On Family Culture

Jordan and I are ten years into our relationship, and in those ten years, we’ve lived in four different states and six different towns.

Each place we’ve lived has had a unique culture, one that slowly revealed itself to us over the passing days and interactions. There was Burnsville, Minnesota, with its teeming highways and old people who called their toilets “stools” and cashiers who didn’t smile as they greeted us.

There was Starkville, Mississippi, where middle-aged women insulted us by pretending to bless us (be warned, if a Southern person ever says “Bless your heart!”, they are not complimenting you!) accents were as thick as the humid summer air, there were crawfish boils every spring and tailgates every fall, and folks prayed before every meal.

And now we’re in New Jersey, where cars are quick to honk, the pizza is just the right amount of greasy and gooey, and people are unfailingly grumpy, until the facade cracks and you realize that the guy who just gruffly told you that he can’t help you is about to give you a free piece of said delicious pizza.

Lately, as W takes his first steps into toddlerhood and emerges as a fully fledged member of our family (with opinions and feelings), I’ve begun to think about culture on the small scale: family culture. Not my larger, extended family, but our immediate family: me and Jordan, and our children.

Having an older child has afforded me an exciting opportunity–as we spend more time with other families, I catch glimpses of the unique cultures that run as an undercurrent to all of their interactions. There are families who eat standing around the dinner table. Families who have rows of colorful beach towels hanging on their deck. Families who shout at each other, and then laugh with each other. Families who build massive pillow forts and spend all day playing in them. Families who pick tomatoes right off the vine and eat them while they’re still warm from the sun.

These glimpses inspire me, and cause me to wonder about our family. What are we like? What do we want to be like? What do we not want to be like?

A culture is formed of so many tiny things: the food we eat, the way we speak to each other, the general sense of ease or unease that we feel with each other, the games we play, the clothes we wear.

Every family has both positive and negative aspects to their culture. (And I want to be clear right from the start that this post isn’t about perfecting or criticizing other families–it’s more just a blank space for me to chew on this idea that’s been forming in my brain).

With such young children, Jordan and I have the ability to very intentionally shape the culture in our family. Our actions and behavior toward each other and our children set the tone for our culture.

Mostly, this is very exciting. On a surface level, we could be any sort of family: a family who does puzzles, a family who wears matching pajamas on Christmas eve, a family who goes on weeklong camping trips into remote places.

On a superficial level, every family culture is wildly different. But I’d argue that on a deeper level, healthy families are made up of the same components: the members genuinely like and enjoy each other. They’re generally on the same team. And they look out for each other and support each other.

Aside from all the fun superficial details, mostly, we just hope that our family culture is made up of all those healthy components: love, understanding, patience, and cooperation. For the most part, these things come easily to us–we adore our children, and we adore each other. It is easy to model love.

But as H has gotten older (and W has taken his first steps into toddlerhood) our children have developed into healthy, normal children, who have tantrums and test boundaries and scream and shout and cry over the toys they snatch from each other’s fingers, cultivating the kind of culture we want has gotten a lot more complex.

So how do we cultivate a healthy family culture when Jordan and I aren’t the only ones in the family? Notice first that I’m using the word “healthy” and not “perfect.” Healthy families have conflict. Healthy families are not perfect. (I’ll have to come back to this idea of perfection in another post, because it’s intriguing. What exactly am I arguing for? Being imperfect in all the right ways? Being perfectly imperfect? Because that seems just as bad. I don’t have all the answers, and I come to these blog posts to try and think my way through these kinds of questions).

My basic game plan for navigating sibling conflict is to stay out of their relationship as much as possible, but make sure that I’m armed with very strict, previously stated rules that are in line with our values, and to be very consistent about enforcing those rules. The rules that we’ve come to mostly revolve around safety (e.g. no hitting, no pushing, you have to sit while you chew, etc). When the kids come to me with specific (non-safety related) grievances (“He stole my toy!” or “He won’t play with me!”), I think of myself as a coach, and not a referee. Instead of deciding what the outcome should be or casting judgement on who was right or wrong, I listen to both sides of the story, and try to help them figure out how to talk to each other about whatever happened.

