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Strengthen Family Ties With Everyday Rituals
Everyday rituals can draw family members together
From Better Homes and Gardens Magazine
Family time
When you hear the term "family rituals," you probably think
of big annual events such as Thanksgiving or Christmas. But the less
flashy family rituals -- such as a pizza dinner every Friday night, bedtime
talks, Sunday afternoon outings, visits to grandparents, birthday celebrations,
Mother's Day, and Father's Day -- are the glue of family life in our
busy world. They bring us together.
The following suggestions offer some examples for how you can bring
your family closer together by nurturing your own rituals. (You may already
have some, and don't even know it!)
Family rituals must have three characteristics to succeed: They must be repeated,
must be coordinated, and they must have emotional significance to the participants.
Family Dinners
Most families are lucky if they have three dinners together in a week. Rather than beating yourself up for not having more, start with enhancing the mealtimes you already have together. Ritualizing the meal can make it a time for bonding rather than just family feeding. Here are some recommendations.
• Get everyone involved. An important principle of family rituals is that the more participation in the ritual, the more enjoyment. Get the children involved in cooking or at least in table setup.
• Sit! Make sure everyone who is home is seated before beginning the meal. It's not an effective ritual if people come late or don't show up.
• Set an atmosphere. You might light a candle and lower the dining-room lights, turn on music, or hold hands and recite a prayer. This creates ritual "space," a sense of being part of something more special than an ordinary time together.
• Turn off the tube. Over half of American families keep the television on during dinner. The TV absorbs attention like a sponge and inhibits conversation.
• Talk it up. Engage everyone in the conversation. This will be most challenging with younger family members. One parent asked his children to tell about three things, no matter how small, that they learned in school that day. This often led to other topics of conversation.
• Keep it light. Dinner is not the time to reprimand a child for not doing chores or for failing a course in school. Try not to criticize eating habits or table manners.
• Create graceful exits. Make sure everyone is finished before anyone leaves the table without permission. Rituals need a clear exit phase, a time when everyone finishes the ritual together.
• Clean up together. Get everyone involved in the cleanup. Rituals decline when one person carries the entire burden.
Verbal Birthday Gifts
A few years ago, the Doherty family decided to make birthdays a greater source of bonding and intimacy by offering verbal gifts to go along with tangible gifts.
At birthday parties, for example, while they are eating their cake and ice cream, and just before the presents are opened, they go around the table and ask each person to offer a few words of appreciation to the birthday person. The content can be anything the speaker wants to say -- no expectation that it has to be poetic or profound. The honored person acknowledges the verbal present, and then they move to the next family member. There is no discussion, just a simple one-by-one sharing of love and appreciation.
This ritual enhancement, as you might imagine, can be quite emotionally intimate and powerful. And you will remember the verbal gifts long after you have forgotten or discarded the physical gifts. Verbal gifts cost nothing, but they deepen the emotional bonds among family members. That is what family rituals are about.
Start Your Own Rituals
If you are inspired to initiate or enhance your family rituals, be forewarned: Be delicate and collaborative about your suggestions or you may get resistance from other family members.
Suggest trying something once, such as verbal birthday gifts, to see how it feels. If it goes well, then ask if the family would like to give such gifts at other birthdays.
Another approach is to make something happen, without discussion, and ask family members what they think of it afterward. For instance, you could light candles and turn soft music on during a family dinner without commenting in advance. If nobody objects, you could keep doing it until others begin lighting candles themselves.