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How Are Your Family Rituals?
by Mark Brandenburg, MA, CPCC
A few years ago, my four-year-old daughter was starting to say our grace
before dinner. "Daddy, fold your hands like this!" she shrieked.
Everyone else at the table was stunned at the intensity of her outburst.
But if we consider the world from the standpoint of a four-year-old
girl, it may make perfect sense. Sarah wakes up in the morning and isn't
always sure if she's going to school or not. She's not quite sure of
which clothes she should wear, and she's not always sure who she'll be
spending time with each day. She's not all that comfortable with the
language yet, so it's not always easy to get her point across.
In other words, she lives with a lot of uncertainty in her life. Having
rituals in your family creates an opportunity for your kids to feel
secure and to feel equal in the family.
It's a time in which nobody will tell them what to do and everyone knows
their role. It represents certainty for kids who live in a sea of
uncertainty.
Contemporary American families are entropic, meaning they drift toward
falling apart," says William Doherty, head of the Marriage and Family
Therapy program at the University of Minnesota. "Rituals combat that
entropy and help hold families together. Whenever you do a ritual, you
are saying `No' to other activities or people, and becoming what I call
an intentional family. Most of us just drift into habits, doing what is
most convenient. But ritualizing means to take a hold of activities and
ask: does this meet the needs of our family? If it's something like
sitting in front of a TV night after night for dinner, then the answer
is `No.'"
So whether your kids are toddlers or teens, make sure you're holding and
creating rituals which have meaning for your family. Family dinners,
weekend trips, or family laundry day on Sunday can all have an important
impact on your family.
And remember that it may mean a lot more to your kids than it does to
you! One of your jobs as a parent is to create some rituals that hold
meaning for your family.
Here are some ideas:
Create a time each week to do a family chore together and then order
pizza.
Plan a "recreation time" for your family at the same time every week,
and rotate who chooses the activity.
Create your own special activities on established holidays-on
Thanksgiving Day, bring food or clothing packages to families who may
need them.
Have a regularly scheduled family meeting in which you talk about
problems, negotiate solutions, plan fun activities, and acknowledge each
other. Make it sacred. Turn off the phone and make it happen.
Make sure that you include your kids in planning the rituals. The more
invested they are in creating it, the more meaningful it will be.
There's a tendency for parents today to throw up their hands when
"together time" with the family is mentioned. With dance lessons,
baseball practice, piano lessons, and homework getting in the way, there
may seem to be little time left for the family. Those in the middle of a
chaotic family schedule seem to have lost the choice along the way.
And while it's inevitable that family life will be busy these days,
parents can never afford to lose the choices available to them. Because
the very "soul" of your family is expressed in meaningful rituals that
parents choose to undertake.
It may be hard to decide against the extra piano lessons that your son
or daughter could be taking, or to have your child participate in only
one sport instead of two. But by doing so, you'll teach them a lesson
that's far more important than the ones they'll learn from these other
activities.
You'll teach them that their family comes first. And as their parent,
it's your responsibility to see that it happens.
About the author:
Mark Brandenburg MA, CPCC, coaches men to be better fathers and
husbands. He is the author of "25 Secrets of Emotionally Intelligent
Fathers"
http://www.markbrandenburg.com/father.htm Sign up for his FREE
bi-weekly newsletter, "Dads, Don't Fix Your Kids," at
http://www.markbrandenburg.com.
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