I didn’t come up with this strategy on my own–instead, I came to it via a book, Siblings Without Rivalry. Navigating sibling relationships was scary enough to me as a new parent that I purchased this book while I was still pregnant with H, and read it shortly before he was born. I absolutely loved it. I’d recommend it for anyone who wants more than one kid, or even folks who don’t have kids, but want to better understand the sibling dynamics in their own families.

It has some pretty straightforward guidelines that have worked well for us:

When a boundary is crossed, I neutrally, state what I see: “I see L grabbing a toy from H.” Then I follow it up with the rule: “We don’t allow grabbing from hands in this house.” And finally, I follow it up with understanding, an opportunity to talk about what happened, and a chance to share solutions for overcoming the problem: “It’s hard sharing toys, isn’t it? Is that toy special to you? Can you think of a way we can share it without fighting?”

Again, this isn’t about being perfect, or about engaging in power struggles. There are times when L grabs a toy from H, and then lovingly soothes H if he cries and finds him a new toy to play with. I let those moments go, and try to keep my eye on the prize: If my goal is a healthy relationship between them and they’ve figured out a way to sort out the issue on their own, it’s better for me to stay out of it.

Every once in awhile, L will tell me or Jordan that he doesn’t like H, and then we always have the same response: that it is totally normal! That we also didn’t always like our siblings, and that siblings can be really hard to have around. Just yesterday, H told me that he hates W, and again, I tried to empathize and make it clear that it was very normal to feel like you hate your siblings sometimes.

I think that this response is key in fostering a healthy relationship between siblings–nothing crushes love faster than feeling like you’re supposed to love someone.

And finally, in cases of potential violence, we intervene loudly, firmly, and immediately. For example, if H is about to whack L, I step between them and say, “STOP! We do not hit people in our family. If you feel angry, you can go punch a pillow.”

Aside from the few, very firm rules that we have in our house (which are mostly designed to keep peace or keep everyone safe), I generally try to minimize control, and instead focus on maximizing cooperation. Often, this looks like ignoring the kids when they climb into the cabinet and grab a third biscotti (or jump on the dining room table, or try out the new curse words they’ve learned from their dad), and instead invite them to come help me put a load of laundry in, or load their plates in the dishwasher, or wipe up a spill.

So far, it’s worked pretty well. Our kids are still young, and I feel certain that our family will go through many different phases of its culture–some easier, and some harder. But so far, they seem to really genuinely love and enjoy each other. In ways, L was perfectly suited to be the first kid (in ways that I, as the oldest in my family, wasn’t). He adores babies, and seems to lack a deep-seated selfishness that I felt as a kid. If we listened to him, we’d have five more babies, all named after H. And all, as he puts it, “helpful babies, not naughty babies.” (W is definitely a naughty baby).

Now onto the fun question: Superficially, what do I want our culture to be?

So many things.

I want our family culture to be composed of fresh bread on Fridays that the kids help knead, their small knuckles leaving indents in the soft, billowy dough. Of canoeing over still water, our reflections sliding over the surface like glass. Of bundling small children up to go owling on full-moon-nights in winter. Of Friday dinners with the whole family gathered around, our faces lit by candlelight. Of bubble baths before bed. Of lazy dogs lounging on the floor like living rugs. Of a couch you sink into, and freshly laundered throw blankets to snuggle up in. Of good friends in and out the door throughout the day. Of hand knit sweaters and Christmas stockings. Of bagels and lox on Saturday mornings. Of paperback books left cracked on the arm of the couch. Of a tumble of shoes at the door, and overflowing laundry baskets and sticky popsicle fingers in summer that leave smudges on the fridge.

It is exciting, having the opportunity to shape a family culture. And I know that we’re on the right track when life is chaotic and hard and crazy, but in those moments when it’s just the five of us, our little family feels like a refuge.