I recently read a fascinating article about rituals and how important they are to our day-to-day lives. I’ve always been a creature of habit and have naturally created rituals for myself throughout the years, but this article stuck with me and got me thinking about how I could create more rituals in my life, especially when it comes to parenting.
I started to intentionally try to look for areas in our life that we could create rituals, and I very quickly found that it was way easier than I expected it to be. One of my favorite things Jackson and I have been doing for the last few months is going on weekly library dates. It takes about an hour out of our Sunday afternoon and has very quickly become one of my absolute favorite routines.
Getting ready to go to the “libaby”
Every Sunday when he wakes up from his nap, we head out to the local library. I let him play and linger as long as he wants, we choose some new books to read at bedtime, and the entire time is focused completely on him and what he wants to do. It’s turned into a ritual that I treasure very dearly – it’s so simple, and it’s something that mothers and their children do all over the country every single day, but it somehow feels more sacred when we call it a “date” and make a ritual out of it. I’ve found that there are so many moments of our day that feel so much more special when I slow down to enjoy them a bit, and when I start calling something a “tradition” it suddenly holds so much more value to all of us.
There are so many different routine parts of the day that you could apply this concept to…
- Making breakfast together
- Reading a book before nap or bed
- Bath time
- Create a dinnertime ritual of sharing highs and lows from the day
- Play a family game together on Friday nights
Sometimes the day-to-day routines can start to feel so mundane, but for me it’s so helpful if I remind myself that I don’t have to do these things, I get to do them. And that one-word attitude shift turns tasks that used to be annoying into extremely special moments that I get to share with my son. I’ve now become much more intentional about finding little moments throughout the day for rituals that I can cherish rather than rush through, and I find that it makes those often tedious moments much more enjoyable.
Do you have any rituals that you do with your children?
blogger / nectarine / 2043 posts
We have a pretty solid morning and nighttime routine so I guess those a rituals in themselves, but I think my favorite is when I wake kiddo up in the morning. She gets a cup of milk, and usually she insists on sitting on my lap, chugging it down and then cuddling for a few minutes as she fully wakes up. It always kills me a little when I have to go in to work early and miss it.
blogger / grape / 92 posts
I would like to start more rituals with my kids. One resolution I made for this year was to implement one Family Home Night (or FHE) each week. I was inspired by my Mormon friends. I’m still fleshing out the idea and trying to get focused on routines. I’m really bad about keeping schedules and doing the same thing, I tend to be more of a “floater”. But I’d like to do something like a dinner we cook together (pizza would be an easy one) then have a fun meal followed by some games before the bedtime routine.