Just Started Your Own Little Family? Here Are a Few Traditions to Begin With
Family traditions offer you the opportunity to create positive, lasting memories for everyone involved. If you have just started a new family, first of all, congratulations! (You have probably already started a tradition of sorts by receiving baby gifts for their pre-first birthday!) Secondly, you’re here because you want to start some fun and wholesome traditions for your little family to start practicing and, hopefully, uphold for years to come, but perhaps you are unsure where to start.
We have some great family tradition activity ideas here for you. Practicing a routine family tradition provides you and your family with fantastic bonding opportunities and can help foster a sense of kinship and well-being in your little ones. In addition to the fun family bonding times these traditions can create, the routine and predictability of tradition can help create a stable home environment, which promotes feelings of safety and security in your little ones.
Have a Family Arts and Crafts Night
Arts and crafts, from playing with dough or modeling clay as an infant or toddler to building intricate model miniatures and popsicle stick kingdoms in adolescence, are a fantastic way to foster creativity and critical thinking skills while spending time together as a family.
Wear your comfy loungewear and let things get messy. Even in the very early days of parenthood, you can start with a craft you enjoy, such as painting or pottery, and allow your infant to watch. As they grow, so will their curiosity, allowing you to nurture their creativity.
Festive Fall Traditions
Fun and festive family traditions that many adhere to happen in the fall and winter. Besides celebrating Fall holidays such as Thanksgiving and Halloween, you can also start a Fall tradition of your own such as family apple picking every September or going to a local corn maze before Halloween each year.
Get everyone matching family Halloween pajamas and create a fun fall tradition of taking pictures with your apple harvest after your traditional orchard visit.
Give Back Together
Traditions aren’t just for bonding with family, taking pictures, or creating fun memories. They are also about instilling values and nurturing positive qualities in each other. Taking the time to give back to your community as a family is a great way to do all these things.
You can volunteer your time at a shelter, organize a monthly park or beach clean-up, or simply donate food or gifts .
Spend Time Outside Together
Another way to instill positive values and also encourage your growing family to connect with the world around them is by spending designated time outside together. Go for a family hike every month, or have a weekly bike ride to the park.
You can have an annual family camping trip or simply get the kid’s sleeping bags out and look at the stars together from the backyard.
Have a Family Game Night
A family game night, whether it’s once per week or once every couple of months, is an awesome family tradition to start as soon as possible. Playing games together is a wonderful way to have fun and bond together as a family.
Traditions of Religious or Cultural Significance
If there are religious or cultural traditions you want to uphold from your own childhood, of course, you’ll want to include those on this list. Whether you observe Passover, celebrate Kwanzaa, or simply love the idea of decorating with personalized needlepoint Christmas stockings above the fireplace, cultural and religious traditions are, to so many, fundamental to familial bonding.
You don’t need to be religious to incorporate these types of traditions into your little family, either. Opening presents on Christmas morning or dressing your toddler in a colorful Easter dress to hunt for candy-filled eggs are sweet family traditions anyone can observe, regardless of their background.
Set Aside One-on-One Time
You can also create a family tradition that doesn’t involve every family member at once. A fantastic way to strengthen familial bonds and create kinship is by setting aside one-on-one time for family members. Start the tradition of taking your little one on an adventure date every so often. That will give one parent the opportunity to connect with their child and give the other parent some treasured alone time!
You don’t even have to leave the house to have these playdates. Bake cookies together, or create a pillow fort out of the kid’s bedding, and let yourself have fun.
Remember that creating and upholding family traditions should be enjoyable. If you try incorporating a tradition into your new family because you love the idea or because it was a tradition you were raised with but then find that it simply isn’t working for your family, don’t force it. The point is to create nice and memorable experiences for the whole family, so have fun with it!