Rituals to Build Strong Families

Join us to learn about family rituals—how to create and why they can help build strong families. Our guest will be Elizabeth Barbour, the author of a new book, Sacred Celebrations: Designing Rituals to Navigate Life’s Milestone Transitions. She’s also a reunited adoptee and an adoptive mom.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Why are rituals important for families? 
  • Define the culture of family-this is who we are
  • This is what we do
• What’s the difference between rituals and routines?
• What’s the difference between rituals and habits?
• Examples of family rituals. 
  • Family meetings, 
  • kid/parent dates, 
  • game nights
  • gratitude practices
  • prayer and meditation
  • family altars
  • travel
  • volunteering together
• When families are created through adoption, any specific rituals that can help them?

Tips

• Keep it simple
• Get input from all members of the family
• Consistency

Transcript

Please pardon any errors, this is an automated transcript.

Hello and welcome to creating a family, talk about adoption, foster care, and kinship
care. Are you looking for some innovative ways to boost your family's connectedness?
At the start of the new year, many of us set goals or intentions or, dare I say,
resolutions for our physical health or for our work -life balance. So why not include
your family's relational health in your goal setting this year? This interview between
our founding executive director, Dawn Davenport, and Elizabeth,
Welcome, Elizabeth, to creating a family. Thank you so much, Dawn. I'm delighted to
be here. You know, I love rituals. I love the concept of rituals. But before
reading the book, when I was thinking about it, I thought, well, I don't know that
as a family, we've done a lot of rituals. But then I realized, after reading the
book, that many of the things that we were doing really were rituals. So anyway,
I'm looking forward to this discussion. So let's start by the obvious,
or maybe it's not the obvious. In fact, it's not obvious. Let's don't start at the
obvious. Let's start at something at the foundational, shall we say, which is why
are rituals important for families? Yes, and such a good point.
They're not so obvious. Well, especially in these days, in this world that we're
living in, in these turbulent and uncertain times, rituals are so important for
connection, they're important for grounding, they're important for presence,
and they're important for belonging. What I really find with the people that I work
with in my coaching practice is that our kids in particular, they're so over
-scheduled, they're overwhelmed, they're worried about the state of the world, they
have a lot going on. And when we have rituals that bring us together as a family,
it allows us to slow down, to settle in, to tell stories,
to listen to one another, and it gives us a deeper sense of connection. So for
kids in particular, it helps them to feel a little bit safer, feel like they can
lean into their parents and their siblings a little bit more. It also helps them to
have a sense of belonging. And of course, it depends on the age of the kids as
well. I know I'm raising a middle schooler right now. So belonging and identity are
really big issues. Yeah. It does, though, help you define the culture of your family
somewhat, which is a form of belonging. Exactly. And I was thinking about this story
before we got on the phone today. One of my favorite examples of this is in one
of the neighborhoods that I used to live in. There was a family, and they had
nicknames for each other, and it came from the television show, The Money Heist. I'm
not sure if you ever saw that. I hadn't. Or maybe I don't remember it either way,
but go ahead. It's actually a Spanish show, and it's about a money heist. It's
about a bunch of people who rob a bank, but it's actually quite funny. And they
had nicknames for all of the people. So instead of calling the robbers by their
given name, they all had a name of a city or a country. So, for example,
you know, Amanda might be Alaska and Eric might be Edinburgh.
But it was a neat way. So when the family, not only at home, but when they would
go out in public and, you know, maybe they were trying to gather the family
together, you know, they had several kids and they would be like, hey, Edinburgh,
hey, Alaska.
So it was just kind of a fun way to stay connected, but it was very much a part
of the identity of their family. It was really cute. Yeah. And that's important to
all -age children. It's important to family structure. It's important for the unity of
the family. And I think that would cover from infancy, really, or certainly
toddlerhood, through adulthood. Absolutely. I agree with that. And,
you know, the other thing that I think that rituals do and why they're so important
is they give us a sense of, this is what my family does.
