Week Sixteen: Your Children

Your Child or Your Children is the topic of this week's prompts. Is there anything more amazing than becoming a parent? The responsibilities, the joys, the trials...probably few things create more significance--for better or worse--in our lives than that of the parent-child relationship, whether it is the one with our own parents or the one with our children.

If you are not a parent, you may wish to choose a person in your life that you may look upon as a surrogate child, whether a step-child, niece, nephew, cousin, or family friend. You may also wish to share about the choice--or lack of choice--involved in not having children and how that affects your life.

*How many children did you want to have? How many do you have?

*Did you have gender preferences (one boy and one girl, or all girls, etc.), and if so, why? What did you get?

*What are the names of your children? Who were they named for and why?

*When and where were each of them born?

*Did you adopt? Write about your adoption experience: how long you had to wait, which country you adopted from, open or closed adoption, etc.

*If you had biological children, was it difficult to conceive? If so, write about that experience.

*Share any stories you remember from the pregnancies of each child.

*Share the story of each child's birth.

*Write about anything significant that you remember from the different stages each child has gone through, such as infancy, toddlerhood, the first day of Kindergarten, elementary, middle or high school, college, marriage, being a parent themselves.

*Describe each child's personality, interests, and talents.

*Describe each child's features and build.

*Describe the relationship of each of your children to each other and to your spouse.

*Write down the wish you have for each child's future.

Add favorite photos of each of your children to your journal.

Our topic next week will be Your Pets.

Week Two: Your Birth

This week's topic is Your Birth. Please use common sense when posting personal information about yourself on the Internet. You may wish to have a complete posting in a written journal or in a document on your desktop, and only post a filtered version online. For instance, I will be writing more about my birthplace than the birth date itself (a fact that I wish to keep private, not for vanity's sake, but for security from identity theft). Here are your prompts:

*When were you born?

*What day of the week did your birthday fall on? (If you don't know, use this perpetual calendar.)

*Do you think that the old nursery rhyme about being born on a certain day of the week accurately reflects your personality? Why or why not?

*Were you born on a holiday? If so, which one?

*Which famous person do you share your birthday with? What is your opinion of these people?

*What saint day were you born on? If Catholic, do you pray to this saint? Do you feel he or she has helped you in any special way?

*Do you share a birthday with any of your ancestors or relatives? Or is your birthday the same date as an ancestor's or relative's date of marriage or death?

*What is your astrological sign? Do you think your sign fits you? What about your Chinese sign? Do you believe in astrology?

*What major events happened on the day you were born? What happened the year you were born?

*Where were you born?

*Were you born in a hospital, at home, or somewhere else?

*Why were you born where you were? Were your parents living in that town, or somewhere else?

*Who was in attendance at your birth?

*Is there an interesting story related to your birth?

*What do you know about the history of the place where you were born?

*Do you still live in the place where you were born? Why or why not?

See if you have a copy of the earliest photo taken of you, and add it to your journal.

Our topic next week will be Your Family. See you then!