Family Tips: Creating & Celebrating Family Rituals
Rituals are an important way for families to enjoy a shared sense of identity, security and belonging.
In many families, our rituals have been inherited from membership of a religious or cultural group or from parents, grandparents or other relatives. In others, we’ve developed our own unique rituals through shared experiences or interests.
Some rituals we enjoy just within our nuclear family group, others we might share with a broader group of friends and/or family.
Why is Creating & Celebrating Family Rituals Important?
Particularly for young children, rituals can be a source of comfort. They help children feel a sense of safety and predictability.
They also help families to strengthen their bonds with each other and connect to their shared family values.
A shared ritual can also just be a great way to simply have some fun together as a family.
Common Types of Family Rituals
Some common forms of family rituals include:
- Your own made up rules for a sport or board game
- Religious or cultural celebrations such as Diwali, Ramadan, Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa or Lunar New Year
- Particular foods or music on certain occasions
- Secret code words or special handshakes
- A particular hat or other item of clothing for the birthday boy or girl
- A special routine of actions and/or phrases at bedtime
Tips to Making Fun & Meaningful Rituals
If you’re keen to develop some new rituals for your family that everyone will engage with and enjoy, here are some ideas:
- If everyone loves a particular food, make it a regular weekly or monthly routine. Perhaps something you can order in if that’s practical and possible.
- Look at your current routine and see if there are any opportunities for adding some fun to regular activities. Perhaps a special handshake or funny hug for saying goodbye in the morning.
- Create a ‘things we love about you’ jar or box that’s used for upcoming birthdays – have each family member contribute some words or a picture.
- If there’s a board game or sport everyone in the family enjoys, create some rituals around it where you prepare or buy special foods or drinks to enjoy with it and put up particular decorations around the house.
We hope these tips will help you with creating & celebrating rituals for your family.