What Family Rituals Have You Invented?
When my daughter was about one and a half years old, I found myself on a mad quest.
“What is our family manifesto?” – I asked my husband. “What are our core values? What rituals keep us on earth? We don’t have any rituals! “(I was reading a lot to Brené Brown at the time.)
My husband, who is familiar with my sudden life crises, answered something like this: “I’m not sure. What’s for dinner? “
I had a wonderful childhood, but we didn’t have many rituals. We didn’t make Santa Claus, bake Christmas cookies, make Easter baskets, or throw firecrackers in our backyard on July 4th. We collected medlar from Grandma’s tree every summer and cleaned them all day until our nails turned orange. I remember that well. I think it’s true that no matter how simple it is, when you do something over and over, year after year, it becomes a part of you.
I study how important rituals are for children and how our job is to create them. Dr. Laura Markham from Aha! Parents write that the rituals that can be of any “routine with a sense of” – bedtime stories, semi-sweet cakes to celebrate the afternoon of birth , name of the dishes that you regularly filing – are “an important tool to help children feel secure in the fact that they should feel like a chaotic world. ” They shape our family identity and help children cope with the many changes that come with age. Strong family rituals are associated with children’s health , academic performance, and a sense of stability in coping with difficulties such as divorce.
Now that my daughter is several years older, new rituals are constantly being invented. Every night we sing the song “Brush your teeth” to the tune “Alouette”. Every morning my husband writes my daughter a note at lunch on sticky notes (usually a Jack Handy quote ). Every Friday night we go to a Japanese restaurant. The great thing about families with very few traditions is that we have little expectation of what we should do. We can do everything on the go.
What family rituals did you grow up with? Did you pass them on to your children? What new have you invented?