When your children are born, they inherit your family’s eye color, hair color, smile and even temperament. They are also emotional sponges when you talk to them, absorbing your voice, your body movements and the love you show when discussing stories you yourself heard as a child from your parents and grandparents.
The story my sisters and I loved hearing was how our parents met. Mom said Dad was in the service and came to church in his uniform and she was smitten! So much so that she dropped the collection plate when handing it to him. That union lasted more than 50 years. Another is how my great-grandmother moved from Germany to Texas with a service member she met, and they lived out in the country. She would stand on the back porch and bang a metal pan to scare the coyotes away from her chicken coop! She stood at just four-foot-10 or so, and I’m sure she was a sight to behold.
I have shared those stories with my own children and many others. The value of knowing who you are and details about your family give youngsters a sense of belonging. If you are lucky enough to live near your parents and grandparents, this is something they definitely know how to do. I learned so much about life from my Mamau while I tagged along as she baked her homemade bread and mayonnaise, crafted cheesecakes no one can emulate and grew the best tomatoes I’ve ever tasted. Her ever-present bent spoon would offer bites to her “chirren,” as she called us.
Some mental health providers have found that more knowledge of family history can increase kids’ likelihood of overcoming psychological and educational challenges. Personal family stories allow your children to better understand themselves. Sharing family stories, quite simply, helps build strong families and connects family members of different ages.
So how do you begin sharing family stories? Taking a walk is the perfect time to talk as things come to mind. Our lives are so busy with activities, sometimes we need to make a conscious effort to quietly tell a story. Pictures are great storytellers too: Grandma’s wedding portrait, a snapshot of her dog, the photo of her on her bike. When my own mother turned 70, I collected photos of her family for a special scrapbook, and my kids loved seeing those black-and-whites!
Find the story in the little things. If you are at a loss, just talk about everyday life and how it’s changed—explain what a phone booth was and cassettes! Visit the Disciple Mama Blog for more ideas.
For fun, have your children “interview” their grandmother. Ask what her favorite foods were when she was a little girl, her favorite subject in school, what she did when she played outside, whether she fought with her brother, what she wore to her first prom and more. Then, compile the answers in a notebook. Grandma will love reading it! And your family will have created a history book of sorts.
Family stories are not fairy tales or the latest superhero movie, but kids still need to hear them. Stories are a way of preserving family history, but more importantly, they help create a sense of continuity and resilience while building a framework to understand painful experiences and celebrate happy times. Parents who share stories about their childhood give their children the knowledge that they are part of something bigger.
As your children get older, entice them with some of those family secrets, like the time their aunt wrecked your car when she hit a deer, or the time your favorite uncle brought to a Christmas party the drugs he’d become hooked on in the Korean War. (Those are a few of my family sagas!) It’s not healthy or useful to turn away from difficult situations that happened, because truth is truth. Once the situations see the light of day, they can have more effect. Once you talk about them, they simply become part of the larger patchwork quilt that is a family’s life.
With FaceTime, your children are already used to listening to your family members. Why not change it up a bit. After your son tells his grandparents he hit a home run, why not ask Grandpa if he ever hit a home run? That will be a story!
Sources: AmericanaSteeples.com, WashingtonPost.com