Lately I’ve been wondering what happened to all the meaningful
family traditions I had planned on passing on to my children.
Lately I’ve been wondering what happened to all the meaningful family traditions I had planned on passing on to my children.
Even before the birth of my children, when I imagined what it might be like to be a mother, I yearned to recapture the traditions I had when I was a child. I envisioned leisurely family dinners together, camping vacations every June, and cutting down our own Christmas tree.
When I’ve tried pointing this out to my husband and kids over the years, they’ve never seemed to understand.
It used to be cute when my daughter asked, “What’s a tradition?”
“Well,” I paused, the first time she asked me this – she was about 8 years old – “It’s something a family does together.”
She thought about this for a moment.
“Like when we hold the tools for daddy when he fixes the garage door?”
It’s not so funny when I bring the concept of a family tradition now, and my daughter says something like, “Yeah, I’ve read about those in social studies.” After all, she’s 14. If we don’t have established family traditions by now, there’s a problem. And, of course, it’s not like we don’t do things as a family. My daughter, over the years, has been enrolled in everything from Girl Scouts to ballet lessons, and my 11-year-old son has belonged to numerous sports teams. They let me pretend I can help them with their homework. But, still, sometimes it seems as though our only family activity is waving to each other as we pass in the hallway.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I think extracurricular activities are wonderful for nurturing confidence and creating self-esteem. But it can pull time away from the hours we have together as a family, and of course, when I can do something like pull off a delicious meal so we can have a leisurely dinner together, our conversations have never been what I imagined they would be.
When my kids were little, I’d get questions like, “What if cats could sing?” Or: “How come pizza doesn’t yell when you bite it?” Now, it’s more likely to be something along the lines of, “Do you think Ryan Seacrest and Paris Hilton would make a good couple?” Either way, not exactly stimulating and thought-provoking parent and child conversation.
Oh, of course this hasn’t happened every time. Every once in a while, my children will accidentally mention something substantial like the mess in the Middle East, and we’ll talk about something deep, but usually someone will realize what’s going on, and interrupt with something like, “Hey, did you see that two-headed pig video on YouTube?”
So recently, it became obvious to me that, if I was ever to get through a whole family dinner having the type of worthwhile and substantial conversation that I could remember and treasure forever someday in my old age, I needed to set some guidelines.
“OK,” I said, “starting tonight there will be no tap dancing vegetables on the table, or any sentences that involve Britney Spears, American Idol or belching,” I added, looking at my son. “We’re only going to have stimulating, introspective conservation.”
At first, my family gave me odd looks as if I had suggested they eat their meal with the baboons in the primate exhibit at the local zoo. But they eventually accepted it, especially after I once again explained my hope to establish a long-lasting family tradition of meaningful conversation during the family dinner time. And, unlikely as it seems, we began talking more about what has been going on in our own lives, rather than what’s been going on with some celebrity who we’ll almost surely never meet.
However, just as I was thinking that maybe, just maybe, our family dinners might finally start fostering a lasting bond of mutual love and respect, my daughter broke the silence.
“Mom,” she said, a little too cheerfully. “What does it feel like to know that you only have a few good years left until we go away to college, and that you still haven’t achieved all of your goals for having family traditions?”
Just for that remark alone, I gave her what she deserved and took us all camping.
Debbie Farmer is a humorist and a mother holding down the fort in California, and the author of “Don’t Put Lipstick on the Cat.” You can reach her at
fa********@oa***************.com
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