Hi there, it's Finley 👋🏼

Happy Friday to the 32 parents who joined this past week.

Today's story takes 2 minutes to read.

The necessity of family traditions

We all have them.

Our family traditions.

Experiences that become a part of the fabric of our lives thanks to great stories or meals or locations.

Oh, and lots and lots of repetition.

One of the greatest joys you experience as a parent is seeing the moments that you love eventually embraced by your kids.

I grew up spending my summers on the lake. We had a multi-generation lake house that smelled musty and included an ancient oven that burned everything on the bottom.

My mom loved going to the lake and taking her two kids because she grew up going to the same lake house as a kid with her parents. Now, we take our kids to the lake and spend days on the boat.

It has become a 5 generation tradition and family identifier for us.

My kids talk about the lake year round. Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall, they are talking about the next time we get to go to the lake together.

Building traditions for our kids is important, and your season of kids is the total sweet spot. Repetitive meaningful experiences bring so much connection.

The problem though is the expectation that parents put on these experiences. We bring our own historical baggage or want the weekend or trip or meal to be exactly as we imagined.

When we do that, we remove the magic. We take the joy and bonding out of the time with our kids when the pressure of the tradition is greater than the presence we bring to it.

Don't be like me. Lower your expectations. Any family tradition will do.

I grew up watching the Masters with my dad. It was a four-day golf tournament that occurred at the same time, on the same tv channel, playing the same golf course year after year after year.

It is my favorite sporting event on the calendar. I look forward to it 51 weeks a year. Why? Because it brings me closer to my dad.

Sure the golf is amazing, but it was a tradition (unlike any other) that connected me with my father.

It doesn't matter what holiday, cabin, event, or adventure it is. Go all in and bring your young kids along with you. They will love it because you do.

A process not an event

"Parenting is not a series of dramatic confrontation-confession events, but rather a life-long process of incremental awareness and progressive change.

Here, in a phrase, is what you are committing yourself to: many mini-moments of change."

Source: Parenting from Paul David Tripp

That's all for today's writing of Parenting: What we've learned (so far)

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We'll visit again next Friday - Finley