The Book of New Family Traditions (33 page)

Good Mother’s Day Website

At
MothersDayWorld.com
you will find a wealth of information about how it is celebrated around the world, as well as crafts, quotes, recipes, and gift ideas. My personal favorite among the quotes is from Abraham Lincoln: “All that I am or ever hope to be I owe to my angel mother.”

Father’s Day

In these enlightened times, dads do more of the heavy lifting of parenthood than ever before, and they deserve to be honored and celebrated. Would you believe that presidents as far back as Woodrow Wilson tried to get Father’s Day recognized as a national holiday? Wilson first proposed the holiday in 1916, but it didn’t happen until Richard Nixon signed it officially into law in 1972. Now it is celebrated globally, including in the Arab world, also in June.

Father’s Day is a great day to do “guy things” like grilling, but the best approach is to spend time with your dad doing the things he truly loves. Take a hike, go to a baseball game, pack a picnic to the park with all his favorite foods. And get mushy: Dads need hugs, too.

Guy Day Adventurers

The McCandless family decided to create a Father’s Day ritual that celebrates all the menfolk in the family at once, including the sons. “About ten years ago, we got tired of just buying another shirt for Father’s Day, so we started planning a special ‘Guy Day’ for all the dads in the family. Every year it’s a new adventure and it includes my father, my father-in-law, my husband, and our son. The first year it was a local air show, another year they toured a naval shipyard, and another time they visited a train museum.”

The womenfolk, “who would be bored by these things,” says Sue, pay for the whole excursion but don’t attend, appearing only at the picnic dinner that ends the day.

Daddy’s Toolbox: A Survival Kit for Fathers

Adapted from a workshop for kids at Blue Tulip, a wonderful New Jersey gift shop that no longer exists.

Take any sort of box, shoebox size or smaller, and let the kids decorate it with torn paper, markers, glued-on decorations. The items listed are just a starting suggestion: Let the children add little tokens, toys, drawings, anything they want their dad to keep close. If they can’t write yet, the parents can help, or let the kids explain in their own words what these items stand for.

• Marbles—to replace the ones you will lose

• Penny—to give you cents (sense) to know how valued you are

• Heart (paper is fine)—to remind you that I love you

• Rope—in case you are at the end of yours

• Rubber band—to remind you to be flexible

• Paper clip—to help you hold things together

Other ideas:
candy, Band-Aids, Lego blocks, mini-sports tokens (football and so on), friendship bracelet, buttons, stickers.

A T-Shirt to Melt His Heart

Materials

White cotton T-shirt

Fabric paints in one or more bright colors

Paintbrush

Instructions

Pour some paint into a shallow foil baking pan, then have your kids place either the palms of their hands or their feet in the paint. Have them make a print of their hands or feet on the front of the T-shirt and write next to the prints either “I’m in good hands with Dad” or “I want to walk in Dad’s footsteps.” If you have more than one child, you can change the wording to “We’re in good hands,” and the like. Have them wash all the paint off their skin immediately. Tiny baby feet and hands are adorable mementos, but you can make this an annual tradition, a clever way to chart the kids’ growth.

July 4

Write Your Family Constitution

The Declaration of Independence was a passionate and detailed argument advocating liberty from British rule, complete with a long list of grievances about how the colonists were treated. But the Constitution, which came later, was all about how the new country would govern itself. This is a good time for you to sit down and create your own document about the rules in your house, and the values from which they spring.

You can get as formal as you want to, but if you are looking for a good model, Scott Gale made a fairly complete and realistic one for his family. He wrote about it in his 2009 book, Your Family Constitution:
A Modern Approach to Family Values and Household Structure.

You can access a lot of his ideas free at the website
YourFamilyConstitution.com
, including an e-book that includes multiple templates for creating your own constitution. Typically, the templates cover such topics as manners and attitudes, chores, homework, and rules about screen time, but what’s clever is that Gale has designed themed constitutions that will really appeal to kids, including a Pirate’s Code (consequences for not following required duties are listed as “Deadman’s Curses”) and one with a football theme (consequences of bad behavior are listed under “Penalties.”)

Everyone in the Gale family signed the constitution, and the kids were consulted in its creation. Like the nation’s constitution, this is a living, changing document. At the family’s weekly meeting, there may be a discussion if some aspect of the constitution isn’t working and small tweaks may be made. Otherwise, they give it a thorough examination once a year to see if it needs a more serious amendment.

You get the idea. For all of you parents struggling to create rules about fraught issues like how much time your kids can spend plugged into their various screens, this may be a godsend. To flesh out your rules and then get everyone to sign off on them (consent of the governed) is a great way to reduce friction, while also teaching about how nations and groups are governed.

A “Happy Birthday, America” Party

Food

Typical barbecue fare such as burgers, hot dogs, or chicken, but be sure to include a cake with white frosting, topped with strawberries and blueberries. Instead of regular candles, use sparklers if you have them.

Music

Get a CD with Sousa marches and patriotic favorites, or lead a sing-along of
Yankee Doodle Dandy, America the Beautiful
, and other suitable songs. Provide printouts of the lyrics by going to the website
ScoutSongs.com
. Be sure to sing “Happy Birthday, America” before lighting the sparklers or candles and cutting the cake.

Party Halts

You could use construction paper to fashion hats, such as Uncle Sam’s stovepipe hat, in red, white, and blue. Just make a cylinder of paper about eight inches high, glue the edges so it fits the child’s head, and cut a matching brim (cut it extra wide so there’s paper you can tuck and glue to the bottom of the hat. No need to worry about a top). Or you could use green paper and make some simple Statue of Liberty hats, just a crown shape with spikes sticking up. Your local party store will also stock hats.

Activities

Read aloud from the Declaration of Independence. Although the long list of complaints about King George III gets boring, the initial section is very inspiring. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” and so on. Borrowing from the Jewish tradition of thinking about the importance and joy of freedom, have all the people at the table talk about why they value freedom, and what life is like today in countries whose citizens are not free.

Sign a Declaration of Interdependence

Although independence was the way to go for the American colonists, and our children want to be as independent of us as possible, there is no question that the fates of all the people living on Earth are tied together. We realize this truth more and more as we go along.

As it turns out, historian, philosopher, and public intellectual Will Durant created such a declaration after World War II, making the point that future world wars might be avoided if people would generally acknowledge this truth, and live it. Because so many of the horrors from that war were related to religious and ethnic persecution, Durant’s declaration argued particularly hard for tolerance.

A more recent declaration has been developed by a nonprofit group called WE, which is attempting to get people all over the world to work together on such issues as environmental stewardship. Prominent social activists and religious leaders, including Desmond Tutu, Deepak Chopra, Jane Goodall, and others have signed this Declaration of Interdependence. Sign it and learn more with your family at: we.net/declaration.

This is the basic language of the document:

Declaration of Interdependence

We, the people of planet Earth,

In recognition of the interconnectedness of all life

And the importance of the balance of nature,

Hereby acknowledge our interdependence

And affirm our dedication

To life-serving environmental stewardship,

The fulfillment of universal human needs worldwide,

Economic and social well-being,

And a culture of peace and nonviolence,

To ensure a sustainable and harmonious world

For present and future generations.

Certainly, you can also write your own Declaration of Interdependence, including your personal commitments to your family and community.