The Book of New Family Traditions (8 page)

Becky Romph says her kids pack “sleeping buddies” in her husband’s suitcase when he is getting ready for a business trip. One time, she reports, when her husband was in Ireland, the hotel left an extra chocolate candy each night for the sleeping buddy.

Coin by Coin to Count the Days

When Elaine Mellon had to accompany her older son abroad for a boy-choir festival, she had to leave his five-year-old brother behind with Dad. Partly to make the absence visual and tactile, Elaine taped twelve quarters to a low table in their home. Every day, her young son would peel off one quarter, and his father would take him to church: He would donate the quarter at church to pay to light a candle and say a prayer for the safe return of mother and brother.

Message-Each-Day Calendar

Suzy Happ sometimes has to attend conferences, and she has made special calendars for her son and daughter covering the exact number of days she would be gone. For every day of absence, there is a window (like an Advent calendar) that they can fold back and get a message from Mom. (This can be done quite simply: Draw the proper number of squares on a page, write a message or draw a little picture inside each, then cut out papers slightly larger than the size of the squares and tape or glue them on one side so they can be lifted up to reveal their secrets.) She might just write where she will be at that point, or wish them luck on a test or sports outing. Once she wrote, “At 8:00 PM, look up at the moon and think of me. I’ll be doing the same!” Each kid got one of these mini-calendars, and it was personalized for each of them.

In a sentimental and popular commercial a few years back for Cingular (now AT&T), a father on a business trip finds his daughter’s stuffed animal monkey packed in his suitcase. He uses his phone’s camera to photograph the monkey on his travels and sends the pictures to his little girl at home. This is a great use of the tech tools many of us carry around: reminding our kids that we’re thinking of them. I’m also planning on making a book about Gus the Gator’s travel, using
Shutterfly.com
or iPhoto’s services for compiling digital photos into a personal, one-of-a-kind book. I’ve used both services before and they are excellent: I’ve made multiple copies of photo books for major birthdays and reunions, but I think there will only be a single copy of the Gus book, for my son.

Problem-Solving Rituals

If there were one thing I could do to help parents most, it would probably be helping them to understand the immense power of ritual to ease the bumpy transitions of everyday family life.

The two most important secrets to problem-solving rituals are distraction and humor. This may seem simpleminded, but it has a sound basis in human psychology. Therapist Aaron Horowitz says that rituals sometimes work as a kind of “hypnotic distraction.” The distraction is helpful whether you are trying to coax a child to end a meltdown or use the potty.

We all love that kids live so fully in the moment, but sometimes they get stuck in that moment and they need help pulling out of it. Also, little kids don’t have the experience yet to know that they can be other than they are: If your son has never used the potty or gone without a pacifier, part of the problem is he can’t imagine being that kid. He can’t make that leap. By promising a reward or giving him a tiny ritual to perform or making him laugh (or all three), you are giving him something to focus on other than his fear or intransigence. Next thing you know, he’s used the potty or stopped hitting his brother, and you can celebrate and congratulate.

Humor is also an important part of the equation. One way to get kids unstuck is to just crack them up. If you can think up something goofy for family members to do whenever tensions soar, you’ll spend a lot less of your life organizing time-outs.

Friday Night Bubble Baths

When my son was a toddler, he couldn’t get enough bubble baths, but the pediatrician frowned on that (some experts say chemicals in the bath products irritate little bottoms). I wanted to end the whining, so we started the tradition of Friday Night Bubble Baths. If Max would say, “Mommy, I want a bubble bath now!” then I could explain, “Well, it’s only Wednesday, honey. We have to wait for Friday. Tomorrow is Thursday, and the next day, it will be Friday Night Bubble Bath time.” A lot of problem-solving rituals are about turning a permanent “No” into a special-occasion “Yes”—and usually, it works like a charm.

Silly Soothing Songs

A little ditty that announces a transitional activity works like magic. Karly Randolph Pitman, the mother of four from Montana, says, “I learned from the preschool teacher, if I am struggling, I create a song. They hated to wash their hands when they were little. So I invented the silly potty song, and the words go, ”We always wash hands when we go potty!”

Kissing/Wisking Ritual to Defuse “Gimmes”

Courtney Andelman is a stay-at-home mom with twin daughters, and very savvy at problem-solving rituals. One of my favorites is the one she invented when her girls get the “gimmes” in a store. “When I am out with the girls and they want things, I say, ‘Make a wish!”’ Courtney explains. “So we whisper the wish into cupped hands, kiss the wish [kiss into the cupped hands], give it a big hug [the child hugs herself] and then throw it up to the North Pole. I try to stand close enough to hear the whisper!”

Seatbelt-Buckling Ritual

Mary Sutton started this after her family was in a car accident. Luckily, there were no major injuries, but none of them was wearing a seatbelt, so it could have been bad. In their ritual, they pile into the car, Mary says “Buckle up!” and the three kids say “Why do we buckle up?” Then they all chorus the reply: “Because we love each other.”

Grocery Store Math Distracter

Doni Boyd’s two kids, like most, nagged their way through shopping trips. So Doni came up with a savvy idea. “We gave them each a $2 credit for every supermarket trip, which really stopped them from begging to buy this and that,” says Doni. “The credit part was because we didn’t want to have to check them out separately. If they spent less than $2, they didn’t get paid the change until we got home and put groceries away. It worked great because they had to do some math to make it work, and if they wanted something worth more than $2 they had to negotiate with siblings and pool their money.”

