“Family traditions are designed to serve the life of the family not for the family to serve the life of the tradition.”
Traditions are a powerful force in the life of a family. They are a needed element as you build the culture and texture of your family by forming and reinforcing what you want your family to believe, do, and be. Their power is in their ability to bring identity, stability, memories, and teach shared values. Learn more about the importance of family traditions in todays #FamilyFriday.
Thanks for watching my #FamilyFriday video from this week. Here are some helpful articles on Family Traditions and how you can use them to create great memories and build healthy values for generations to come.
Creating a Positive Family Culture: The Importance of Establishing Family Traditions
If you are interested in a general outline of what I said in the video, see below:
Kids are ritual thinkers. They often say, “we always” or “we never” even if you have only ever done something once. Why is this? Because kids like and need stability and long for a sense of connectedness and identity. In fact, we all long for this which is why family traditions are so important and so powerful. They provide part of the fabric upon which families are built.
Here are a few Key Ideas on Family Traditions:
Traditions help to create a family culture. They reinforce values and tell us what is important. As such they can have a positive or negative force. So, we must be intentional as we create family traditions so that they end up helping our family rather than hurting it. A few other benefits of family traditions are:
Give identity
Provide stability, comfort, and security
Strengthen relationships and connections (shared history and experience)
Pass on family history and heritage – places you in a larger family story
Help build memories
Traditions can be either big or small. We often think of traditions more on the grand scale but they don’t have to be elaborate. Often the more occasional our tradition the more elaborate they will be and the more often the less elaborate they will be.
Traditions and daily routines are related but not always the same. Some things may be both routines and traditions but some aren’t. Traditions have a much higher level of intent so that they fulfill a specific purpose in the life of families.
They are solid but not completely rigid. They are not chiseled in stone. They are not laws. Family traditions are designed to serve the life of the family not for the family to serve the life of the tradition. As such, they should have enough substance to be meaningful and patterned but so much rigidity that they can’t serve the needs of your family. For instance, you may have traditions that work for the toddler years but then become meaningless as your kids grow. Try something new. I’m trying to tell you to be intentional but free. Here’s a good rule of thumb: if a tradition seems forced or causes more stress than joy, then it may not be worth keeping or it may need changing to make it more meaningful.
Here are some tips for you as you build traditions for your own family:
Don’t try to recreate all of your family’s traditions from when you were growing up. This is necessary for at least two reasons. First, you have made a new family that needs it own life and existence. The new family you have created won't be exactly the same as your family growing up (no matter how hard you try to make it so). Because it's the same, it won't feel the same, so trying to recreate it is futile. Second, if both you and your spouse were to bring in every tradition from your childhood, you wouldn’t have the time and energy for them all. The sheer volume of the traditions would make them unhelpful and meaningless.
Don’t be afraid to try something new. If it doesn’t work or you don’t like it, you can always try something different next time. In fact, the more regular your tradition, the more opportunity you have to tweak and adapt it without it feeling like a life change.
Don’t do too much. Strive for quality, meaning, and significance rather than quantity.