Sort of you were saying, this is who we are, and this is what we do. Like, we
have grades together every night when we have dinner. We have a gratitude jar that
we write notes in with each other and review once a month. We are a family who
goes hiking every Sunday night, or we are a family who makes grandma's green bean
casserole every Thanksgiving, you know, whatever. Even though no one really likes it.
No one likes green meat casserole. But we eat it. It's the soup. It's that soup
with the canned onions on top. Nobody likes it, but you make it. Exactly.
And why do we do it, right? It's because it evokes memories of times gone by.
And it helps us reconnect to maybe our childhood or the stories that our parents
told us about them growing up with their parents, which are our grandparents. That
makes great sense. So anyone who has listened to this show knows that I'm a real
big believer in routines. I say it often in terms of the fact that it is really
important to children who've experienced trauma in their life, kids who have had a
lot of disruption with foster kids, new kids coming in. Routines just simplify family
life, but more importantly, for kids who need to feel some control because their
world is very out of control, routines provide that. It provides predictability. They
can understand what's happening, what's coming next, and that gives them a sense of
control in their life where they have very little. So I was thinking of routines
the entire time I was reading. And so what is the difference between a ritual and
a routine? That's such a great question. And I so agree with what you said about
that need for predictability and certainty and stability. And to me, the difference
is that routine is something that we do on a regular basis.
It becomes a habit. We don't necessarily think about it. It could be things like,
you know, we cook dinner together or we go to the gym and work out together before
school or after work or whatever. I'll give you even more relevant in my life,
bedtime routine. We take a bath. We brush our teeth. You brush your teeth first,
then mom brushes your teeth afterwards. We then get into jammies. Then we read two
books. Then we say prayers. Then we, yeah, whatever. And then we get in bed and we
cover ourselves with two blankets and we have three lovies, that type of thing.
I love it. Can you tell what my life is sometimes like? Two blankets and three
lovies. I love it.
Yes, and that's such a great example. Like, this is the routine, this is the habit
that what we do. What makes it a ritual is another layer of mindfulness and
intention. So let's use maybe a birthday for an example.
Instead of just having a traditional birthday where, you know, maybe we have cake
and ice cream and we give people presents. We maybe offer to the person in the
family. It doesn't matter whether it's the children or the adults, but it's like you
get to play in your special day. You get to pick out the meal. You get to decide
what we're going to do today. You get to pick a special activity. And then it
becomes a ritual because it has a new level of meaning.
It has a new level of intention and more magic comes with that.
No, that was mine. I loved lamb shops. I don't know why. I don't know what kid
likes lamb chops, but yeah.
Mine would have been ice cream, cookies, and cake. Well, we got that after dinner,
but yeah. Oh, no, that would have been the meal for me, but anyway. Yeah, that's
great. I love it. You know, another example, I have one family who what they do
with their children is whenever a child turns 13 in their family,
that's when they get to choose a special trip to go on with their grandparents. And
so the grandparent makes sure that each one of the children of all their grandkids
gets a special quality trip with grandma and grandpa when the kid turns 13. I think
that's a pretty cool ritual. Yeah, me too. You've mentioned habits. Is there a
difference between, you've said the difference between rituals and routines is
intentionality, but throwing habits in there. Is there a distinction, habits and
routines and rituals in your mind? A habit might be, you know, brushing your teeth,
right? Like, we all need to do that every day. Yeah. To me, habits and routine are
fairly similar. Okay, got it. The distinction is really to go to ritual, which has
that intentionality to it. Gotcha. Okay. I use the word routine, but I think that I
probably would conflate routine and habits as well.
I'd like to interrupt this conversation just for a moment to let you know that we
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improve how we serve you. So please chime in today.
All right. Now let's get to the meet, the part that I am most excited about, and
that is I want to talk about examples of family rituals, because we've talked about
the importance of rituals, and we're talking today about building strong families. So
let's get concrete. What are some family rituals that you have talked about in the
book, but also seen in your coaching practice? So what are some rituals? Well,
there's
Do we have a mission statement for our family? You know, do we have goals or
things that we want to do? I know one family, what they do is every New Year's.
