The Book of New Family Traditions (3 page)

Source: Dr. Steven J. Wolin, psychiatrist and professor at George Washington University Medical School. Dr. Wolin said in an interview with the author that he has long been fascinated by cases in which children from extremely troubled backgrounds still manage to grow up well-adjusted. With colleagues, he conducted a series of studies of families of alcoholics during the 1970s and 1980s, writing many papers on the results. In the
Journal of Studies on Alcohol 41
(1988), he and several colleagues published a paper, “Disrupted Family Rituals: A Factor in the Intergenerational Transmission of Alcoholism.”

Study 3

Children who grow up with solid, satisfying family rituals, including such traditions as dinnertimes, weekend outings, vacations, and holidays, adjust much more easily and happily to college life.

Source: Dr. Barbara Fiese, a professor at the University of Illinois and director of the Family Resiliency Center there, has written often about the importance of meaningful family traditions in such publications as the 2006 book,
Family Routines and Rituals
(Yale University Press). Her many reports on the topic include “Reclaiming the Family Table: Mealtimes and Child Health and Well-Being,” published by the Society for Research in
Child Development Social Policy Report
22 (4) (2008). The professor discussed her overall findings in an interview with the author.

These and other studies confirm what we know intuitively: Rituals and celebrations help kids feel connected and valued. This is where the rubber meets the road in terms of “quality time.” If parents make an effort to create traditions, and then routinely, reliably practice those traditions, they are sending a message very loudly that their kids aren’t just a bothersome distraction from plowing through the to-do list but are the central focus of life.

So we all want memorable, meaningful family traditions. But when do families need rituals and celebrations? And where do they come from?

CHAPTER 1

Ritual Recipes: Getting Started

Many families start with holidays, a natural place to begin. There are also the rituals that just creep up on us: You serve pancakes with chocolate chips one Sunday, and then the next Sunday, the kids wonder, “Why aren’t we having the special Sunday pancakes?” A ritual is born.

But where else do rituals belong? What is enough? Can there be too many? What is the recipe for ritual?

There is no minimum daily requirement of ritual prescribed by the US Department of Agriculture or child psychologists, but if I had to reduce ritual life to a formula, I’d give families three goals to meet.

First, research and experience suggest that families should have one solid ritual of connection daily, and I’ll explain in a minute what that might look like. Second, I recommend they also plan a modest weekly family ritual. In addition, all major milestones, accomplishments, and relevant holidays deserve to be celebrated, leaving enormous leeway to individual families about which occasions they mark, and how. Third, but just as vital, I suggest applying rituals as a corrective whenever there’s a bumpy spot in the regular routine. Transitions are always tough for young children: Substituting a fun or silly ritual for a ritual of tantrums and fussing can miraculously smooth over rough patches.

If you follow the simple guidelines above, you’ll have all the major bases covered, and anything else will be gravy. You will soon find yourself and your kids becoming attuned to ritual, to the point that when some major event occurs or is coming soon, at least one family member will pipe up to say, “We need a ritual for this!”

Daily and Weekly Rituals of Connection

Daily rituals of connection don’t have to take up much time and can take many forms. The important thing is that every family member gets to act or speak. Some families have breakfast together and compare their thoughts about the day ahead. Other families find it easier to connect after school each day, or at dinner or bedtime.

The Kyger family in Virginia saves its connection ritual for dinner. After a simple Quaker grace, during which family members briefly hold hands and pray silently, each person around the table has to share something “new and good” about their day, even the teenagers. Another family has a bedtime ritual called “gratefuls and grumbles,” when the children have to come up with one of each but must end on the positive note of something for which they are grateful.

Bobbi Conner, longtime host of the National Public Radio (NPR) program
The Parent’s Journal
, created her daily ritual of connection when her kids were small. It occurred right after she got home from work each evening. She writes about it in her excellent book
Unplugged Play
, noting that before she started doing this, her reentry time at home was extremely stressful. The kids were hungry and cranky and wanted to tell her things, but she felt pressure to put down her purse and immediately make dinner, and the tension escalated. So instead, she decided to really connect with them right after walking in the door. She would make a simple healthy snack, like apples and cheese, sit down with her children right away, and get caught up on their moods and news. Then, after everyone was reconnected, the kids happily ran off to play and Bobbi could calmly prepare a meal.

One of my favorite family rituals of all time, and a good simple template, was created by Suzy Kellett, a divorced mother of quadruplets. Starting when the quads were in grade school, she started having a relaxed “teatime” with her kids in the evening. As they got older, teatime would move a little later, until it eventually reached 9:00 PM or so. But every night, at the designated time, her four kids would stop doing homework, hang up the phone, and gather in the family room for twenty or thirty minutes. In addition to drinking cinnamon herbal tea, the Kelletts were drinking in each other’s stories. All of us change continually, and such “check-in circles” allow us to witness one another’s transformations, while also celebrating what stays constant in our connection.

