The Intentional Family

The most important parenting book I have read is Gordon Neufeld's Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers. Jan Matney at Your Child as Zen Master gives a great testimonial about Neufeld's work: "I have been deeply influenced by Gordon Neufeld's work (I took his Power To Parent course this summer with our daughter and son-in-law). I walked away from it struck by how good parenting comes from over and over, strongly attaching to our children. In other words, don't be held hostage by the latest theory on how to gain control over children, but instead gain enough wisdom and authority to deeply attach. Then our influence over them is because they respect and love us, not because we know how to manage them."

For me, the book makes sense over and over again. Neufeld talks about the biological need for kids to be in attachment relationships, the consequences of living in a culture that, for a variety of reasons, encourages children to attach to their peers rather than their parents, and the power and connection that comes when parents consciously create strong attachments with their children. Attachment facilitates parents who have natural authority that children respond to, and children who develop into mature, caring, wise, intelligent, well-developed, healthy human beings.

Neufeld offers many useful techniques for connecting with our children. Creating family rituals is one way that we can preserve and hold sacred our relationships with one another. Rituals that facilitate the parent-child relationship need to be protected, intentionally put in place and committed to. In his words, "Unless a time and place is set aside and rituals are created, pressures that are more urgent will inevitably prevail." The sit-down family dinner is can be a great opportunity to connect, as well as bedtime rituals, morning rituals, rituals for leaving and coming home, weekends, birthdays, holidays, daddy traditions, giving traditions and even couples traditions (just for mom and dad).

Matt and I have been talking and making choices about what we want our rituals to be. We've been going through the exercises in The Relationship Cure: A 5 Step Guide to Strengthening Your Marriage, Family, and Friendships that take us through different ritual ideas and ask us questions about what we want. I've also been reading two other books (I know, I'm a book junkie), New Traditions: Redefining Celebrations for Today's Family and The Intentional Family: Simple Rituals to Strengthen Family Ties, both of which have great ritual ideas.

So far, we have created a family meal ritual where we put the food out on the table, set the table, light a candle, turn down the light, say a prayer of thanks, and not get up if possible until dinner is over. We've made Saturday mornings our time for doing something together as a family, usually hiking or swimming and going out to lunch. We already have a connecting kid bedtime ritual (now we need to work on our bedtime ritual). We've decided how we want our birthday and anniversary celebrations to go, how we want to take care of sick family members, how we want to be with guests, and how we want coming-home greetings to be. We still have a lot more rituals to talk about, and we will continue to discuss it for some time. I like the process of waking up, becoming more and more intentional about how I am in my life and what my true purposes are, and I really like the idea that our kids can grow up in a loving, committed, connected family.

What are some of your family rituals? You might have intentionally set it up, or you might have just made it a habit without realizing it. You might have a memory of one from when your kids were young, one you are doing now, or one you would like to start. What are some of your favorites? Please share, and help us all generate some ideas!