They sit down with the family and they have some structured time to talk about,
what do we want to do in this coming year? And they make sort of a bucket list
for the family. And then throughout the year, they go ahead and they work on
achieving these things, whether it's, you know, taking a trip or doing some volunteer
work or working on something in the house. And then at the end of the year,
as they get ready to go to the next year, they review it. So, you know, what did
we accomplish here? And then what do we want for the next year? So family meetings
are one thing. I think, and this is going to sound so obvious, but having regularly
scheduled dates, whether it's dates for the adults to go out without the children
because believe it or not, and you probably do know this, but there are so many
families where the parents never get time for themselves. Because it's hard,
right? It's hard to find a babysitter. It's hard to step away. It's expensive. It
can cost money. So I think a lot of times couples get really burned out.
You are preaching to the choir. I am a huge believer. And it could be date
morning, it could be date night, but the importance of parents, the foundation of
the family, and we're assuming that we're talking about a two parent, those parents
form the foundation of the family. But I would also say that even if you're single,
having a night that you recharge or having a time of day, maybe it's going,
working out and then getting a cup of coffee on the way home, it's hard. It's hard
to make the, particularly for singles, but as you point out, even for a two -parent
family, it is difficult. It is difficult, but like everything, it's about making it
a priority. It's about saying this is important to us, this matters to us. And what
you just said, Dawn, which is so key, is that parents really do form that
foundation of the family. So children watch our parents. They learn from us.
And so if they never see us taking a break, if they never see us stepping away,
they learn that, oh, that's what I'm supposed to do too. But if they see it
modeled for them that, hey, you know, mom or dad or mom and dad together, or both
of our parents or grandparents, you know, whoever the caregivers are, they step away
and that's okay. Then it teaches them it's okay if they can do that too. Yes. And
I think that this comes to the, which you had said, the intentionality, it's not
easy. And there are a lot, I hear from people all the time. I don't want to leave
my children with babysitters. I don't feel comfortable doing that. There are a lot
of obstacles. But this is where taking creativity. Sharing could work in the evening.
I know of two couples who, one has Friday night and the other has Saturday night,
and they swap off. And the kids actually spend the night at the family who is on
Friday night, date night for one family. The kids spend the night at the other
house, and then on Saturday night, it's a reverse. Now, that is a unique situation
in that the families get along very well, and they have similar age children who
also are friends. That's great. Yeah, just different forms of, you know,
finding a place to put your kids on the Saturday morning and working out with your
spouse. You know, just things like that. There are ways to make it happen if you
believe it is important enough. And I think what you and I are both saying is it
is important. Friday night, date, night was a ritual in our family.
We jokingly said the kids knew not to get sick on Friday night. Of course, it's
not true. That is not true. But when it was a standing ritual that we had it,
and our kids came to believe in it. I mean, they were like, okay, yeah, mom and
dad, and we made it special for them. They got to pick.
importance of, if you were a two -parent family, putting primacy to your relationship,
part of our date was that we weren't supposed to talk about the kids. Well, that
lasted probably half of the first date night with the first child. That never worked
for us. I do know families who are religious about that. They say, no, we are not
going to talk about the kids. We're going to talk about other things in our life.
That did not work for us, but I'm all in favor of it. Yeah, I just can't stress
it enough. But you also mention kid and parent dates. So let's talk about that.
Yeah, well, and I think that's especially important when you have more than one
child in the family. I'm raising an only child. So this is not such an issue for
us because she gets all of our time and attention. But when you have multiple kids,
like I have a friend who is raising seven children. And, you know, that's got to
be really hard to make each kid feel special. So they try and rotate through and
have little date times. You know, and again, it doesn't have to be a date night.
