Family Traditions!

It is Easter time and I find myself wanting to dye eggs.  My children are all grown and have married and moved far away.  I have no grandchildren near.  Why do I want to dye Easter eggs?  Tradition.  Traditions!  (Cue Tevye from “Fiddler on the Roof.”)  We always dyed Easter eggs and then had creamed eggs on toast to use them all up, yellow yolks and whites streaked with blue and pink and purple dye that had leaked through any inevitable cracks, and all.  My mother did it, I do it, and my daughter said, “I still do this.  Even if no one else wants to decorate eggs, I boil them and dye them so I can have creamed eggs on toast.”

My dad was in the Air Force, so we moved often and saw many different traditions as we lived in different places.  In Montgomery Alabama, Easter meant a new fancy dress with white gloves and an Easter hat.  In Virginia, there were Easter egg hunts. My Jewish friends had their own traditions with Passover and the tradition-laden Seder.  In Spain there were processions with images of honored Saints carried by hooded and robed men.  In my own home, as a Christian, I woke my children up on Easter morning with a “Hallelujah, He is risen”. 

Children become very attached to rituals and traditions.  How many times has your child demanded the same bedtime book ad nauseum, and you can never skip or shorten a part.  Kids love rituals of all types: Those bedtime routines, the birthday meal, weekly movie nights, playing board games together.  Holidays, birthdays, weddings and funerals provide a purpose for coming together.  “It gives us an opportunity to affirm our faith—not just in our beliefs or our culture, but our faith in our families and the love we share.”¹  It is like a bank.  We deposit time, faith, love and energy to the family bank and then, during difficult times, we can withdraw what we need.  Family traditions are one of the deposits we make to the family bank.²

Traditions strengthen family bonds.  They create a feeling of closeness and togetherness, creating connections between family members.  In our family, we have a traditional Cousins’ Conference, three days each year when teenaged cousins meet for lessons, service, activities, swimming, hiking, and lots of bonding.  After 30 years, we are now down to 2^nd and 3^rd cousins and they come from many states to participate.  These bonds last well into their adult years and help them feel they are not alone, but part of something unique and special. 

As family comes together, we realize what is truly the most important part of life.  Researchers have consistently found that families that engage in frequent traditions report stronger connection and unity than families that haven’t established rituals together.

      Photo by Catherine Scott

Traditions give children a sense of identity and belonging.  Especially in their teen years, our children can feel lost and not sure where they belong.  Family tradition helps them see that they belong to a family.  My husband’s father used to say, after telling family stories, “You are a Brown, and that means something.”  It gives kids a feeling of security, safety, and comfort.  They know who they are as an individual member of a whole family.  Traditions teach children the story of their cultural or religious history.    Psychologist Marshal Duke has found that children who have an intimate knowledge of their family’s history are typically more well-adjusted and self-confident than children who don’t.³

Traditions link generations.  They tie us upward into our family tree and downward into the families that are brand new, giving our children both roots and wings.  They honor our ancestors and welcome new in-laws and babies.  One thing my husband loved doing at family reunions is to listen to the older aunts and uncles (who were great story tellers) reminisce about their youth and adventures.  Kids get to know and understand a little about the lives of a generation before, closing that proverbial gap. 

Sociologists and family researchers have found that when grandparents are involved in their children’s lives, the children have “fewer emotional and behavioral problems.”³

Continuing family traditions that have passed down through multiple generations is a great way to teach your children about your family’s cultural and religious history.  My brother’s wife played the part of Santa Lucia, wearing a wreath of candles, gently singing awake her children Christmas morning to honor their Scandinavian ancestry.  As her children grew, a daughter took the part of Santa Lucia, continuing the tradition through another generation.

