The Power of Rituals
Small Changes That Can Make a Significant Difference
Thanks for reading Raising Good Humans on Substack! My first book, The Five Principles of Parenting: Your Essential Guide to Raising Good Humans is now available for purchase here.
Back again this week, with an attempt to lighten the burden we feel as parents each day.
Assaulted by all of the noise, media attention, and What’sApp parent group chatter (parent group chats are a whole other topic!), it is so easy to get stuck in a loop. Everything we are doing for our kids is wrong. Whatever their issues, they are your fault. More and more of the things that are going sideways, and so few solutions.
As you know, that isn’t my jam.
On the latest episode of the Raising Good Humans Podcast, I interviewed professor and social psychologist, Jonathan Haidt. He has started a movement with his recent book, The Anxious Generation, and is getting a lot of parents to reconsider their decisions around technology. That is important. We have spent quite a bit of time talking about this over the years, so instead of zeroing in on tech, I wanted to highlight something that can bolster our children’s lives right now.
Once you unpack the issue of technology, it's less about how awful the device is, or these apps are, and it is more about what they take us away from.
Dr. Aliza Pressman
In our conversation, one of the places that I find so heartening is when we discuss the power of rituals and routines in helping to ground our children in community. We know from birth that a child’s brain LOVES routines. The predictability, the consistency, and the belonging that a routine creates helps to make our children feel safer, less distracted, and more secure. From a place of routine, they can focus their energy on growing rapidly. They can anticipate what comes next and prepare, call on their skills to regulate, and use a routine to fall back on when things change. Rituals are also predictable and stabilizing, and importantly, they are linked to feeling a greater sense of belonging. That belonging, or mattering, is associated with higher self-esteem, self-confidence, and improved mental health. As they age, the benefit of these rituals and routines continues to play an important role in our children’s mental health, in their connection to the world around them, in promoting social skills, and in supporting their emerging identity. Rituals create shared experiences, memories, lasting connective tissue that strengthens our friendships, and our resilience.
In a world crowded by smartphones, some of our traditional routines and rituals have been lost. That part is true. But it is not too late.
Our kids are starving for community. And no matter where your kid is, no matter how long they have had a phone for, if you can give them more community, it'll be easier for them to put down the phone.
Jonathan Haidt
Here are 5 ways to create (or rediscover) routines and rituals right now:
Eat family meals. As I have written about here, eating together a few times a week (at any meal) has a powerful impact on our children’s connection (to us and the outside world), our relationships, and their well-being.
If you have kids who are already on screens and already on social media, remind yourself that there are ways to pack the day in so that, even if they have phones, there are times when we just put our phones away.
Dr. Aliza Pressman
Reach out to make rituals within your community. This weekend, send a text (!!) to your child’s close friends, or your closest parent friends, and make a plan to hang out. Start with something reasonable, like a regular get together once a month at someone’s house, and take it from there. Here is my sample text, “It turns out that having routines and rituals is so beneficial to our kids. Is anybody up for something monthly or weekly that we can all commit to?” Easy as that! And make it mandatory and screen free. Once there is no working around it, everyone usually leans in!
Ground routines around bedtime, homework, and phone use. You may think that you’ve already lost the battle, and that things have spun out of control, but it isn’t true. Start a routine that you feel good about. Is it coming home from practice, doing homework at the kitchen counter, and getting phone time for limited windows? Removing phones from the bedroom at night and insisting on lights out by an agreed upon time (sneak reading with a flashlight doesn’t usually cause sleep deprivation)? Call on your strength and confidence and set some routines that make sense for what you’re seeing.
If you are leaning into your relationship, your limits, and your boundaries (Rules), your kids are going to be able to get through the tricky waters of technology.
Dr. Aliza Pressman
Find ritual wherever it lives. Pancake breakfasts on Sunday, walking the dog each night before dinner (or just every Sunday night), game night with your siblings once a month. Find small moments that bring you all together, just BECAUSE.
Tell stories. Storytelling is a powerful part of how we connect as humans. Talk about morals and values, and share your history and culture. Tell your children stories about your past, or generations before you, your religion, your culture, or your country of origin. Help them connect to something more, something bigger, and something personal.
Finally, let’s talk about how parents can regain their power around devices. I know I have said this before, but it is NEVER too late for you to make a change.
Set a limit. You are responsible for doing what you think, see, and learn is best for your children - not for making them happy with all of your decisions. While we don’t need to focus on taking phones away, we can certainly talk with and enforce limits that make sense, have meaningful conversations around our decisions and clarity around our flexibility (or inflexibility) .
Make peace with your own anxiety around technology. This is important for you AND good for your kids, too. (Friend Melinda Moyer has a great piece for more, here.)
Monitor your own use. If social media is impacting you negatively, it’s time to take your own advice. Follow the same guidelines you’ve set for your kids - out of bedrooms, time limits, more connection and community.
Your child does not really have a phone. You have a phone that they are borrowing.
Dr. Aliza Pressman
A quick reminder to buy my first book, The Five Principles of Parenting, and write a review from wherever you order. Reviews really help to get the book noticed, and to spread the word. Please especially rate and review any books purchased on Amazon (it shockingly really, really matters!). Also, when you receive the book, snap a quick pic with it and post on social media. Share one thing you love about it and help me to get more copies into the hands of parents in your community. Tell a friend about the book, or about something you found helpful in the book. Parents look to each other for advice, and I’d love to be a part of the support you pass on to your loved ones.
Love this. I was a really anxious kid who gravitated towards routines and rituals. Now trying to set these up for our family. We'd love to get a family movie night going, but it's been difficult to schedule. Do you have any tips about getting the ball rolling?