It can be a date day. But dedicate, you know, two or three hours to just spending
one -on -one time with each child. Or what my friend Joney did, she took the little
kids camping. I think she took three of the younger kids and then left the four
older ones home with dad. And then, you know, of course, you can switch that up
and do vice versa. So that, again, gives the kids a feeling of, oh,
this is my special time with my parent. And so I get to focus just on me,
and especially if you've got multiple siblings running around, that can be really
exhausted. Well, let me ask you a question. What about the concept of taking one
child and then running errands, growing grocery shopping, returning, you know, Amazon
purchases, but you just have one child and you try to intentionally
elevated by saying, oh, we're going to go get ice cream, you know, or we're going
to go take 30 minutes and walk in the park after we go to the grocery store. So
I think to make it a ritual, it needs to have a little more intentionality. But
sure, I think it could definitely count as just a date, like, oh, we get some one
-on -one time together. I see your point. I see the distinction. But because with
busy families, go Back to your example of a family, and many of our families do
have multiple children. So if you've got seven kids, fitting in the time for two to
three hour, and again, air quotes, date with each child would become overwhelming and
people would just say, you know, that's just not feasible for my life. But if we
say it's the intentionality of having one -on -one time, and then I hear your point,
elevating it to do something special. Like during the grocery shopping, you get to
pick the cereal that we're going to have that week or something along those lines.
And then perhaps afterwards, on the way home, we will do X. We'll stop at the
coffee store. Mom will get a coffee and you'll get whatever. Right. Exactly. Okay.
And that would make it more doable because we have a huge list of errands. I mean,
we just do. There's thousands of things. And the challenge, of course, is finding
who will keep the other kids. It's a Tetris game. It is. It's balancing, I guess.
Yeah. Since we're ending up talking about each of these, I want to go back and
give more time to family meetings. I think that's an important one. You talked about
family meetings as more higher level. We're going to set goals. We'll do a bucket
list for the year. We're going to set goals. We're going to talk about big things.
What about family meetings for the more mundane? In our family, we had not
throughout all of our children's childhood, but through a large portion of it, we
had a family meeting on Sunday. It wasn't particularly highbrow.
It was more about, this is what everybody has going on this week. We also had a
notebook that was kept in the drawer at the kitchen table and we'd have the date
of the next Sunday and anybody could write something that they wanted to talk about.
I recently ran across it. I had not opened that drawer in years and I opened it
and found the notebook and it was absolutely hilarious. One kid was saying, I want
to talk about so -and -so, another sibling doing this. I don't like it or something
along those lines. And so it certainly was not highbrow what we were doing. But
let's talk about that type of family meeting. Is there a place for that? Oh,
absolutely. And that's such a great example, Dawn. And yes, I didn't mean to skim
over that because I do think having regular check -ins, whether it's weekly or once
a month, are so vital for the family because they really help with communication.
And particularly for kids, as you were talking about, you know, a lot of your
listeners have kids who have had trauma and they've had experiences where they're not
valued or listened to in a very present way. And so to create that sacred container
of, you know, as you said, maybe like Sunday night or Sunday morning, whatever it
is. And just saying, this is our dedicated time as a family to talk, to listen,
to share, to address whatever it is that's going on, I think is really critical.
And I think the way you could potentially elevate that from, you know, again, so
we're talking about this distinction, right, between routine, like, well, this is what
we do versus, oh, how do we make it a ritual, is the routine is, yeah, we talk
about the schedule and who's got a soccer game and who has basketball and who has
acting. But then we also maybe add in an element of more intentionality.
Maybe you introduce a gratitude component of, hey, you know,
what are three things that you are grateful for this week? Or maybe your family
keeps a gratitude jar that you have little slips of paper and you write notes on
it throughout the week when someone does something kind. Like, oh, you know, my
sister put my stuff away from me or my brother made my lunch for me.
And that was really nice. And then what you do is you can read it together at the
end of the week and, you know, sort of celebrate like, oh, wow, look at all this
great stuff that's happening in the family. So it's small things like that that can
elevate it from just being like, oh, this is a family meeting to, oh, wow, this is
a special time that we get to come together. Okay. Yeah. I'm beginning to get that
distinction now that the element of ritual is taking what could be a routine and
making it, for lack of better words, a little more special, a little more, yeah.
had your meeting and then you end it with your family song where you all get up
and you have a little dance party. You know, like there's different ways to make it
sacred and sacred doesn't necessarily have to mean serious. It can mean silly fun
and playful too. The next one that I wanted to talk about is one that is near and
dear to my heart because I absolutely love it and that is game night or could be
game day for that matter, game morning, but nonetheless, let's talk about game night.