Traditions teach heritage and values.  “One of the main purposes of rituals and traditions, whether religious or secular, is to impart and reinforce values.  Through nightly bedtime stories, the value of reading and learning is exemplified; through daily family prayer, the importance of faith is re-enforced; and through regular family dinners or activities, a sense of family solidarity is instilled.”³

     Photo by National Cancer Institute

Traditions build memories.  Memories are the moments we look back on to laugh about and to smile about because they made us feel so good on the inside.  They are the topic of conversation at family gatherings. “In her book Ask the Children Ellen Galinsky tells of asking children what they would remember most about their childhood.  Most of the kids responded by talking about simple everyday traditions like family dinners, holiday get-togethers, and bedtime stories,” rather than thing oneliness, boosting generosity towards strangers, and staving off anxiety.”³ 

Family traditions can also honor and instill memories of departed family members, as we tell stories about them and their values.

s they had.³

Positive childhood memories can reach into adulthood, helping us be happier and more generous.  “Recent research has shown that reflecting fondly on one’s past actually provides a myriad of positive benefits including counteracting l

Traditions help children be more grounded and focused.  In the hectic pace of life, tradition helps us see what is truly important.  It anchors us to our families and emphasizes the love we have for each other.  It teaches us how important it is to be together.  It gives our children something to hold on to. 

“Psychologist Marshal Duke has found that children who have an intimate knowledge of their family’s history are typically more well-adjusted and self-confident that children who don’t.  There’s something about understanding your past and knowing you belong to something bigger than yourself that instills confidence.”³

Traditions help our children be more resilient.  Paradoxically, the anchor of tradition allows our children to be resilient, confident that they are loved and knowing how to express love to others.  They learn to navigate change.  Researchers have found that even when the family itself causes stress, family traditions and rituals can provide comfort and security to children.  For example, one study found that “families of alcoholics are less likely to transmit alcoholism to the next generation if they maintain the family dinnertime ritual and do not allow a parent’s alcoholism to interfere with this time together.”³

Family traditions provide children comfort when there are few constants in their life, especially when there is change, or grief.  A move, a divorce, a death of a loved one makes everything new and strange for them, but at least they know that there is still Taco Tuesday and every Saturday they still have chores followed by a trip to the ice cream parlor.

Merging family traditions.  When a couple marries, they need to merge the traditions of each of their families.  Your family always had cornbread stuffing at Thanksgiving dinner, while his had bread stuffing.  Which tradition wins out? 

My husband’s father used to tell his kids, “We’re going on a trip.  Pack your clothes, we’re leaving in an hour.”  My mother, on the other hand, would plan weeks ahead, what we were going to do, what we were going to see, so we wouldn’t miss a thing.  We had to combine his family’s spontaneity resulting in surreptitious moments and my family’s planning so we’d find the jewels we might have otherwise not known existed.

A blended family with stepparents can become a nightmare, “because we and our children base a lot of our emotional and family lives in traditions.”¹  It’s a good idea to talk as a family about which traditions you’ll continue in your new family and which ones you will let go.  Get creative, try to compromise, and find ways to combine traditions, or better yet, create your own new family traditions.

Letting go of traditions.  Families are fluid.  They have seasons.  Traditions that worked when your children were toddlers might be resented when they’re teenagers.  Holding onto traditions that no longer work does nobody any favors.  While you should work hard to create and maintain long-lasting traditions for your family, don’t try to force a tradition if it’s creating more stress than joy.  Feel free to create new traditions that better fit a changing family and eliminate others.  As your parents age, maybe your mother shouldn’t need to be in charge of having all family get-togethers at her house.  As your son marries, maybe it’s OK for his wife to bring baked yams instead of the traditional candied yams you’ve always had.  “It’s important to be honest about what a tradition means to you, and what parts of that tradition carry the most meaning.  What is important is to keep our families warm and strong.  Anything less just isn’t worth the ruffled feathers.”¹

Some family traditions are just plain wrong and need to be eliminated.  Any tradition that lowers a family member’s worth or lessens their value, or that teaches incorrect values should be purged.  A tradition of the men in the family going out on a drunk every Saturday night is one that needs to be rejected.  A tradition where the wife is subservient should be removed.

Creating traditions.  There is no cookie cutter, no mold, no pattern for what your family traditions should look like.  Meg Cox, author of “The Book of New Family Traditions,” suggests that families have four types of traditions in addition to those that come with holidays or birthdays.³

·       Daily Connection Traditions.  These are the small things you do every day to enforce family identity and values.  These come from intentionally developing positive rituals around the routines of day to day life such as family dinner, chores, and bedtime.  Things such as having everyone sharing the best part of their day at dinner time.  Once I had two daughters that were constantly fighting and putting each other down.  We started circling the table and having everyone say one good thing about every other family member.  At first, they had a hard time finding something good to say.  But after a while, they started looking for the good things so they would have something to say.

