Preparing for the family’s annual summer vacation focuses my mind on the importance of having family traditions.
Traditions can be daily, weekly, yearly, or longer. We all have daily traditions that we take for granted. Do you wake your kids up the same way every day? Do you put them to sleep in the same manner? Is there a special game you play on the car ride to school? These routines help define our relationship to our children and to the world itself.
One of our family’s weekly traditions is letting both kids eat Friday night dinner in front of the television. Yes, for all of you Screen Time Police Officers out there, you read that correctly, in front of the television. Even further, there’s very little communication that happens besides delivering and replenishing food and drinks. The adults sit off to the side and have “adult” conversation while the toddlers take in the newest Paw Patrol while shoveling a week’s worth of leftovers into their mouths. Judge away.
Traditions can help teach children and others about religious practices as well as pass down behaviors specific to one’s culture. They can also help mark seasonality, which becomes super helpful when living in a place where the weather stays the same throughout the year. Or, traditions can just be a time when mom and dad recover from a long week, and the kids get to ease into their weekend doing something they desperately want to do.
“Hank, why do you drink? Hank, why do you roll smoke? Why must you live out the songs that you wrote? Over and over, everybody met my prediction. So if I get stoned, I’m just carryin’ on an old family tradition.”– Hank Williams Jr.
What traditions do you and your family practice? Are they positive or negative? Are you mindful of them and their impact?
Traditions can also be the suck-o-licious kind, like, packing for a family of four to be away from home for a week, which is what I need to get back to doing.