Okay, I have to ask Dom, what are your favorite family games to play? You know,
that's a great question. It's hard to. We play a game almost every night at dinner,
and yes, I know everybody's raised. You've got to be kidding me. At dinner, yes, at
dinner, we play a game. Lately, for many years now, it has been Mexican train. It's
a domino game. And that's, we've gone through a lot of others. For me, a good game
with a large family of diverse,
changed, obviously, over the years when our daughter was little, you know, I wouldn't
say it was my favorite, but she loved playing Candyland. Oh, God, yeah. Oh, my God.
If I have to play one more game of this. I couldn't, I just couldn't wait when I
could finally get him to shoots and ladders, which actually, yeah, it's like, oh,
please, can we just get rid of Candyland and move to shoot some land? Which is
really just as bad, but it was a step up from Candyland. That's first yeah. Even
now, I would prefer shoots and ladders to Candyland, but go ahead. And never a
monopoly for me. Never monopoly. Oh, my gosh. In fact, I got to the point where I
refused to play Monopoly. I just said, no, the rest of you all play because I
really don't like that game. So it's funny you mentioned Monopoly, actually. So I
have a memory of my own childhood that is really stressful. And so before I share
it, though, the one thing I want to preface is saying game nights are important,
not only because they're fun, but also because they teach kids about teamwork.
They teach them about language skills, about math skills. They teach them about how
to be good winners and how to be good losers. So that's where my Monopoly story
comes in. So I remember I was maybe 10 years old and my mom my dad and I were
playing Monopoly, and I lost, and apparently I was very angry about it. And I
picked up all of the rest of my money, which probably wasn't much if I lost, but
I picked it up and I threw it across the table. It is the only time,
Dawn, that I remember getting sent to my room. But, you know, it's such a great
example of that because I remember it because it's so clearly was an experience of
my parents saying that is not an acceptable way to lose. You know,
when you lose, you lose graciously, you congratulate the other players and you say,
well, you know, you did a better job than me. Maybe I'll do better next time. And
so it was really, I mean, I remember where it was. I remember the sunroom where it
was at this time and like the money went everywhere. And my mom would like, go to
your room. I was like, what?
Yeah, it sticks in your mind, yes. It does. But yeah, but it's that idea that
these game nights, not only do they provide us with the connection and the belonging
and the play and the laughter and all of that, but it really does teach skills for
kids, too, skills that they would get outside of the classroom. And you may have to
be, in fact, not may, you will, particularly as the adults, have to be flexible.
The Candyland example is a good one. My refusal to play Monopoly is not.
Everybody needs to look forward to it. So finding the right game or games,
and we have struggled with some of ours not wanting to shift to a new game and
some of the others getting tired. And so trying to find a time, again, it goes
back to intentionality because it was important to us, taking the one or ones that
didn't want to change and make sure that they learned the new game, felt comfortable
with it, agreed to take, you know, we were going to give it a trial run, that
type of thing. It goes back to your intentionality. It's not as easy as just
opening up a game because, well, if you have just one child, it probably could be
because you just cater to whatever that child is wanting. But if you've got multiple
kids, you've got to give some thoughts. So it has to be important. You have to
value it. And so it takes some thought. And you may get stuck playing Candyland a
lot longer than you choose.
But somehow we eventually grow out of it. Yes. Thank goodness. You know,
and it doesn't have to even be table games. I mean, Twister is such a fun game to
bring out with the family. And, of course, The kids are far more limber than the
parents, so it's a good, it's good to have games where the kids can be better than
the parents. Yes. And Twister is, if you're up for it, is a pretty good example of
that. It's funny. I was actually just going to mention Twister. And the other one,
I think charades is a really good one because it doesn't, it doesn't matter what
age you are. We played that this summer with some cousins. And it was grandparents
and parents and then the little kids. And everybody was able to get engaged and
have a blast with it. Plus you get creative with it too. I love charades. Yeah,
and we do do that. There's a game called, it's not a game. It's a charades thing,
but it's called Gestures. It's an electronic form of charades. And that's fun.