Many parents have a bedtime ritual, such as reading a story and saying prayers. 

My mother used to sing bedtime songs to me, ones her mother sang to her.  I also sang songs to my children as they were going to sleep.

·       Weekly Connection Traditions.  These are special weekly activities like “a special Saturday morning breakfast or a weekly game night.”¹  We had a weekly family night with a short lesson, game, and treat.  Of course, they looked forward to the game and treat more than the lesson, and I still remembering playing tag with my kids on the front lawn.  Since the youngest couldn’t catch anyone but me, I was too often It.  When I was a child, every Sunday morning we would all get on my parent’s bed, lying in every direction, and read the Sunday funnies.
     

·       Seasonal Connection Traditions.  My children used to make May Day baskets from paper and fill them with flowers from our garden and take them to the neighbors.  They would hang them on the doors and ring the doorbell and run or hide. 

      Annual ski trips, or trips to the beach, or visiting out-of-town relatives during summer vacations all count.  Our family has annual extended family reunions, and now our children have children, they all still want to come.

·       Life Changes Traditions.  These are to celebrate the special moments in your family.  Things like starting school, birthdays, graduating, honors won, coming of age.

I asked my friends and extended family for their own traditions that they love.  Here are some of their responses:

1.       Reading stories before bed, family night snacks, making corny jokes, summer trips.

2.      Attending family reunions, family parties, family weddings, all things ‘family’.

3.      One-on-one dates with our children, children interviews.

4.      We have always reenacted the Nativity on Christmas Eve, sometimes using a live baby Jesus and sometimes we use a doll.  Even the big kids participate.  It isn’t always perfectly spiritual but it is always heartwarming.

5.      Our annual family hike in the Tetons.”

6.      After our dates, we’d always go into our parent’s bedroom and Mom would be so excited to hear about our dates, what we did and the wonderful time we had.  She never criticized or berated us, but asked, “Did he hold your hand?” or ‘Did you kiss?’ We could tell her everything.

7.      Sunday night dinner of grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup, while my mother read to us.  It never dawned on me until I was a mother that she was missing her dinner.

8.     We children making and serving dinner for our parents on their anniversary, with menus, waitresses (us), and candlelight.

9.      Old fashioned home-made ice cream each Labor Day.

10.  Camping and hiking trips, how we used to sleep out under the stars.  How it always seemed to take longer to hike in than to hike back out.  One trip, while listening to the adults talking on the night drive home, I created my own five rules for wealth: Pay tithing, Learn so you can Earn, Save what you can, Invest what you saved, and Take care of your stuff so you don’t have to replace it.

11.   Playing the alphabet game on long car trips.  Singing silly songs together in the car.

12.  Caroling and cookies for the neighbors at Christmas.

13.  When I was a teen and my father wanted to talk seriously with me, he always took me on a walk.
14. Homemade cards for aunts and uncles and cousins for all holidays.
15. Big extended family dinners.

What are the traditions you loved as a child?  What are ones you have in place with your own children?  What traditions would you like to create?

1.        Are family traditions important? By Jacob Clifton     How Stuff Works

2.        Why We Need to Maintain Family Tradition by Daffnee Cohen  Huffpost

3.        Creating a Positive Family Culture: The Importance of Establishing Family Traditions by Brett & Kate McKay  The Art of Manliness

Do Our Children Suffer from Too Much?

Any couple who has a new baby know that children complicate life.  When once you could just pick up and go somewhere, now you have to move an incredible amount of stuff.  Diapers, wipes, changing pads, bottles, bibs, change of clothes for excessive blow outs from one end or the other, a carrier, maybe a play pen or porta crib or stroller, toys, blankets, pacifiers and toys.  Logistics become complicated too, with nap time and play time and eating time; and if anyone of them is delayed, everyone is sorry.

When they get older, the stuff just keeps accumulating, and increasingly busy schedules compound the tension.  Unfortunately, this isn’t good for their mental health nor our emotional health.

So let’s talk about simplifying our kid’s lives: their stuff, their schedule, and their rhythm of life.

If you’ve ever tiptoed your way through a minefield of toys on the front room floor and felt extreme relief that you weren’t mortally wounded by a Leggo, you know that toys need to be tamed.  

Most children have too many toys.  The effect is sensory overload and an odd feeling of dissatisfaction.  So which toys do we keep and which do we donate or throw away?

