What is the Pillow Chat Diary?

The Pillow Chat Diary is a little book which offers children the chance to share worries and fears without the need to talk face-to-face. Children simply write in the diary and slip it under their pillow where their trusted adult can then find it and respond.

Used in this way, the Pillow Chat Diary gives a child a new way of communicating with their parent/trusted adult about anything happening in their life. For children, some questions and topics may feel too scary to talk or ask about face-to-face, they may feel unsure about how their trusted adult will react to a difficult question; and it can be hard for the adult to know what to say straight away. The Pillow Chat Diary can take away this pressure, by allowing children to ask questions or tell their parents/trusted adults things that may feel too scary to say out loud; and by giving the adult time to think of a response.

My story with the Pillow Chat Diary

The Pillow Chat Diary came about from my family’s own personal experience. In 2007, when I was 18 months old, my dad was diagnosed with a rare, incurable cancer. This meant that he would go through a lot of different treatments and his health was unstable. As a young child, I was unaware of just what was happening but getting older meant I would develop anxieties and questions about exactly what my dad was going through and why. I distinctly remember having a lot of difficult questions about everything that my dad was going through and what would happen. However, even asking the questions felt difficult because I never wanted to upset my mum. So, my mum came up with the idea of using a diary with my older brother and me.

She explained to us that we could ask anything in the little book she gave us and slip it under either our pillows or hers and she would give each of us the best answer she could. Using this book felt like a relief for me, my brother and my mum. My brother and I were able to ask the (many) questions that raced through our heads without worrying about upsetting our mum, and my mum could take her time to answer these often-hard questions.

How the Pillow Chat Diary can help

From the diary I used, my parents went on to create more just like it for other children and parents to use. It became known as the Pillow Chat Diary. My dad died in 2020, when I was 14, following a 13-year battle with his cancer, outliving doctors’ predictions by 12 and a half years. I feel that having the Pillow Chat Diary to use was essential for my brother’s wellbeing and mine because even as children we could tell when there was difficult news, even before we were told. So, having this resource meant that we didn’t have to worry about what might be happening as we knew that we could ask at any point with the Pillow Chat Diary. Even though the news was often very hard to hear, I believe that it is so important not to keep children in the dark as, from experience, they are aware of more than you might realise.

This diary could benefit so many children in difficult situations, such as having a poorly parent, bereavement, parents divorcing, but also just for questions about life and growing up. I personally found that the simple action of writing down all of my anxieties made it feel slightly better already.

This little resource now exists to support other children, and I feel very proud that from such a difficult time in my family’s life, we have created something that will hopefully help others.