And then you have to do, depending on the age and depending on the temperament and
personality of your family, you can all work together to be guessing.
Yes. Or you can divide into teams. Yes. Let's talk now about some of the gratitude
rituals. So one thing I learned many, many years ago, I had gone to visit some
friends of mine at their home. And it was just the three of us. So it was a
husband and wife and their five cats and me. And they invited me to dinner.
And when we sat down to eat, they said, Elizabeth, we want to teach you about
something that we do. Instead of saying traditional grace or, you know,
clinking our glasses and saying cheers, they said, what we do is we sit and take a
few moments and we share what we're grateful for throughout the day and it was such
a beautiful practice we probably took 10 minutes I mean our food was almost cold by
the time we got to it but each person took you know three to four minutes and
said wow this happened and that happened and this person said this kind thing to me
and I had this wonderful opportunity and you know wow the sunset was beautiful and
it was such a lovely way to step into the evening time and to sit down in
community together. And so I have started incorporating that with my family as well.
And then particularly when we have big gatherings, I remember one of the first
Thanksgiving's that we went to many years ago with, you know, bigger family. And
instead of just, you know, hey, let's dig in and eat the turkey and the cranberry
sauce. It was, hey, let's everybody to go around the table and just say one.
many years ago who was struggling with her teenagers and she felt like they were
being ungrateful and entitled and just sort of you know taking parents for granted
and I said what if you start a gratitude jar and she's like well what's that and
I said well you know you just take little pieces of paper and you have a pen out
and you have a little bowl or a jar and you invite people throughout the week to
write down something that they're grateful for that happened. So I think I shared
that earlier. You know, so -and -so made my lunch and so -and -so was really nice to
me. And then what you do is you review it each week as a family. And let me tell
you, this client said there was a complete transformation with her teenagers because,
you know, at first they grumbled and grown like, I don't want to this, you know,
it's really stupid. But as the weeks went on And she persisted and said, nope, this
is something we're going to do. This is important. Then they started to really get
into it. And she said it really started to shift our attitude. So that's another
great one. Mm -hmm. Well, this would lead us right into discussing prayer or
meditation. Where do those fit as far as rituals? Well, every family is obviously
going to be different. You know, you talked earlier about bedtime routine. I know
there's a lot of families that say prayers together. I have another friend years
ago. They raised their family doing transcendental meditation. And so they meditate as
a family together twice a day for 20 minutes. Like, wow, how do you find time to
do that? But they did. They made it a priority every morning and every evening. So
I think prayer and meditation, it's obviously very personal, very intimate. Sometimes
it's something that we do together. And sometimes it's also just saying, hey,
separately, let's just be quiet together in the space. So they don't necessarily have
to be verbalized prayers necessarily, but just sort of being in that same space
together. We talked earlier about, you know, in your family meeting, it could be
lighting a candle. You know, you could light up a candle and just everybody sit
quietly. So it's just that togetherness that matters. I don't know if this would
fall under ritual, but certainly something that was identifying for my family was
travel. We were a family that loved to travel, and we made sacri.
We didn't, our kids didn't have some of the latest toys, but we would point out
that we're saving money for a, you know, a two -week trip this summer to do X or
whatever. So how does travel fit into rituals. Well, I'm a big proponent of travel,
too. In fact, we always would say our number one family value is travel. And like
you, you know, make it a priority. And so, nope, we're not spending money on this
gadget or, you know, this brand name clothing because we're putting our money in the
travel budget. So absolutely, I think it can be a ritual. But again, it's about the
intentionality behind it. Why are we choosing to go to a particular place. What are
we going to do when we get there? Yes, maybe we'll sight and see, we'll have fun,
we'll relax, but can we make a ritual out of, you know, we're always going to try,
let's say, a new cuisine, you know, and whether you're traveling domestically or
internationally, but it's like, oh, can we try a new food from this region? Or can
we try a new restaurant? Or maybe we go visit all of the local farmers. I think
it's really about what is important to your family.
