The Book of New Family Traditions (21 page)

Family Day

A couple in Minnesota adopted two Romanian orphans in 1991 and decided to celebrate the adoptions on an annual day they called Family Day. At a festive dinner, they retell the story of the adoptions but also take time to talk about a biological daughter who committed suicide in her teens. There are five candles on the cake, including one for this girl.

When I share this story, I sometimes hear from people who are disturbed by this and express a concern the kids might think they were adopted as “replacement children” for the suicide. But I believe in the positive intention of this family, which is to communicate that no matter what, once a person joins this family, he or she is part of it forever, and everybody’s story matters. I think that’s ultimately deeply comforting, conveying permanence.

Many Roots, Muck Loue

Adoptive parents try to raise their families to appreciate all aspects of their children’s roots, both the genetic ones and the cultural and personal traditions of the family they join. There is so much cross-pollination now, and scientists have shown that genetically, the people of Earth are a very mixed-up but nonhomogenized brew. I’m always heartened by stories I hear about adopted kids celebrating their multiple cultures with energy and creativity. My friend’s Korean-born daughter was trying to pick just the right wedding dress to show off the tattoo on her back: It’s a Celtic knot, in tribute to her “Irish roots.”

Talking to a Star

When Lucy Steinitz noticed that her daughter, adopted as an infant from Guatemala, got sad on her birthdays, wondering about the mother that let her go, Lucy invented a special birthday ritual. She told Elsita she didn’t know much about the woman but suggested, “If you look out your bedroom window and talk to a star, and tell her what she needs to know about you, I just know she’ll be listening.” The ritual always made Elsita feel better, and as a teenager, Lucy took her for a “cultural heritage” trip to Guatemala.

Mia’s Life Book

Jennifer Grant and her husband already had three children when they decided to adopt a fourth. They adopted Mia from Guatemala when she was about eighteen months old. She is the youngest now at nine, but her sister and two brothers are all only about two years apart.

Like most adoptions, there were emotional bumps along the way, many of which Jennifer explores in her fine memoir of adoption,
Love You More,
but the family found several rituals that helped greatly. A major one was the “Life Book” that Jennifer made even before she brought Mia home, and it’s something many adopting families do.

“It acknowledges that an adopted child’s life began when they were born, not when they come to your home,” says Jennifer. “I tell a little about Guatemalan history, what the culture and geography are like, what I know about her birth mother, and where she spent her first year and a half.” The book includes photos of Mia’s foster mother, that woman’s own children, and also pictures of Mia meeting her new family.

This book was an anchor, a love/security object, for Mia for quite some time. “I think Mia has read her Life Book about 100 times,” says Jennifer. “When she was little, it was her favorite book to read. I had the whole thing copied on cardstock, so she could carry it with her everywhere.”

Every year, they reread the book on Mia’s “Homecoming Anniversary” when celebrating her arrival. It’s a special day for the whole family, and the older kids write notes to Mia telling her what she means to them, and what they remember of her earliest days there.

Resources for Adoptive Families

There are many specialized resources for adoption, but here are some basic guides. Any parents contemplating adoption are advised to search for and work with reliable agencies, which will be able to suggest all manner of resources. The best agencies tend to have websites packed with articles and links and also offer occasional workshops and other programs for parents.

Magazines

Adoptive Families
is an award-winning national magazine that is published bi-monthly.

You can read some of the content on the website
AdoptiveFamilies.com
, and the site links to many good online resources.
Adoption Today
is also excellent, an all-digital publication that focuses particularly on international and trans-racial adoptions. That website is Adopt
Info.net
.

Books

There are hundreds of books, including many heartwarming individual adoption memoirs. Some of the good general-interest titles are:

•
The Connected Child: Bring Hope and Healing to Your Adoptive Family
(especially for parents who adopt from other cultures or have special-issues kids), by Karyn B. Purvis, David R. Cross, and Wendy Lyons Sunshine.

•
The Whole Life Adoption Book: Realistic Advice for Building a Healthy Adoptive Family
(new edition, 2008), by Jayne E. Schooler and Thomas Atwood.

•
Adoption Parenting: Creating a Toolbox, Building Connections,
edited by Jean MacLeod and Sheena Macrae, which includes essays from more than 100 experts in the field.

Summer Vacation Rituals

A balance needs to be found between the overprogrammed school year life of many kids and a summer of loafing. Family rituals for this time of year often center on summer food, trips to the local pool, and backyard games, when kids are not off at camp. Here are some fun ideas to try:

Books and Cones

One reason my son reads so much in the summer is that the local library gives the kids a “summer passport” to list all the books they read (or have read to them). Any child who clocks twelve hours of reading in a summer gets a free sundae at the local ice cream store in the fall. Why not make books a sweet treat now: Go to the library every two weeks, and stop for an ice cream cone after every visit.

Tour Your Town

One summer weekend each year, pretend your family just arrived as tourists and see the best your town has to offer. Visit historical sites, eat in the cool new restaurant, take a long bike ride through neighborhoods you’ve never visited. Take photos in front of landmarks, buy T-shirts, and send postcards.

