When raising children, the intangible value of having consistent traditions is just that, intangible. The results create anchors of emotional poise later in our children’s lives. Consequently, in our home, we have gone to great lengths to establish family traditions with our children on a regular basis. The types of traditions can be daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly. Think of your own daily wake up and bed time routines with your children. You know from your own experience that your kids cherish, or even cling to that routine. Things don’t go too well for you when you try to shortcut that routine do they?
The same can be said for traditions that occur on a less frequent basis such as weekend morning routines or the first Friday of each month. One of the traditions we’ve tried to establish in our home is every Saturday dad makes pancakes so mom can sleep in and enjoy a nice break. The kids have become conditioned to expect it. One time we thought we’d skip it and just have cereal instead. It was not well received. Each child noticeably dissented. We quickly internalized the value of traditions that day.
Other obvious examples of traditions include Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween or Hanukkah. These are holidays that have such strong traditional ties that if we somehow skipped them the feelings and emotions surrounding the traditions are absent and we are left with a sense of emptiness. A recent addition we’ve made to our family traditions, now tied to our business, is that each Christmas season we try to find a couple of families with daughters in the 3-6 year age range and play secret Santa by leaving gifts for the family. We always include one deluxe kit for each of their daughters. It’s hard not to accessorize with a few items that are usually not included in the deluxe kit because they are so much fun such as a nail polish or a gloss. Our daughter, the source of the inspiration behind our company has concluded that doing that is almost as much fun as playing with her pretend makeup herself.