I truly believe kids need traditions in their lives. They find comfort in predictability in a world where they have very little control and traditions create predictability. Personally, we have established daily, weekly, monthly and yearly traditions for our family.
Our daily tradition is as simple as praying before bedtime. We also eat together as a family every night. Weekly, we have Family Day on Sundays, where we don't make any outside plans and try to stay home to spend time together, specifically focused on the kids. Monthly, Mike takes the kids on "special dates" to Home Depot or Lowe's to build things together. And I'm sure many of you share annual birthday and Christmas traditions that are similar to ours.
Our daily tradition is as simple as praying before bedtime. We also eat together as a family every night. Weekly, we have Family Day on Sundays, where we don't make any outside plans and try to stay home to spend time together, specifically focused on the kids. Monthly, Mike takes the kids on "special dates" to Home Depot or Lowe's to build things together. And I'm sure many of you share annual birthday and Christmas traditions that are similar to ours.
As the holidays approach, I begin thinking about traditions. Most of my (positive) memories as a kid revolve around our family traditions. If you think back, yours probably do, too.
I've heard it said that if you don't have a lot of childhood memories, your life probably wasn't very eventful. Things were probably pretty routine for your family with few "out of the ordinary" events to stick out in your head. But anymore, it seems that nice, normal, simple childhoods are rare.
For me, I hardly remember eating meals as a kid. Though I know I ate three square meals a day, I couldn't tell you what we typically had for breakfast, lunch or dinner...even through high school. It's all a big blur. Yet every Sunday as a teenager we went to the movies. I remember the tradition well, even though I don't remember the movie titles.
Knowing that the mundane details of life fade away in our minds, I try to intentionally create memories for my kids. Last year, "Simple Mom" wrote a post titled Family Traditions: 10 Ideas to Get You Started that has some other fun ideas, if you're interested.
Some traditions I've incorporated into our family include:
Some traditions I've incorporated into our family include:
- Saturday morning cartoons (since the kids rarely watch t.v., this is a treat)
- Sunday is Family Day (we decline invitations to BBQs, birthday parties and play dates)
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| {squirt bottle + batter = letter pancakes} |
- Breakfast in bed on Mother's Day and Father's Day
- Half-birthday celebrations (consisting of the dinner menu of the half-birthday person's choice, plus cupcakes with candles for dessert) and many other birthday traditions.
- Annual Easter Egg Hunts
- Christmas in July (I'm going to start allowing the kids to invite friends next year)
- First and Last Day of School Traditions (also, there are other great school tradition ideas in the comment section of this post)
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| {the full fondue spread} |
- Annual Family Pie Night (to get my whole, extended family together between Thanksgiving and Christmas with no competing family commitments)
- And you know we have our Christmas Traditions, like decorating the tree the day after Thanksgiving, daily advent calendars and 25 Days of Christmas activities. (there are more great Christmas tradition ideas in the comment section of this post)
I love traditions. What traditions do you have?
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2 comments:
"You Are Special!"
Another tradition that you have that your kids totally love (and that I wish I'd done) is honoring the person that has a special event or milestone with the bright red, unmistakeable plate that has "You Are Special" written on it. Ryan particularly loves this tradition and even asks if this is a day that he can have this plate come down from its holder to honor him during meal time.
Genius!!
I love family traditions too Katie. I think it's important and fun for the kids and for them to add it to their own when they become adults/parents one day.
I also have a hard time remembering all the details of what foods we ate growing up. I know every Friday we got pizza and subs for dinner. On New Years Eve we had lobster, steak, shrimp cocktails at home. My kids always ask what I ate for breakfast or packed for lunch and I honestly can't remember neither does my mom. Anyhow, my kids will remember their food likes and dislikes and the in between because I actually have a food album for them to look thru since they were babies.
Thanks for the reminder about traditions.
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