# Did anyone ever keep a diary as a child?



## Marie5656 (Aug 26, 2021)

*I am suspecting this was more a thing for girls than boys, though I may be wrong.  But did you ever keep a diary?  I happened to read an article abut them, and was thinking about them.  I had one.

*


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## Ruth n Jersey (Aug 26, 2021)

@Marie5656 When I was a kid I always got one for Christmas from my mom. I was pretty good at remembering to write in it on a daily basis. Most had a plastic cover and came with a little gold key.
I wish I had saved them. It would be so much fun to look back at what I wrote and what I considered so important or earthshattering back in the 50s during my preteen and early teen years.


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## Gemma (Aug 26, 2021)

No.  My mother was too nosey and would have made sure to find it and read it.  The less she knew, the better off I was.


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## jujube (Aug 26, 2021)

Yes, and I actually came across it several years ago.  I made three entries and all three of them were about how hard my mother made me work around the house (bulletin: my mother didn't make me work anywhere near as much as she should have.....)


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## katlupe (Aug 26, 2021)

Yes, I kept diaries but had to lock and hide them or my mother for sure would have read them.


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## Packerjohn (Aug 26, 2021)

Yes, when I was young and when I traveled the world.  I probably have 40 diaries.  Don't really want to burn them but I'm not sure what to do with them?  When you get to my age, having too much stuff is just a big headache.  Reading those diaries shows who I was at that time.  Reading the 5-year Diary I kept in elementary school is a real "eye-opener."  So many of my friends are now long gone.  There was Carol, Billy, Murray, Terry and many others.  I often wonder why I'm here and they are gone?  Maybe it's because I have a sense of humour about life?  Maybe it's because I was always the rebel rouser and never followed the politically correct line or the line that society told me I should do?  It's a bit of mystery but I'm still kicking around BC here for a few days before driving home.

Yes, it's true that more girls kept diaries than us guys did but that just goes to show that I've been pushing against "the grain" all my life.  I like to think for myself and let others think for themselves.


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## Shero (Aug 26, 2021)

I didn't keep a diary as a child, too busy surfing and swimming, but when I started travelling I wrote in journals. I now have a stack of them, they are invaluable!


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## Shero (Aug 26, 2021)

Packerjohn said:


> Yes, when I was young and when I traveled the world.  I probably have 40 diaries.  Don't really want to burn them but I'm not sure what to do with them?  When you get to my age, having too much stuff is just a big headache.


I wish you could find a way to keep them. I'm sure they would make a wonderful book


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## win231 (Aug 26, 2021)

It's probably true that women keep diaries & most men don't.
I never had one.  Reading my sister's diary was much more fun.
I had a girlfriend who let me read hers - many pages about me.  It would have made a porn star cringe.


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## hollydolly (Aug 27, 2021)

I kept one as a mid teen, and my father found it.. and showed it to the wicked stepmother, and I was taken to task for what I'd written in it... got a beating for saying both of them were abusive .... so I never kept one after that... but I have kept a diary pretty much ever since my Daughter was born....They are boxed in the attic.. and to this day I keep a physical diary in my bag, so every time I go out and if I stop off to have a coffee  on my own, I will write in my diary that day and perhaps the previous days events...

here are a few of my diaries from past years


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## Lee (Aug 27, 2021)

I got one as a gift, do not remember ever making an entry in it though.


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## Furryanimal (Aug 27, 2021)

No...but that was because I knew if my mother found it she’d read it,


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## Fyrefox (Aug 27, 2021)

I kept a diary only briefly, because if I were honest in it, I wouldn’t want other people to ever see it, and if suitable for public viewing, it would be insipid and boring, and of interest to no one.  Plus my mother _did _go through my stuff, and would have killed me had she read an uncensored diary...


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## moviequeen1 (Aug 27, 2021)

Yes, mine was pink,had a locket/key,similar to one show in Holly's picture,can't remember how long I had it
I now keep 2 journals,one is yearly where I write down what happen during the yr,started in 1979.My late mother used to write in her yearly journal,I continued her lead
The other I started in 2011 my 'retirement journal' though I don't write in it every day,usually 1-3 times/month. Its always interesting to go back&read what I was thinking about


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## RadishRose (Aug 27, 2021)

Once. I was maybe 11....It lasted maybe three months.


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## Sliverfox (Aug 27, 2021)

Some time in my early teens, is when I got  a diary,, kept  track of daily happenings.

By time  I meant  my  serious  boyfriend,, started to write in a  'code' that I thought mother  wouldn't catch on to it.
 When  we married, stopped writing in them.

After  hubby's retirement &  traveling  more , occasionally  write in a journal.

The one thing I did learn from keeping  track  of  problems/events that upset  me,,  helped understand , accept  things that you have  control no over.


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## feywon (Aug 27, 2021)

Kept journals throughout my teens and 20s, most often in one of those 'composition notebooks' because they were cheap. Still have select pages (got tired of moving the box of them so yanked out anything that was just bland 'weather report' sort of stuff.

i found them very useful both at the time and years later when i reading them to decide what was worth keeping because there were parts where i barely recognized the girl writing them--rationally i knew that was past me and we shared the same memories and internal narrative of our life and who we are.  But by turn of the century i had a better understanding and 'grasp' of it all.  i also saved correspondence from friends and after my first husband died (we were estranged at the time) in 1978, one of my two best friends from high school days was 'downsizing' for a move to cohabit with someone sent me all my letters to her spanning 1965 to 1978.  She said she could not bear to discard them because as my other HS BF said, 'you put some of your best writing in your letters to friends scattered around the globe'.   That was a great gift especially since a decade of them spanned the off/on years of relationship with first husband and reading them helped me see objectively how i would get emotionally healthier when apart from him, then get sucked into our patterns overtime when we reconciled. i lasted a little longer each time. 

In 1999 when in midst of my last divorce, and the bankruptcy proceedings it necessitated, i kept a 'gratitude' journal and what i called my 'Let Go and Let It Be' box. The former was to remind me what 'working' in my life, and what of value i still had in it (my children, my furry companions, a job). The latter is where i put papers and receipts representing things i needed to do to resolve everything. That was to remind me that i had done all that was necessary and required of me, and so it was pointless to be anxious or 'worry' in the slightest.


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## Mr. Ed (Aug 31, 2021)

I started a diary in January https://penzu.com.


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## Tish (Aug 31, 2021)

I received one as a gift and kept it updated until my snoopy sister found it.


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## MarciKS (Aug 31, 2021)

no because i knew i'd never have the privacy to have one. my mother would've always been in it. i have one now but it's just me so it's ok.


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## Sassycakes (Aug 31, 2021)

I had a diary as a teenager and kept writing in it until after my husband got out of the Navy._ My husband got drafted right before we got married when I was 20yrs old. It helped relieve my tension during that time._


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## IrisSenior (Sep 1, 2021)

I did write in a diary for many years and went back to look at some awhile ago...boy, I was boring as I wrote some of the same things everyday like when I woke and when I went to bed. This is one of my projects that I have to do that I will go through my keepsake tote and decide if I really want to keep some of the stuff that in it.


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