• ·       Keep the comfort toys they take to bed—these should always stay
• ·       Keep toys that involve building, construction, and digging
• ·       Keep toys that involve role playing: kitchens, dress-up clothes, action figures or dolls that can be part of a story the child can imagine and participate in.
• ·       Keep receptive toys such as favorite dolls or stuffed animals: toys that just receive.

     

•      Keep creative materials such as paints, crayons, clay or play dough, stickers, glue, colored paper, and scissors.

     Ones that just sit on a shelf and look pretty, maybe in their original packaging, aren’t toys.  They are collections and maybe aren’t appropriate for a young child.

·       

• ·       Remove any toys that are broken or have missing parts.
• ·       Remove toys that limit imagination.  Toys that light up or make a noise when you push a button are prime candidates.
• ·       Remove toys your child hasn’t played with in over a month.
• ·       Remove toys that they’ve outgrown.
• ·       Remove duplicates (how many Barbie dolls or Buzz lightyears do they need?).

If there are still too many toys, put some away in a rotating library to exchange out from time to time.

Then find a spot for the ones you keep.  If you lean toward the OCD spectrum, you can have an individual place for each item and have your child put one toy away before they play with the next.  

If you lean toward the OCD spectrum, you can have an individual place for each item and have your child put one toy away before they play with the next.

If you are more laid back, you can just have some bins for each type of toy.

Although mine was more likely to look like this.

A huge toy box doesn’t work very well.  It keeps them off the floor but is overwhelming to a child opening it to find something to play with.  It hides broken toys, some clothes, maybe school work, and the good stuff.  And everything has to come out when searching for the prize toy at the bottom.

Once your children start school, they have too much paper.  It is staggering the amount of paper your children bring home from school on a weekly basis.  

Weekly newsletters, progress reports, graded papers, projects, permission slips, PTA forms, notices, art work, homework, and office forms fill their backpacks, and then overflow your tables and turn your counters into chaos.  What to do with it all? 

Each day as they come home, do a paperwork triage.  Notices of upcoming dates go on your calendar.  Sign any necessary papers and forms and return to their backpacks.  A lot of the paper load can just be read and then go into the trash.  Then comes the difficult job of decided what to do with your child’s art work, spelling tests, awards, poems and stories, etc.  Although you love every single bit of work he does, you need to make a choice: to keep files upon files of paperwork you’ll never look at to clutter your house, or to simplify and only keep the pieces that are extremely well done or have special significance.  

You can post most daily art work and good grades on the ‘frig or a bulletin board or hang them from a wire and admire them, but they aren’t permanent.  They will be replaced when the next ones are produced.  After you decide how much you are going to keep, have your child help you decide which are the very best to be saved.  You are not a bad mom if you throw away something your child made.

My dad was in the Air Force and we moved every one to three years.  I have nothing from my grade school years except the annual class picture.  I am not scarred by this, nor have I ever wished I could see the hand-print turkey I made in Kindergarten.  I kept some samples of my children’s school and art work, but only about one or two special items a year.  You can be a little more generous, but seriously consider if you are really giving honor to your child’s creation by keeping everything she makes and letting it pile up.

So ask yourself:

·       Is this a good example of my child’s work?

·       Do I like it or is it special to my child?

·       Is it something I’ll regret not keeping?

·       Have I already saved other examples of this type of school work or artwork?

If you decide to keep it, after displaying it, put it away in a file, folder, album, manila envelope, or box.

You should also consider simplifying their books, and their clothes.  You’ve got the idea now.

Sometimes harder than simplifying things is simplifying schedules.  Kids with a packed agenda of school work, sports, extracurricular activities, lessons, chores each day may feel stressed and chaotic.  

Developmental psychologist David Elkind reports that children have lost more than 12 hours of free time per week in the last two decades, meaning they’ve lost the opportunity for the creative play and exploration that children need. 

Simplifying your family’s schedule can reduce the frantic feeling of always being on the go.  We as mothers often have a hard time simplifying activities because this involves saying “no”, maybe to others, and maybe to our child.  Cutting back to just one or two of your child’s favorite activities can give them time and freedom to play and explore.  Setting effective screen time limits keeps your child distraction-free and helps her learn to find joy in the present moment.  