New and Barbecued

Once a week, have a simple backyard barbecue, but invite a family in the neighborhood or from your children’s school that hasn’t been to your home before. Make a pact with your kids that you’ll serve some of their favorite foods like hot dogs and chips, but try one new grilled item each time, like grilled peppers, corn on the cob, or chicken and mushroom kabobs.

After-Lunck Siesta

During summers, whether they were at home or away, the Vogt kids had a period of thirty minutes to an hour after lunch when they went to their rooms to read or daydream. It was a serene time, no distractions, in the heat of the day, and it calmed and rested everyone.

Make a Movie

After school ends, have a “story conference” and come up with a wacky plot in which every family member plays at least one character. Design costumes. Over the course of the summer, shoot one scene at a time, in different locations. For credits, film one of your kids typing the title and list of actors on a computer screen. At summer’s end, invite friends and family to the “premiere.” Next summer: Shoot a sequel, or the prequel to a movie still to come.

Master a New Skill Together

Long summers and vacations are the absolute best times to learn a new skill that takes practice. Why not pick one, or several, that everyone in the family takes a hand at?

It could be old standards like playing a harmonica. Or learning simple juggling. Or basic magic tricks, starting with those that require only a regular deck of cards. There are tutorials on all of these and more available online, and additional resources at your local library. Many of these are quite portable too, so you can keep practicing if you travel for part of your vacation. And some satisfying skills like whistling require time and patience, but no props at all.

The fun of taking on something like this as a family is that you can build up to a talent show or other event at summer’s end, and find out which family member learned the most.

Getting There: Rituals for Cars and Planes

Vacation spots are mostly heavenly, but getting there can be challenging. Many families have created rituals that make the journey actually feel like part of the vacation.

Fuss Towns

Polly Mead drastically reduced the number of car fights between her four kids by creating the ritual of “fuss towns.” Before a long drive, she would locate a town roughly halfway to the day’s destination. The kids were not allowed to fuss and yell until they got to the outskirts of the designated fuss town, when those behaviors became mandatory. The kids would erupt and explode with a vengeance, but once they reached the other end of town, they calmed back down. Mostly.

Vacation Treasure Balls

Public Radio personality Marty Goldensohn told me his mother used to make these balls for car trips. She started with a small hard ball, wrapping it with half-inch ribbon around and around, folding in little toys, tokens, pieces of candy. During a long trip, each kid got one and could only unwrap to the next treasure at designated intervals.

If you try this with your kids, I assume you’d use different-colored ribbon for each of them so there would be no fights.

Rhyme Games

Car games are essential, and many of the best don’t even require props. Have one of the parents start a nonsense sentence, which every person in the car has to rhyme with another sentence. Nancy Shaw used to play a game like this with her children in the car, and later turned it into a series of best-selling picture books with such names as
Sheep in a Jeep
and
Sheep on a Ship.

Storyteller for Hire

Many parents keep their kids occupied watching TV shows and movies on portable screens during long rides, but I’d argue for a story the whole family can share. We always take chapter books on car trips, but the designated reader gets pooped before long. A great ritual is to get an unabridged book on CD from the local library. The story becomes a memorable part of your summer. Ask the librarian for age-appropriate books, but our favorites are the Harry Potter books;
The Trumpet of the Swan
read by author E. B. White; and
The Indian in the Cupboard
read by author Lynne Reid Banks. The story becomes part of your shared family culture. And the driver doesn’t get so bored.

Great Online Resource for Car Games and Activities

Laurel Smith is the former high school teacher and mother of three behind the website
MomsMinivan.com
. She boasts that her site contains 101 road trip games for kids, and I believe it. Here you will find rules to lots of classic games, along with fresh ideas for license plate games and on-the-road scavenger hunts and car bingo, for which you can download and print cards.

Being There: Rituals for Peak Vacations

Porcupine Award

The Routh family of Iowa spotted a live porcupine while hiking in the Rocky Mountains and declared it the strangest-looking creature they had ever seen outside a zoo. Thus was born the Porcupine Award, given to the family member who spots the weirdest animal on any trip, or even a long family hike. Mary Routh says it’s great because even the baby of the family sometimes wins. There isn’t an actual certificate given by the Rouths, but your family could create one. Or buy a cheap trophy and pass it from room to room back home, as different people “win.”

Every Picture Tells a Story

Think ahead about a loose plot that could be tied to your destination, and take a series of fun photos to tell that story. It could be as simple as creating a scrapbook travelogue starring your toddler daughter’s frayed teddy bear. Photograph him at the pool (not too close to the water), asleep in her bed, viewing the local sights. One family I know has a goofy Christmas gift exchange in which the same wacky object is passed from household to household: Whoever gets the thing in a given year invariably takes it on vacation and photographs it somewhere scenic.

An alternative: No matter where you travel in the world with your family, try to take the same photo. Have everyone make the same gesture, or photograph everyone making the same silly face or wearing hats or Groucho glasses. Save one photo from everyone you travel with to make a big collage for your family room.

Super Sand Castles

The Bonner family visits the same beach every year, and the whole family collaboratively makes a very large, complicated sand castle in their annual ritual. There are turrets