Do You Create Family Rituals?

It’s Friday – which means 2 things in our house: ‘Friday Family Assembly’ and  ‘Friday Film Night.’

Each Friday afternoon when Zoe comes home from school, we all sit around the kitchen table enjoying afternoon tea and our little ritual of ‘family assembly’.

We each take it in turn to stand and the other two congratulate us on our wonderful achievements that week.  There's always lots of clapping and cheering and taking of bows.

It's based on something they used to do at Zoe's Primary School.  Every Friday morning they would hold an assembly.  Each teacher read out the names of children who had done particularly well with something that week.  The whole school would clap and cheer and celebrate their success. And they would go up to the front to collect a sweetie as their prize.

We thought this was a wonderful thing to do and decided to make our own celebration called 'Family Assembly.'

Those achievements may include:  doing something that takes us outside of our comfort zone; overcoming a problem; achieving a goal; being kind to someone else; not giving up when something got difficult.

No matter what’s happened during the week, we can always find something wonderful to give positive feedback about.  I’ve even taken to writing a list of things when they occur to me.  Often when we get to the end of the week, we can forget things that have happened at the beginning.

Family assembly always ends with the giving out of prizes.  Just something small like a chocolate bar.  But at the end of the month Zoe sometimes gets a DVD or a magazine.

Friday is also Family Film Night - a wonderful opportunity to take some time to sit down as a family and watch a film together.  It's a day I look forward to all week - it feels like a real treat and I make sure that I have a final push during the day on Friday to finish off any outstanding work, so that I can relax and enjoy my evening with my little family.

I hope you all have a wonderful Easter weekend with your family and treasure moments like this.  Why not start your own little regular traditions?  Let me know how you get on.

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