In Simplicity Parenting, Kim John Payne says, “A child who doesn’t experience leisure—or better yet, boredom—will always be looking for external stimulation, activity, or entertainment.”

Besides limiting activities and providing downtime, routines and teaching them self-sufficiency simplifies both their lives and yours.  When they learn to hang their jacket up when they come in the door, have a place for their homework, put their shoes where they can find them in the morning, there is no frantic panic in the morning.  Planning and prepping ahead also ease the frustration jams of the day.  

I remember one son who was late to junior high every day for a week because he couldn’t find his shoes.  Finally, on Friday, totally frustrated, I lost my temper and sent him out the door in his socks.  He meekly came back in about 15 minutes and I meekly let him in.  He didn’t lose his shoes after that.  He became responsible for knowing where they were.

And lastly, simplify the rhythm of their lives.  Institute quiet bedtimes, with a song or a story.  Get outside to run and play.  Nature provides endless possibilities for healthy stimulation, creativity and confidence building.  

Have family time together (that means you need to put away your smart phone or tablet too).  Don’t let the terrible news of the world overwhelm them—limit or edit outside information.  Simplify the small daily things.  Let them be messy, or silly, or creative, or adventurous.  

Let them be kids. 

Keep it Simple, Smarty

I have several fruit trees in my yard that I just completed pruning.  When I finished, it looked like there were as many branches on the ground as left on the tree.  Here in Southern California, my peaches are already blossoming and forming baby peaches.  Soon will come the heart-rendering job of thinning.  It just kills me to pull six baby peaches off a branch to throw away, leaving only three to grow.  

The only reason I do it is because I know that if I leave all of them on, I’ll have many tiny inferior peaches.  If I thin, I’ll have large, beautiful, more flavorful fruit.

We live in a time when we and our children can do more, have more, see more, accumulate more, and want more than any time we have ever known.  Too often we allow ourselves and our children to be driven from one deadline, activity, or opportunity to the next.  We are busily engaged in a multitude of trivial things that distract us from the few vital things that make all of the difference.  Maybe we need to do a little judicial pruning and thinning in our lives.

One of my daughters, who works as a personal organizer, visited me and helped me declutter and organize my garage.  While we worked, she taught me.  She said, “A popular decluttering book tells people to pick up each item they own and ask the question, ‘does this spark joy?’ and then let it go if it doesn’t.”  She doesn’t agree with this advice.

Does my toilet brush spark joy?  No, more like disgust.  But I’m not going to let it go because having a dirty toilet would be more disgusting.  There are things you keep because they are useful. 

The bigger problem with using the ‘spark joy’ approach is the mindset it supports. 

1) We place our own happiness above everything else and continue to define our happiness in terms of our possessions.

2) It does not help us overcome the pull of consumption in our lives.  Owning less is great, but wanting less is even better.

3) It does little to evaluate the motivations within that caused the clutter to build in the first place, so it just comes back.

My daughter proposes an alternative question she read in an article by Joshua Becker.  “Does it help me fulfill a greater purpose with my life?  …whatever [people] feel they were put on the planet to do, some of their possessions (or time, I might add) are either directly or indirectly helping them accomplish it, while others are holding them back.  It makes the best sense to keep what aligns with their goal in life and get rid of the rest.”

Sometimes we clutter our time like we clutter our homes.

I am sort of a jack of all trades.  I have been blessed with many interests and abilities.  I love to write, to paint, to compose music, to garden, to serve, to play the piano, to sing, to study, to research.  I am adequate in all of them, but not really good in any of them.  Why?  Because none of them are my ultimate aim.  I cannot be all things, and must choose where to spend my time and efforts.  My aim is to be a good mother, to raise productive, independent, caring, hard working children.  It is to be a good wife and treat my husband with love and respect and care.  It is to be a good person, serving those around me, being honest, keeping my word, being full of love instead of judgement.

I have taken classes and read to develop each of my interests, but not to the point of excelling.  I use them to serve others (playing the piano for the children in church, writing this blog to help younger mothers, sharing the bounty of my garden with my neighbors) and for my own enjoyment.  But they are not the dominant use of my time or energies.