Weekly rituals also vary widely, including weekly meetings or a designated “family night.” One family has a weekly “pizza night” at home but structures the meal to include family business. Family members may tell jokes and rate their favorite sports teams while eating pizza, but over dessert, they always discuss current family issues, anything from behavior concerns to vacation ideas. It’s also fine if the weekly get-together is “movie night” in your family room. But in that case, it’s even more important to build in a conversational give-and-take component. Saying “please pass the popcorn” doesn’t qualify as a ritual of connection.

Many religious families use a weekly family night to help pass on their faith, devoting part of the evening to prayer. Some families have a meeting format, maybe half an hour that includes a review of everyone’s schedule that week and a discussion of chores. To make it fun, this is also a good time to pay the kids their allowances or designate a family “winner of the week,” based on attitude and accomplishments, and end with a special snack.

Five Signs You Need a Family Ritual

1. A big occasion is coming: holiday, birthday, new driver’s license, graduation, and so on.

2. A family member gets hit with major news, good or bad: a sports victory, hugely improved report card, death of a grandparent or a pet, big promotion.

3. A recurring rough spot clouds the family routine, a time when the kids always whine, such as during transitions. This rough patch could be bath time, getting dressed for school, starting homework, or bedtime.

4. The whole family, especially the kids, displays a general sense of boredom or malaise. Maybe it’s the winter doldrums or an economic downturn, but people need a lift.

5. You want to make “teachable moments” both fun and unforgettable. Among the lessons you seek to teach could be your values, the family’s history, or practical life skills.

In the following pages, this book will offer detailed ideas for holidays and celebrations, but families should also be on the lookout for unconventional milestones. Maybe your child isn’t ever going to be an Olympic swimmer but finally conquered a long-standing fear of getting his face wet or completed his first real dive. To celebrate such spontaneous triumphs, keep a package of instant brownie mix in your pantry. Make a brownie sundae, or use a star-shaped cookie cutter on the brownies to properly celebrate his stardom.

One of the most rewarding but under-appreciated uses of ritual is to smooth over rough spots in a family’s regular routine. Take the mother who had trouble getting her kids out of bed after weekends—she invented “Monday sundaes” for breakfast (frozen yogurt, fresh fruit, and sprinkles), which only get served to kids who are dressed and downstairs inside her time limit.

Ingredients:The Three Parts of a Ritual

But once you know you want a ritual, how do you make one?

There is no “Joy of Rituals” cookbook, but after interviewing hundreds of families across the country and trying lots of rituals with my own family, I’ve developed some basic “recipes” for making memorable traditions.

A satisfying and thorough ritual has three parts: It has a beginning, a middle (the central action), and an end. Even a simple grace before supper has those elements: a nod or verbal cue that grace is to be said, the grace itself, and “Amen” at the end. Although extremely basic, these are similar to the three stages anthropologists observe in tribal rites of passage: First comes preparation, then action (and often transformation, say, from boyhood to manhood), and finally the stage of integration and celebration.

The reason you need some sort of beginning is that ritual is human life in capital letters: It needs to be punctuated, capitalized, elevated. Ritual is not normal life. It isn’t bland or boring but is vivid, whether by virtue of blaring noisemakers or solemn silence. Ritual requires intense focus, and a good ritual beginning gets the participants engaged. It tells people a ritual is starting, like the rising curtain before a theater performance.

A common way to signal a ritual’s start is by sound: a verbal cue, or special music, or tapping a fork against the side of a glass. Visual cues work, too.

If you think about a simple birthday celebration, the “beginning” is as basic as turning out the lights before presenting the cake. The “action” stage is when the child blows out candles and makes a wish while everybody sings “Happy Birthday.” In the final or celebration stage, everyone eats cake and the child opens gifts.

Ritual beginnings make us aware that something special is about to happen, functioning like the verbal “Once upon a time” cue of a fairy tale. But special doesn’t have to mean complicated.

How to Start and End a Ritual

You will find detailed advice later in the chapter about the central action in a ritual, but here are some quick ideas about how to signal when a ritual, of whatever size, is about to start or end.

Beginning

Sounds:
Clapping, bells, whistles, gongs, a drum roll, or other musical cues (play a fitting song on whatever device is handy). Or the absence of sound, a moment of silence.

Verbal cues:
A prayer, a simple group chant, or a direct declarative sentence, such as “Let us begin.”

Visual cues:
Lighting of a candle (or candles), lights turned out or flicked on and off, a curtain lifted, the dramatic entrance of a leader.

Ending

Choose from among the sound and visual cues from the Beginning section: You may want to bookend your ritual with something similar. If you turned out the lights, turn them back on. If you lit candles, blow them out. If you are doing musical cues, choose something that comes to a crescendo or fades to silence.

Possible physical cues for ending include bowing heads, holding hands (with a squeeze at the end), hugging.

Verbal cues:
Silence. Simple words such as “Amen” or “Blessed be.” Or a pop culture or literary reference that suits the tone of your ritual, like “Mischief managed,” a nod to Harry Potter.

Keep in mind that the three-part format applies generally to more weighty or lengthy rituals. But it’s a good rubric to keep in the back of your mind when you set out to create a new tradition for your family.