My mom and dad did not tell us a lot of family stories growing up and that is a disappointment for me. They were busy raising 6 kids, but now that they are both gone, I wish they had told more stories that I could pass on to my kids.
I think we have an obligation to tell our kids our stories, our lives, and our dreams. Not only do they bond us together, but they give our children a solid foundation, so they know where they come from. This is one of the reasons I write books and LIFEies.
As my kids have gotten older, I’ve enjoyed sharing stories with them, taking them to where I grew up or sharing my favorite anecdotes over the holidays or during family vacations. The below article goes in depth on why it’s important to tell our family stories.
This holiday season, in between gift opening and meals, take some time to share your family stories and explain why they’re important to you. Your kids will appreciate it…if not now, trust me they will later.
Have a great holiday season. This is a time for being thankful and I am so grateful for all the lessons, wisdom, and learnings I have gathered from this Chimera group. Thank you all.
The Secret Benefits of Retelling Family StoriesChildren learn about family history and identity through stories told by older generation.
By Sue Shellenbarger
November 11, 2019
PHOTO: DOMINIC BUGATTO The story inspired Dr. Blakeley to set aside her teaching career while her daughter was growing up, work from home as an editor and return to teaching in her 50s. “Standing in front of a classroom for the first time in 20 years was terrifying,” Dr. Blakeley says. “But I soon realized that I absolutely love teaching.” Cynthia Blakeley, Hannah Rose Blakeley’s mother and a liberal-studies instructor at Emory, enjoys telling stories about her late mother, Shirley. A seamstress and waitress who suffered from anxiety, her mother overcame personal obstacles to attend college in her 50s and embarked on a new career as a social worker from age 60 to 78. “Those were the happiest 18 years of her life,” Dr. Blakeley says. Family stories also can serve as antidotes for the pressure many teens feel to get good grades, get into an elite college and land immediately on an established career path. Parents who include in their stories descriptions of feelings they experienced at the time, such as distress, anger or sadness, and tell how they coped with those emotions by venting, reframing or calming them, help children learn to regulate their own emotions, Dr. Fivush says. Researchers in another study asked families with 10- to 12-year-old children to reminisce about happy and negative experiences, then followed up two years later. Children whose parents explained negative emotions and how they resolved them had better social and academic skills. Intergenerational stories anchor youngsters as part of a larger group, helping them develop a sense of identity. In a 2008 study, researchers at Emory quizzed 40 youngsters ages 10 to 14 on 20 family-history questions, such as how their parents met or where their grandparents grew up. Those who answered more questions correctly showed, on separate assessments, less anxiety and fewer behavior problems. His mother, Hannah Roveto of Duxbury, believes the stories helped instill a sense of adventure. “They show you don’t have to do what everybody else is expecting of you,” she says. “You can do something a little crazy and still get back on a path of your own choosing.”
Hannah Rose Blakeley, left, and her mother, Cynthia, say they took valuable life lessons from family stories told at holiday gatherings. While Mr. Roveto didn’t think much about the stories as a child, he took them to heart later as a college student aspiring to a career as a filmmaker. When a professor suggested he spend a summer break in Los Angeles working in the film industry, “the thought at 19 years old seemed crazy,” he says. But he knew his grandparents had taken wild risks that turned out all right. So he drove cross-country with a friend, found work in his field and returned with valuable experience and a few stories of his own to tell. Mr. Roveto has since graduated and is working in New York as a cinematographer. Matt Roveto, 24, remembers wanting as a child to escape when stories were told at his family’s holiday gatherings in Duxbury, Mass. Relatives would describe how his great-grandmother rescued Jewish children from Nazi territory in World War II. Or how his grandfather as a teenager at military school threw his bags out a second-floor window, jumped out and ran away on the day his parents planned to drive him to college. His grandfather supported himself for a year as a bellhop in Chicago before returning, enrolling in college and starting a career as an apparel wholesaler.
She sometimes tells her mother’s story to her students, saying, “Don’t feel too stressed out if your career trajectory isn’t a straight shot.” It’s the season when adults might want to think about stories they would like younger family members to know, Dr. Fivush says. “Telling a story might seem weird on a Monday at 3 p.m., but over Thanksgiving dinner, it can be easier to say, ‘You know, I’ve been thinking about a story …’ ” she says. A good place to start is to ask yourself, “If I had to leave the children with one or two stories, what are the ones I would want them to know?” |