So how should we be spending our time?  Maybe for some, becoming an outstanding artist is a central goal.  Maybe another yearns to be a concert pianist.  We need to identify our goals and then head in that direction.  What things are we doing with our time now that move us closer to our ultimate aim, and what things are getting in the way?  Could we use our time, money, and energy in better ways?  It would be a good idea for us to identify our main goal in life.  If we don’t know what the goal is, we don’t know what is most important to us and we fritter and clutter away our lives.

One year I was the room mother for one of my children’s grade school classes.  For a winter party, I made 32 felt ice skates with candy cane blades for the children.  It took hours and hours.  They were really cute, but--the only ones impressed were the other mothers, who were probably feeling intimidated because they didn't spend hours and hours on what they brought.  The kids didn't care one bit.  Being Southern Californians, they didn’t know what ice skates were.  The felt skates ended up on the floor or in the trash as the children ate the candy canes that they  would have been happy to have just plain.  

I clearly cluttered my life needlessly.

My daughter takes us back to the question of the toilet brush.  “In our lives,” she said, “we have things that we have to do that may not seem to be part of our true purpose.  We have maintenance tasks.  We have to sleep, we have to eat, we have to maintain our homes, we have to manage our money, exercise, shower, wash our children’s faces and behinds.  These things can be very time consuming but they are necessary.  We need to do them.  But it becomes a matter of balance.  If we let the maintenance tasks get out of balance in our priorities, they can obscure what we’re really trying to achieve.  Then, perhaps, we end up with things like a perfect Thanksgiving meal but high tensions among family members.  Or being on time to church with perfectly groomed children who resent being there.  Or such tightly controlled spending of our time and resources that we are unwilling to share our time or money to meet the needs of others.

Housekeeping has never been one of my interests or talents.  My dad told me that my room was like the layers in a geological formation.  He could tell what I’d done all week by delving into the layers of clothes on my floor.  

I “won” the pigpen award in my college dorm.  Years later, I hadn’t reformed.  A child of 10, coming to our house to play with my children, primly told me, “Your house is very messy.”  So at one point in time, I decided I was going to have a perfectly clean house all the time.  It was hard for me, but I was doing it, until I realized that I didn’t want to let my children make cookies in the kitchen, or do a craft project at the dining table, or play in the rain, or have friends over, or play dress-up, or build a fort of couch cushions and sheets, or many other things, because if they did it, they would make a mess, and the house wouldn’t be clean.  While I definitely needed to keep better control over the mess and clutter, I overbalanced my clean control and lost my aim.  As one dad said when someone commented on the worn spots his children had made playing on his lawn, “I’m raising children, not grass.”

Sometimes, when things go wrong, when we are under stress or duress, we think we need to work harder, accelerate our frantic pace, run even faster and do more to get through to the other side.  Pres. Deiter Uchtdorf, a former airline pilot, talked about what pilots do when they encounter turbulence. 

“A student pilot,” he said, “may think that increasing speed is a good strategy because it will get them through the turbulence faster.  But that may be the wrong thing to do.  Professional pilots understand that there is an optimum turbulence penetration speed that will minimize the negative effects of turbulence.  And most of the time that would mean to reduce your speed.  It’s the same principle that applies to speed bumps on a road.

“Therefore, it is good advice to slow down a little, steady the course, and focus on the essentials when experiencing adverse conditions.  When stress levels rise, when distress appears, when tragedy strikes, going faster and harder doesn’t ease the way.

“When we unnecessarily complicate our lives, we often feel increased frustration, diminished joy, and too little sense of meaning in our lives.  Instead we need to focus on what matters most.

“There is a beauty and clarity that comes from simplicity that we sometimes do not appreciate in our thirst for intricate solutions.  ...we would do well to slow down a little, proceed at the optimum speed for our circumstances, focus on the significant, lift up our eyes, and truly see the things that matter most.”

Once we have pondered, prayed, and decided which of the many things we’ve cluttered our life with need to be pruned out, it is yet another challenge to make it happen.  We need to need to think about which habits we should work on to make the worthwhile things become more automatic, more prominent.  Just like cleaning and organizing my garage will take constant effort to keep it from becoming filled with unimportant things again, it is daily efforts applied consistently over time that will keep our lives focused on the important and eliminate what is merely filling our time and lessening our strengths.

In my next blog in two weeks, I’ll share some practical hints and ideas in simplifying our children’s lives, which in turn will simplify ours.  Until then, find your joy.

     photo by shinosan