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Why Family Traditions Are Important – What does your family do on holidays? How do you plan to celebrate the 4th of July as a family? How important do you think it is to create traditions that become memories for your family?
It’s important for your family to establish some things that will be consistent when things are constantly changing.
Why Family Traditions Are Important
Spending quality time with extended family at strategic times can have the potential to foster important relationships.
Why Is So Important To Create Family Traditions For Your Kids
They are actually a great time to tell a story. You can tell your children stories that they may have forgotten about when they were little. Chances are, your parents will tell your children stories about you that you don’t want them to know. But a child has an extraordinary power to hear stories that connect them to a larger family.
Every Christmas my dad would cover our house with outside speakers and play Christmas carols outside for the whole neighborhood. (If he tried today, he’d probably be fined by the Home Owners Association.)
Every summer we would spend a week on the farm where my mother grew up. (One summer they actually paid my cousins to pay me to work haying for a week so they could do the hard work for me.)
Every Sunday night, a group of families we knew would go to someone’s house and play games. (I think I learned the importance of community more after church than after church.)
Why Family Traditions Are Important To Children
Reggie is the founder and CEO of Orange (The reThink Group). She has co-authored three parenting books, Don’t Miss Out, Play to Keep, and Parenting Beyond Your Skills, as well as other leadership books such as A New Kind of Leader and Think Second. Reggie lives in Georgia with his wife Debbie and has four grown children, Reggie Paul, Hannah, Sarah and Rebekah. There is no doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically affected how family members interact with each other. In the past year, many parents have learned to cope with working from home while their children study remotely in the next room. Over the past 15 months, many families have spent more time together than they were used to, and with it, many of their habits and activities have changed. Families developed new traditions to get through the strange and disorienting time.
But now that the pandemic has eased its influence on American society, the question arises: Will these pandemic traditions remain? And what traditions are worth following?
To shed light on these new traditions and how they affect family dynamics, we surveyed 1,006 parents about their family experiences during the pandemic. In doing so, we’ve gained some surprising insights into how the pandemic is affecting families and how parents and children interact with each other.
The most obvious way the pandemic has affected families over the past year has been the increased time parents and children spend together.
Create Family Traditions For A Memorable Childhood & Family Bonds
80% of the parents we surveyed said they worked from home during the pandemic, and 69% said their children studied remotely during this period. One in five families had an adult child return home, and a similar number reported staying at home for childcare.
The result? Most families spent more time than usual during the pandemic. Not surprisingly, parents felt the impact of this change the most. Fifty-eight percent of parents experienced some stress from this increased family interaction, and more than a third felt a lot or extreme stress as a result.
As parents faced an unfamiliar family landscape, they found themselves forced to come up with new routines and coping strategies. Thus, new family traditions were born.
As old schedules and habits went out the window, parents had to discover new ways to communicate with their children.
Fun Family Christmas Traditions
The parents we surveyed reported many new bonding activities, some of the most popular being family outings, movie nights, group exercises, and game nights. The traditions families relied on most in their daily lives were family outings, followed by group exercise and then family or themed dinners and sharing of daily experiences. Other popular activities include arts and crafts, Zoom meetings with extended family, and playing video games together.
We wondered which of these new activities improved family relationships the most. Parents we surveyed reported that family outings, family dinners, stories, and sharing everyday experiences led to the most bonding. This finding makes sense given that two of the foundations of strong parent-child relationships are eating together and listening/empathy.
We also asked parents which new traditions they were most satisfied with. Here – again – family outings topped the list, but movie nights and working out together, family get-togethers and family dinners were strong contenders. Perhaps these activities were so powerful because they represented shared experiences, and research shows that they increase our feelings of closeness to others.
Given that family traditions are changing so drastically and suddenly in 2020, it makes sense that families will feel the impact on many different levels. We asked parents how these new activities affect family dynamics and which ones increase or decrease stress.
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In most cases, these new activities reduced stress, with more than half of parents reporting lower family stress levels after adopting them.
However, stress levels vary between parents. Parents with young children (ages 4 and under) are more likely to say these new family traditions increase stress. This is perhaps not surprising, given that parents of young children often struggle to entertain or engage their children while trying to work from home themselves. In contrast, parents with older, more independent children (18 years and older) found that new traditions tended to reduce intrafamily tension.
Overall, most families reported that their new traditions increased feelings of connectedness, with more than 90% of parents reporting that they felt more connected to other family members. But as families emerge from relative isolation, which of these traditions will continue?
The parents we surveyed said they were most likely to continue with family outings, sharing stories and experiences with each other, and family meals. Activities they expect to be phased out include family Zoom meetings and video games — presumably because life after the pandemic will involve less screen time and more personal interaction.
New Ideas For Traditions To Start With Your Family
Parents who wondered which activities reduced family stress pointed to Zoom meetings and sharing daily experiences (activities that promote quality time and thoughtful communication), as well as video games, game nights, gardening or plant care (shared experiences).
Interestingly, some traditions that parents said they intended to continue were associated with more stress, rather than less. Family outings and movie nights were reported as the best activities to continue post-pandemic, although they were rated as more stressful than other pastimes. Perhaps the benefits of these activities outweigh the downsides. Family gatherings, book clubs, and playing music together were also more associated with increased stress.
With all these changes in family farms, we wondered: How did these new traditions affect parent-child relationships?
The biggest change was that parents got to know their children better. 84% of parents said they felt they knew their children better after fighting the pandemic together.
Family Tradition Ideas To Pass Down To Your Kids And Grandkids
However, growing family closeness has not always been easy. More than a third of parents reported that more family interaction during the pandemic has led to more arguments. This sentiment was particularly strong among parents with young children, perhaps because they face significant stressors due to economic instability and lack of childcare options.
However, overall, the majority of parents reported that their relationships with their children had strengthened. Interestingly, 65% of men reported better relationships with their children (compared to 60% of women), perhaps reflecting men’s increased involvement in family roles during the pandemic.
As the pandemic begins to subside, we asked parents to look ahead and imagine what family dynamics might look like in the future.
Most of the parents who participated in our survey said that they expect to become closer with their children, or at least to maintain the current level of closeness. Many respondents expressed little regret when thinking about returning to a more normal lifestyle; 71% of parents said they would spend more time with their children.
How To Create Your Own Christmas Family Traditions
However, parents of children aged 4 and younger were more willing to take a break from intensive family time; more than a fifth of these parents said they would not spend extra time with their children. As mentioned earlier, given the mental and emotional burdens placed on parents of young children during a pandemic, it is understandable that they are looking for some respite.
And they are not alone in their excitement to return to a more normal lifestyle. More than half of the parents we surveyed were excited to get out of the year of pandemic isolation, although parents of children aged 9-12 were the least likely to express this feeling.
The pandemic has changed almost every aspect of American life, but its impact has been felt
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