Before You Forget: The Widsom of Writing Diaries for Your Children [Paperback]

Kelly DuMar (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 2001

The first book for parents to apply the wisdom of personal journaling to parenting. Teaches parents everything they need to know to begin writing diaries to their children, saving their stories as they grow.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Ms. DuMar is an educator from Sherborn, Massachusetts.

About the Author

Kelly DuMar, M.Ed., is a Harvard-educated counselor, workshop facilitator, and playwright who has been keeping diaries for her three children for over sixteen years. She has been facilitating Diary Door Workshops for over twenty years. Kelly is a certifed psychodramatist, a Fellow in the American Society for Group Psychotherapy and Psycholdrama, and a member of the National Association for Poetry Therapy. She lives on the Charles River in the Boston area with her husband and three children.

Product Details

• Paperback: 225 pages
• Publisher: Red Pail Pr (September 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0970840101
• ISBN-13: 978-0970840103
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,993,977 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Parenting Inspiration!, May 28, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Before You Forget: The Widsom of Writing Diaries for Your Children (Paperback)

I have thouroughly enjoyed the author's stories as well as her storytelling technique. It is an inspiring parenting tool, as well as a feel good reading experience, and one that I will go back to over and over again. I have given 3 away as gifts in the first 2 weeks after reading it because it is the kind of book that needs to be shared... and I'm not giving up my copy!!

We have all written a letter or made notes to our children when we have something monumental to share. What the author helps us understand (and it's really been right there under our noses) is that all the stories, no matter how casual or routine they seem at the time, are equal in our children's minds, as they are their stories, and the fact that we treasure those stories enough to write them, is monumental in itself to our children.

Besides the motivation and inspiration she provides to tell our childrens stories, her writing is so pleasurable, I can't imagine not enjoying anything the author would give to us. So I look forward to her next book, and of possibly hearing more stories like the one with Perrin and the moon that she will some day hold in her hands.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Keeping in Touch, May 22, 2001

By 

Lisa Friedlander, LiCSW (Tewksbury, MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Before You Forget: The Widsom of Writing Diaries for Your Children (Paperback)

Kelly DuMar's book is a true original. During the first of her third pregnancies, DuMar began keeping diary letters to her child-to-be. Continuing this process through three children, she has a collection of letters which document, interpret, love, and laugh through the baby-steps, discoveries, antics and landmark events that shape her children's lives as well as her parenting skills. Through examples of her own writing as well as exercises she calls diary door openers, DuMar gently guides the reader--perhaps a parent, grandparent, or any adult who values her relationship with a child or children--across the threshold and into the delighting world of writing diary stories about the children in one's life and the relationships one has with them. From days of oral traditions to the present, children love to sit around the hearth, the camp fire, or in the glow of a fading day and listen to stories about their acts of bravery or mastery, their funniest moments, their first dates. What a rich experience for a parent, to reach for a diary and read your child something you wrote five years ago, refreshing the memory and revisiting the past in a vital, interactive way. Dumar is breaking new ground in "Before You Forget," and writes in an accessible, down-to-earth way about parenting children, writing about their lives, and honoring family life in a creative and satisfying way.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Open a New Door in your Parenting Life, October 4, 2001

By 

Debra Ann Gfeller, MD, Fellow of the Academy ... (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Before You Forget: The Widsom of Writing Diaries for Your Children (Paperback)

Kelly DuMar's book has been a gentle stimulous into a new media of communicating with my children. Now, through this new genre of diary writing, I feel I have a place to take my experiences with my children, whether they are conflicts or compromises or simply shared fun, and I can explain how I am feeling about these experiences in real time, knowing that my words will be read and better understood in the future. Kelly has a way of encouraging her readers at every step to see this as a truly fun and rewarding experience, and she gives you lots of excellent suggestions to get you started. I feel I have been given a gift in this book, and that I am creating a gift for my daughters as I learn how to walk through her diary door.