A short talk emphasizing the importance of intentionally creating family rituals to build connection, memory, and shared identity. The speaker recommends involving children in designing rituals (e.g., family meetings, beads for when a parent is away) and gives concrete examples of rituals that foster closeness and lasting memories.
Chapters
I'm really big in the creating of rituals of any kind. If we look back to our last year of life as an adult, what do we remember about our last year? We probably remember, like, big ticket items, like big events we can't remember. Maybe a birthday party, maybe a trip we went on with the family, something big. But those minuscule moments that happen day to day of what your child's face looked like with their sleepy hair, and they come and they bound on you. The feeling is somewhere in you, but you can't necessarily recall that unless you happen to capture it on a video camera. So the reason why rituals are so important is the more rituals that you can create as a family. Now, there's lots of rituals. Like, Christmas is a ritual for some people, the tooth fairy might be a ritual. But sometimes some families have yearly reunions. That's a ritual. But think in the context of your own intimate family. What are the rituals that you can create that create that sense of connection and closeness and attunement with everybody? And don't just come up with it yourself. Invite the children to strategize. Maybe in a family meeting where what can we do together? That after recognizing what our family identity is and what we're committed to, I mean, some of those in a family meeting, we've created, like, what are the things our family's committed to having fun. Our family's committed to being curious and trying out new things. We have that all over the house. So as part of our family identity now we can say to each other, okay, what ritual can we do that could be fun for us and allows us to learn? What would you like? Sometimes it was like whenever daddy or mommy went away, we each created a little bead that would hang from their bedhead. And so each bead was an intention that everyone put on it. Okay, simple. I mean, the sky's the limit with these things. So I create an intention for them, and that's my bead. My son would create an intention for his sister, my husband. Everyone would create an intention. So everyone's left with four beads. And that bead is our little token. And we know that that is a ritual that we do every time somebody goes away. But it allows us to remember what that bead represented or how we see them in the world or what our hope for. Whatever it is, it's something special and unique. But then you find that children go, I like that. I want that. Hey, we've got to create our beads. And now that becomes. When you look back with your children, about our life or they share with their friends. This was the extraordinary things my parents used to do. These are the things family meetings.
