How Can Family Rituals Help?
I try so hard to institute some kind of schedule into our daily lives. Some days I succeed, some I don’t. Nap doesn’t always start at 1:30 pm, I can’t ever seem to have dinner ready by 6:30 pm, but bedtime, well, I usually make that happen at the appointed time! We have one rule though that stands true generally every night: we read one book with milk, brush teeth and then read one book before bed. It has become such a ritual that Birch talks about each step as we get ready for bed: “one book with milk now?” “Yes,” I answer. “Then brush teeth?” “Yes,” I say again. “Book before bed? ” he asks excitedly. “Yes, one more.” I respond. We go through this each night. I think he is checking to see if I will change course, ever. And to be fair, I have. Last night when we were all sick, brushing teeth seemed to be another exhausting chore, that even I, tooth-brushing neurotic, didn’t care about. As Alice points out in her post below, these rituals are important- for both us and our children.
Alice Kaltman
Family Rituals, Old and New
by Alice Kaltman
As I come off the high of the holiday season, I find myself thinking even more than usual about family rituals, the beauty and benefit of some and the stifling nature of others. At their best family rituals are grounding, connecting experiences. At their worst family rituals are boring senseless events we tolerate because of their cemented status in the bedrock of our family life.
If you’re lucky, you don’t have too many ritual obligations in your life, you have more ritual desires. Most of us have a bit of both, and when we get married and have kids, our stockpile increases in both categories.
Family rituals are fabulous for kids, providing a sense of security in a topsy-turvy world that even their competent parents (aka: YOU) have a hard time managing. Rituals help foster a sense of order and meaning in children’s lives. It is emotionally stabilizing for kids to know there will be a chicken dinner every Sunday, or two stories read every night at bedtime. Studies by the psychologists Stephen and Sybil Wolin have shown that kids who come from families with lots of rituals – ceremonial, religious, and the everyday – are less apt to indulge in destructive behaviors outside the home when they get older. So you may just have to suck it up and partake in boring rituals year after year, month after month, maybe even day after day for the benefit of your kids.
But no one says you can’t make things interesting and fun by blazing new ritual trails in the privacy of your own home. One of the great things about starting your own family is you can create new family rituals, and ditch some of the snooze-inducing, eye-rolling ones you grew up with. I thought it might be fun to share with you some rituals I’ve collected over the years from clients and friends to show you the range of ideas and ways families interpret the meaning of ritual. You have permission to steal any or all of them, by the way. If you have any family rituals of your own to share, by all means do so by leaving me a comment.
So if you haven’t already, start to create your own sampler of new and used family rituals. Who knows? If you do a good job, your kids might even continue them with their own families. Perhaps no new generations will ever feel bored, need to ask “can we leave yet?”, or ever have the need to roll their eyes, like ever!
- We make homemade waffles for breakfast every Sunday morning.
- Whenever we’d drive over a bump, my mother would step on the gas right at the top of the bump and our stomachs would jump and then we were supposed to say, “wham, bam, thank you m’am”.
- I would count the kids’ toes in the morning when they were waking up and would miscount intentionally, joking as if they had lost or gained toes over night.
- Ever since our son started school we have him tell us two things from his school day soon after he comes home, usually while he is having an after school snack. One or both of us will sit with him and give him our full attention for a few minutes before he’s off to doing homework and we are back to our work or tasks.
- Friday night lasagna. Everyone helps make it.
- Sabbath candle lighting.
- On cold mornings, before trekking off to pre-school, I would put my kid’s clothes in the dryer and heat them up before dressing her. She would wait naked under the covers of our bed. I would run in the room calling, “hot clothes, hot clothes!” She would laugh and smile as I put the warm clothes on her.
- We always play our own version of the alphabet game on long car rides.
- At bedtime my husband said “nite, nite, don’t let the bedbugs bite…(big pause)…ME!”. Not exactly deep in meaning and value, but still a constant in our lives and definitely something that gave structure and closure to the end of our kids days when they were young.
Alice Kaltman, L.C.S.W. has been working with parents and kids since 1988. In 2006, she co-founded Family Matters NY with Sara Zaslow, L.M.S.W. FMNY is a parenting coaching service for Brooklyn and Manhattan families, providing support through home and office visits. Alice lives in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn with her teen-age daughter and husband, the sculptor Daniel Wiener. She also writes fiction for kids, and dances professionally in her spare (?) time. Write to Alice at info@familymattersny.com. To see her resource listing and reviews on the blog, click here and here
Alice has her own page now! You can see all her articles listed here.
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