camera and record as you talk.
If you audio record it. Try to get a microphone your child can sit in front of. Kids love microphones and rarely get to use them. Giving them a microphone to speak into not only makes the audio quality better, it also makes your child feel important and signals to them that this is a special unique experience. It could also help them focus better. Again, make sure there is no distracting background noise.
Here are some questions you can ask:
- What do you like about school?
- What do you think of being a part of this family?
- Who do you look up to, and why?
- What is something you are good at?
- What is something you want to be better at? How can you get better?
- What would the perfect day be like?
- What is something that made you sad recently?
- What are you looking forward to?
Kid interviews can be something you schedule out every so often. I recommend you do it at least once a year. Around your child’s birthday is a good time to do it so you can preserve a snapshot of their growth and intellectual development over the years. You could also do it monthly or every six months. Whatever time frame you feel is best will work. Perhaps you make it a monthly or even weekly thing but the different time frames have slightly different purposes and structures.
For example, you could schedule a kid interview with your child once a week but the weekly sessions are only 10 minutes long and you and your child both come with 2 questions for each other about things that happened or experiences you had that week. You could then make the first Sunday of every month the “hat session” where you both prepare and put a prompt to elicit a true story from your lives and you each have to pick one of the prompts from a hat and tell that story to the other person. You could then have the yearly session scheduled around your child’s birthday and in that session you have a list of 20 or so standard questions that pertain to the year they’ve had and the growth they have experienced.
These are just examples of how you could structure it. You can set it up however you feel it will be best for your family and situation. Get creative and put a structure together that will allow you and your child to really know each other and develop a strong bond that will last forever.
Watching parents do kid interviews is pretty amazing. Both the parent and the child light up. You can see them getting closer to each other right in front of you. Few things can have such a positive effect on family relationships. I encourage you to try a kid interview. Play with the idea and come up with a structure both you and your child enjoy. It is up to you to create the kind of relationship you want to have with your child. After years of conducting and recording kid interviews, you could have an unbreakable relationship with your child and a priceless collection of memories.
