Childhood memories often aren’t of costantly going away on holiday or of annéehuge amount of money being spent on your birthday, but of small things that families do together again and again each year.
Maybe making pancakes together on Saturday morning, watching a movie under a rather worn out blanket, or even making cookies for Christmas?
These activities seem so mundane to us as adults, but give children so much to look forward to.
A family tradition can give your family members things to look forward to. It creates a sense of belonging. Even though you may be busy with your lives, you know you still have something in common.
These traditions can be very simple and cost nothing at all.
Here are five simple family traditions worth trying.
1. Make One Meal a Weekly Family Event
Life is busy. Work, school, and activities that fill up every moment of every day make it hard to fit in time to sit down and have a meal with family.
So, we can pick one meal a week to have as a family. This can be as easy as having pizza on Friday night.
As an example, Friday could be pizza night, Sunday could be breakfast, or Saturday could be the day when your family has homemade burgers.
Young children can be given the job of laying the tables and older children can help with preparing meals.
Envision a Sunday morning where the first pancake is flipped too early and the strawberries have mysterously vanished from the bowl one by one before being devoured by a sneak attack.
The food doesn’t need to be perfect.
So while it is lovely to go out for the occasional special occasion, it is the knowledge that there is one special family time a week when everyone can stop and spend time together that makes the food for the rest of the week worth cooking.
2. Start a Family Movie or Game Night
Something that is comforting is having an evening where everyone can have fun and put aside their many responsibilities.
Having a family movie night or a game night one night a week can be so comfortable. He chooses the activity for the night and it can be a movie or a board game or cards.
In the alternate scenario above, each family member could choose an activity that the family would undertake on a specified evening of each week. One week it could be a funny animated film and the next a Very Competitive game of Uno.
Most people will grumble about losing.
Set up a bucket of popcorn and the family’s favorite blankets in the living room and charge everyone to put their phones away for the night.
It can be really funny too though. So long as someone can laugh at Daddy and the games he plays, then it will be a great night for all. Seeing how silly Daddy looks while trying to figure out the rules to a game or how a young child can play it in a completely new way is sure to bring many laughs throughout the years.
These are the kinds of moments that will often get recounted by a family for many years to come.
3. Create a Special Birthday Tradition
Family and friends can throw the child a party with lovely decorations, but it is the special personal touches and memories that children will remember in years to come.
Instead of feeling pressured to do something bigger for their next birthday, create a personal tradition and stick to it.
This could be as simple as the family leaving the balcony of the child’s bedroom door filled with balloons each year, or having breakfast together and each person telling the child loves them about.
It’s another wonderful family tradition of writing a short birthday letter each year.
Tell them something you like about them. Maybe something funny that they said recently, or how they overcame something that they thought was going to be too hard for them. I personally love remembering all of the moments where I made my parents proud.
Keep the letters somewhere safe.
Imagine the simple pleasure your child will have, years from now, reading through all your treasured little memories of them.
This is something that can be easy to remember each year and be a lot of fun as well.
4. Take a Monthly Family Adventure
Family adventures can be so simple and can take place in the area where you live and don’t have to involve expensive airplane tickets, hotel bookings etc.
Sometimes, exploring somewhere close to home is enough.
Choose one different location to go on a family adventure each month.
This can be a walk to a new park, a different trail, visit a farmers market, or even pack a lunch for a picnic.
Let the children help choose the destination.
Things can go wrong. Inevitably, someone will have forgotten something vital (like their water bottle), the weather will change or the sandwiches could get squashed in the bag.
They can even be funny as you recall the squished sandwiches, or the child who forgot his water.
That event may not have been perfect but that’s not the point of family adventures. The point is to have some fun experiences together.
5. Keep a Family Memory Jar
This is another of our simple family traditions which cost virtually nothing to set up!
An empty jar, some pieces of paper and a pen are all you need to start this simple tradition.
Whenever something special happens, write it down and drop it inside.
It could be something as simple as a funny comment you made at breakfast, or your child coming home with good grades from school, or a family outing to a park or to go for a hike, or even something good that someone did for another person.
Make sure all family members can contribute whether they can write or not, i.e. they can draw or paint a picture to remember the event by.
Read the notes off to each other at the end of the year.
Be surprised by the memories of your children and what they consider special.
You may be surprised at what they find special.
Sometimes the best memory is the simple things, like the time you spent making cookies for your family on a rainy day, baking till midnight, and eating them for breakfast the next morning.
Little Traditions Create Lasting Memories
The biggest part of family tradition is the meaning of the gesture, not the price tag of it.
The children do not need to be taken on lots of outings. They need to be taken out and have fun together as a family and be shown they are loved.
Start simple! Choose a family tradition that is part of your normal routine and see how you can make it better to include your children in activities you already do.
Years from now your children will probably not even remember the gifts or outings of fabric which you spent so much time and money on preparing.
These are the things your children will remember, the laughter of your family together, the annual traditions and the love that surrounds you.
Because sometimes, the smallest traditions leave the biggest memories.