Creating Family Traditions

Creating family traditions are fun and easy. Family traditions are a simple and enjoyable way to spend quality time with the ones you love and they do not necessarily have to revolve around holidays - although those are nice too.

Think back to when you were a child - is there something you did with your family that you'd like to continue? Is there something you didn't do with your family that you'd like to implement?

Let's look at a few ideas.....

Reading: Reading together every evening is a great way to encourage your children to read, invoke thought provoking conversations, learn more about each other and their views. Child experts have proved that reading to unborn children stimulate their learning and brain activity - how much more so when they are here in the real world of homework and life lessons? Let each person take a turn picking the book. This may be awkward depending on the age differences, but do it anyway and discuss what you read! Allow even encourage children to ask questions - nothing within reason is off limits and no question is stupid- this will aide parents in understanding what is going on in their child's life at the time and encourage children to think and reason as an adult.

Listen to Music: This may be a bit difficult at times, especially if your teenager is into Rap and your pre-schooler into Barney songs, but listening to music is another great way to encourage children and adults to diversify their interests. Listening to the same music as your teen will help you understand what he or she may be going through at that point in their life. Most music is recycled anyway - what you heard as a teen becomes popular again when your children are teens - this gives you solid ground to build upon during what are normally turbulent years.

Cooking a special meal - Everyone gets a chance to explore cullinary skills and build family ties especially if each is allowed to prepare their favorite dish - regardless of what that might be - call it pot luck night and no reasonably healthy dish is vetoed.

Movie night: As with the reading and music, this can be a challenge - especially with large age differences between children - still unless the movie is incredibly gory or violent, give it a shot.

Prayer, Scripture and/or Bible study - keep it simple, straightforward and allow different opinions to be discussed. No interpretation is one-hundred-percent wrong and hearing a child's viewpoint will encourage adults to maintain their "childlike faith."

These are just a few ideas on creating family traditions. The most important thing to remember is that any quality time with your family is beneficial to everyone involved. The purpose of family traditions is to encourage discussions, thereby stimulating growth and fostering understanding and compassion which will assist everyone in becoming the best person they can be.