‘90s FAMILY : The Times That Bind : It’s the little outings and rituals that connect children and parents--like Sunday walks or video night. Kids will cherish those moments well into adulthood.
It has been 25 years since Vivian Harold, 35, found the tiny daily love notes her father packed in her lunch box. But the memory still moves her.
“I don’t know how he did it,” says Harold, who had four siblings and a mother who was mentally ill. “What with all the chaos of our general lives, it took everything to just keep going. But he somehow found the time and energy, and all of us remember this ritual with deep, deep gratitude. Somehow the ritual of those little notes actually made us feel connected, like a family.”
Harold says she has kept most of the notes and still pulls them out to read when her spirits sag. “If he only knew then what they mean now,” she says.
Ask your kids when they’re young what little rituals and traditions you foster in your family circle, and chances are they’ll look at you with blank faces. But ask them at 25 or 26 and they’ll likely rattle off dozens, some you’ll remember and others that will cause you to look at them with blank faces. We did that?
That’s because family rituals and all the little, warm, intimate behaviors that bind families together grow more important with time. Include some small, consistent rituals and traditions in your home, and you’ll reap the benefits for decades. These don’t have to be a major undertaking. The simpler, the sweeter, the better.
“The great value of traditions comes as they give a family a sense of identity, a belongingness,” says James Dobson, president and founder of Focus on the Family, a nonprofit religious organization. “All of us desperately need to feel that we’re not just a cluster of people living together in a house, but we’re a family that’s conscious of its uniqueness, its personality, character and heritage, and that our special relationships of love and companionship make us a unit with identity.”
Rabbi Arnold Rachlis of University Synagogue in Irvine agrees. He has two sons, Adam, 12 and Michael, 8, and a household that gravitates around Jewish family traditions. “All children have a huge yearning for family. And there’s nothing better than ritual and tradition to help satisfy that need,” he says.
Children crave security and as life in ‘90s families is often scattered, small rituals can bring a sense of continuity and calm.
“They are wonderful because despite everything else that can go out of balance in a kid’s life, they can count on something,” says Vivien Santana Hughes, an editor at L.A. Parent magazine. “It might just be the weekly walk to the local video store, but if it’s consistent, then it can center a child like few other things can.”
The consistency factor is what Karen Lutton, 42, and her husband Mike, 39, peg as primary in the raising of their three children, Nicholas, 10, Matthew, 7, and Haley, 1.
Karen’s mother used to surprise her periodically with purses on her bed. “Sometimes it was a Barbie wallet, 99 cents, nothing big.” This gave her such a sense of love and safety, she’s expanded the theme with her own family.
The Luttons’ repertoire includes an attitude board at the back door where Karen daily scrawls something positive to help her family seize the day and video night when everyone gathers together in bed to watch movies. Sundays, the Luttons go to the beach, out for a walk or stay home--together.
“All this is about time, love and caring about each other,” says Karen, “and something as simple as jumping into bed together to watch videos--my kids adore it, and it’s something they’ll remember all their lives, I would imagine more so than a diamond watch at Christmas.”
Monday night is yet another Lutton ritual. The kids yell: “Mom, it’s Monday, it’s Target!” Each Monday, Karen takes the kids to Pizza Hut and then they roam around Target “up and down the same aisles and look at all the same stuff. And every Batman looks the same to me.”
But she says her children love this ritual. “And I think, ‘Oh my God, why is it Monday? I don’t want to go to Pizza Hut and Target and look at Batmans and Power Rangers,’ but I do.”
“I always believe in investing in memories,” says Dave Dillman, a marriage, family and child counselor in Buena Park. “But I also advise that the smaller gestures have a better chance of embedding positive memories. The grand gestures tend to blow up in your face. And then all the kids remember is the pain, trauma, hurt, yelling and screaming.”
For example, he notes the traditional two-week family vacation is not necessarily idyllic, “simply because ‘90s families tend to spend little time together and then they’re forced to all of a sudden be together,” with stress, expense and work piling up on the home front.
“It’s better to take one or two weekends a year,” he says, and cater to the children. One weekend, go camping. Another, to the opera in San Francisco. “If you make the traditions and rituals smaller and easier and simpler, the chances for their success are much, much greater.”
Dillman also suggests tucking your kids in at night, no matter their age. “Parents ask me all the time at what age they should stop this routine, but I think even older kids love being tucked into bed at night. They may go, ‘ahh, gross,’ and pull away, but something inside kids really loves and craves that ritual. It’s sort of like putting out Christmas stockings for older kids. When should you stop doing that? The answer is probably never.”
“The bottom line is relationship,” says Andy Costa of Corona del Mar, whose wife, Linda and three children, Leanna, 14, Alita, 10, and Giovanni, 4, do something active together such as bowling, miniature golf or cycling weekly. “We go to the park. We play volleyball. None of this is expensive stuff, but I know I’m investing a lot more than money into my kids. And there’s no right or wrong way to do it. It’s what works for your family and brings pleasure to your kids.”
“A lot of people are doing things special to their family, to their particular lifestyle,” says Santana Hughes. “They’re not necessarily doing what they did as children. Times and budgets and time constraints change. But the need for that closeness never does.”
Parents need to be sincere about the rituals they establish. Kids are experts at detecting poses parents try to pass off as family togetherness. The overriding message is: It doesn’t have to be big, but it has to be real.
“Kids recognize what’s real and what’s chillingly cheerful and fake,” says Eddy Dall, 47, whose parents adopted traditions that put the family in debt such as boating and expensive gifts and vacations. “Looking back, even they now realize simpler, more down-to-earth things, like a Sunday walk in the park--with their hearts authentically in it--would have been wonderful.”
“The Jewish view of family life is to water your garden,” says Rachlis. “We believe a religion without rituals is really just a philosophy and family life without rituals, large and small, can be just as dry. Rituals and traditions bring breath, song, action, play, drama, imagination, spirituality to life, and kids learn to love and anticipate the rituals. Think of it in the same way inside your own family home.”