Science Museum, and we're going to make a point to go do that. So again, I think
it's about intentionality and letting everybody have a voice, you know, not just
having the parents or the grandparents plan the trip and say, this is what we're
going to do, but ask each member of the family, what do you want? What's important
to you? Yeah. So what are some other family rituals that you highlight in the book?
Well, some other ones, I think one thing we haven't touched on yet is the idea of
having a home or a family altar, particularly if you have had loved ones who have
passed on, whether it's a grandparent or maybe it could be a parent or it could be
a sibling. I think that having a special dedicated altar to honor our ancestors can
be a really lovely way to talk about where we come from, people that we have known
and loved. It could be for pets, you know, if you have a dog or a kitty cat
who's passed away, that could be a nice way to honor them. But I also think a
family altar can just be a place to have everybody have sort of a central place
where they can stop and pause throughout the day, maybe say a little prayer,
maybe just kind of get resourced. You know, when we get so busy and we're running
everywhere and we're stuck on our phones and the kids are watching TV, it's like,
oh, I'm just gonna kind of stand in front of the altar or sit in front of the
altar for two or three minutes and just get myself grounded. So it could be a
place where when you go on a hike together on the weekend, you pick up, you know,
a favorite rock and you go oh i love this rock because of how it feels or it's
so pretty and you place it on the altar for little kids it can be gathering leaves
or acorns in the fall if you go to the beach you could pick up some shells so
you know tying it into travel that we were just talking about right like your altar
could have a theme so maybe in one family it's all about travel and in another
family it's about you know, honoring the unfluster. So it's really about what feels
good to you. The other one, and we'll end with this one, because I think
everybody's got the gist of what we're talking about. But what I didn't want to
spend some time talking about volunteering, that one was very important to me, that
we do that on some level, and that we do it together as a family.
So if you could talk to us a bit about the volunteering ritual. Absolutely.
Yes. I think as we all know that when we take our kids to volunteer, it helps
them to appreciate the world that they inhabit. And it helps them to understand that
there are other people who are in need of help and support. So whether it is,
you know, volunteering at a homeless shelter or serving soup at a soup kitchen or
maybe it's volunteering at the local animal shelter because you know the puppies and
doggies that are there don't have any love and they need some extra attention but I
think volunteering really helps our kids to connect with the world around us into
our community and what it does too is it helps them to realize wow you know things
are actually pretty good at home Because, you know, a lot of times, you know, I
don't have this or I don't have that. Or my friends all have this or they have
that or they do this and they do that. And then it allows them to get some
perspective and say, wow, you know, actually our family is pretty great. We really
love and care for each other and we're connected. So, yeah, I think the volunteering
piece is huge. What kinds of things did you do with your kids volunteer -wise?
When they were younger, one that we did that I'm assuming would still be allowed,
I don't No.
children because the older ones were busy with after school activities, but we would
stop by and visit Miss Mamie. We didn't do it every week. It started off every
week and then it got to be every other week. I think our children still remember
this and I think it was important. So yeah, that's an example of one. What's an
example of volunteering that you have done with your family? Well, I know last year,
so we just moved to a new city And last year, one of the local churches sponsored
a holiday caroling bus tour. And so they got a bunch of the members of the church.
And we actually weren't a member, but we were invited to go, join them. And we
went around and visited a lot of the nursing homes and independent living. And my
daughter just loved that. Because, you know, to see these older folks and,
you know, they would just get the biggest smiles on their faces as all these kids
came in and started singing to them. And it was really fun. So we're going to plan
to do that again this year. As you can tell, audience, there are so many
opportunities. And you need to fit it to where your kids' interest, too. That's part
of it.
One more short interruption, if I may. I want to remind you about the library of
15 free courses, thanks to our very generous partnership with the Jockey Being Family
Foundation. These courses are designed to strengthen your family, build connectedness,
and give you some tools for your parenting toolbox. You can check it out at Bitley
slash JBF support. That's BIT .L .L .Y slash JBF support.