Reward for Detested but Necessary Hygiene Tasks

After clipping nails, Courtney Andelman gives her two girls temporary tattoos. She says that because they are so thrilled at the prospect of tattoos, they don’t stop to whine about the actual clipping part. And here is her advice on the topic of temporary tats: “The big trick with temporary tattoos is to use lots of water. The paper needs to get very soft to transfer the image well. We count together while we do this, which is probably how my girls learned to count to thirty at such a young age!”

Eight Common Rough Spots That Rituals Can Smooth Over

1.
Daycare or school drop-off

2.
Naptimes and bedtimes

3.
Grocery shopping and other errands

4.
Waiting (in lines, for restaurant food, etc.)

5.
Bathtime

6.
Hair brushing or other grooming

7.
Departure of a friend or family member

8.
Taking turns/Sharing during playtime

Problem-Solving Rituals Basics

• Silly songs or rhymes, either about what is happening, or something wildly different that distracts

• Visual games, such as “The person who sees the most people dressed in red before our food comes wins!”

• Always bring and read books (This one saved our lives, waiting in long lines at Disneyworld to take Max, at four, on rides.)

• Comic choreography: Make-up goofy dance moves, even for sitting down

Rituals to Keep the Peace

Kids will bicker and fight, especially siblings. But sometimes a brief ritual can calm the combatants. Teaching young kids to avoid violence is a powerful life lesson.

Family Huddle

When the two Abbe kids have been fighting, especially in the car, their mother hollers out, “Family huddle time.” Even in a parking lot, they stop and huddle like teammates, stack their hands up in the center of the circle, yell out the family cheer (“Let’s go, Abbes!”), and punch their fists to the sky. Afterward, they go on their way as a united force.

Crazy Dance Party

Members of the Pfeiffer family say that unity is always restored if they can laugh together. So when any of them feels it’s needed, he or she calls out, “Crazy Dance Party,” and starts a countdown from ten to one. By the time one is reached, someone has found a rock oldies radio station to listen to, and they dance like lunatics till everybody is laughing.

Shakespearean Insults

This is one of those problem-solving rituals in which humor is the magic ingredient. Liz Hawkins, mother of four, had some fridge magnets on hand that were decorated with colorful insults taken from William Shakespeare’s writings. When her kids were little, she used to say, “If you’re going to fight, then you have to hug,” but when they got to be teenagers, she needed a new defense-against-the-dark-arts ritual. She got the idea to tell her warring children that if they were going to insult one another, they could only do it using one of these Shakespearean taunts. “They looked at me like I was nuts,” she says, but they soon rose to the occasion and discovered it was impossible to keep a straight face after calling their sibling “Thou crusty batch of nature!” (usually with their best British accent).

If your kids are too young for the bard, there are variations on this concept: I know one mom who announced to her kids that they could only call each other names in a foreign tongue. Because they don’t speak any languages other than English, they would quickly crack themselves up by inventing outrageous insults in pretend languages.

Three Tips on Handling Anger from Expert Naomi Drew

1. Create a cooling-off ritual for yourself:

Breathe deeply three times, then get a drink of water, go into another room, and listen to quiet music; or light a candle and calm your thoughts.

2. Help your children to create their own cooling-off rituals.

Some kids pet their dog, run around the yard, wash their face, write in a journal, or take their frustration out by making something out of clay.

3. Peace shield ritual:

Put a drop or two of essential oil of lavender in a spray bottle full of water. During a calm moment, have your children close their eyes and imagine a shield of light, protecting them from hurt and anger. Spray some lavender water in their direction to “lock in” the shield’s power. Next time they get upset, have them imagine the peace shield protecting them from hurt and anger.

Naomi Drew’s many books include
No Kidding About Bullying: 125 Ready-to-Use Activities to Help Kids Manage Anger, Resolve Conflicts, Build Empathy,
and
Get Along
(Free Spirit Publishing). Find out more at her website,
www.LearningPeace.com
.

School Rituals

Preparing First-Timers

The beginning of preschool is one of the biggest transitions your children will ever go through, at an age when change is especially scary. Preparing them well and making the send-off a joyful ritual will equip them well for all the transitions ahead.

Meet the Teacher/Playground Picnic

Most preschools arrange a tour of the school to acclimate the new kids. Take advantage of it, and try to engage your child in a conversation with the teacher. Take your camera and take a photo of the teacher, so she becomes even more familiar in coming days. On another day right before school starts, take your child for a special picnic at the school playground: Having had fun there and knowing her way around the swings will make her more comfortable on the first day.

Drop-Off Rituals

Saying “good-bye” is terribly hard, especially at the beginning, so think beforehand about a ritual that might ease the transition for your child. Elinor Craig found her son settled in quickly after she let him choose a secret code word on the way: When he said, “It’s
fire engines,
Mom,” it meant he was ready for her to leave. One mother kisses her daughter’s hand before she goes, and tells her it’s a magic, all-day kiss: If she gets lonely and holds the hand to her lips, she’ll get a “love buzz.” Create a secret “big boy” or “big girl” handshake and hug combination, express your love in words, then if possible, get your child engaged with some toys on a table or a book on the floor before leaving. Never sneak out!