Now let's go back to the show and finish up. All right, let's end on talking
about...
that your child wants to celebrate. Because let's be honest, there's loss associated
with that. Even in infant adoption, there is the loss of birth family. And whereas
a four -year -old doesn't get that, an 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 -year -old, 16 -year -old,
this might not be a day of celebration. But there's still ways that one could
ritualize it. And the ritual can include both the gain as well as the loss.
What are your thoughts on that type of ritual? I absolutely love what you're saying
there about this dawn because I think that when we talk about ritual, it doesn't
always have to be about sort of celebration and joy and delight and happiness.
Rituals are also about honoring. They're about honoring. They're about witnessing.
They're about recognizing pain, recognizing pain, loss, grief, suffering, trauma,
all of that. And with many things in life, it's a both -and, right? Like, we can
be happy that we're a part of this new family, and we can honor and acknowledge
the fact that, wow, I am separated from my family of biology. And that's really sad
and devastating. I remember growing up as an adoptee every year on my birthday, even
though my mom made a big deal of it, she would always say, there's a young woman
out there thinking of you this day every year. And, you know, eventually I was able
to meet my biological mom. But as a child, it made me pause and you're right. She
is out there. Right. So it's actually bringing that. And your mother was also very
wisely sending the signal to you that this is not a subject that you have to avoid
with me. I am not threatened by talking about your birth mom. So, kudos to your
mom. Yes, yes. Well, and actually, and thank you for saying that. She informed my
parenting, so I remember when my daughter turned seven. And even though we had shown
her pictures of her biological mother, when she was younger, she didn't like possess
one. And so she asked me, she said, Mom, for my birthday, I'd like a picture of
my birth mom. And so we gave it to her, and we talked about her. So every year
on our daughter's birthday, we always say extra prayers and blessings for a birth
mom. And we're actually now in reunion with her biological father and have been for
a couple years. And so he now actually gets to become part of her birthday
celebrations, which Mm -hmm. And that's an interesting ritual, too,
incorporating birth family during important milestones in your child's life.
That's another ritual. Yes. If it's a positive and healthy relationship,
absolutely. As we know, that's so important for these kids. And whether it's actually
being in relationship with them in real life or just simply talking about them or
maybe if there's a connection but they're not in person, you know, maybe it's
exchanging letters or gifts or having a phone call, but certainly any way to
incorporate them. You know, the way I look at it is, you know, the more people to
love my child, the better. Are there any other specific rituals that you've thought
about and included for adoptive or foster families, families who are formed not
through birth? I actually wanted to circle back to you, talked about the gotcha
days, and we kind of got a little sidetrack there. The one thing about the gotcha
day is if it is something that the family decides, okay, yes, we do want to
celebrate this, is to really go back to that day when the family was formed.
I have some friends who traveled to China to adopt their daughter. They already had
twin boys here in the U .S. and then they traveled to China to adopt their
daughter, what they call the third to make their triplets. And that day,
apparently, when they united with her, they all took the kids to go get soft
vanilla ice cream. You know, like the kind we used to get at Carvel when we were
kids. And now these kids are in college. But every year on that day,
they all go and get soft vanilla ice cream codes. And it's like, that's their
gotcha day ritual. And again, it's such a simple thing. But what it does is it
takes them back to the place. It takes them back to that moment. It takes them
back to that wonder of, wow, this is when we solidified and cemented our connection
as a bit. Well, that leads us directly into the tips section because one of the
tips you just gave was don't make it too complex. If you're setting up rich
who you are and what you do and the culture of your family. So any other tips?
Well, one we had talked about sort of throughout is asking for input, you know,
asking for each member of the family to talk about what they want, what's important
for them, what matters to them, and making sure that you're incorporating that in
the rituals. And then I think consistency is really key. Sort of what you were
talking about at the beginning about routines and habits that we have. Consistency is
really key. And so for something to really become a ritual, it's something that you
want to do on a regular basis. It doesn't have to be daily or weekly, but
something like every year we do this or every quarter we do this. Or,
you know, as I talked about like every time someone turns a certain age in the
family, then they get this special thing. So I think that consistency is really key.
I would agree. If it's going to become a ritual, it has to be a ritual.
and it's also fun. So there you go. Thank you for joining us today, everyone, and
I will see you next week.