Family Identity Part II
So last post talked a little about how I’m trying to instill some family identity in my kids so that we think of each other as a part of one unit rather than a collection of individuals. I talked a little about our family history and passing that on to my children so they have a sense of belonging to something larger than themselves. Today I want to look at other ways I can build up the family identity and talk a little bit more about why I feel this is so important. Read more »
Posted: July 15th, 2008 under Family.
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One of the things that my wife and I try to instill in our children is a sense of family identity and pride in it. I find the entire concept interesting and fairly alien to my upbringing. Growing up, my name was just that, a name. While there were some famous Dewey’s in the history books and we can trace our heritage back to the 1600s here in America, it did not really intrude much in my life (other than the quickly thought-of insults on the playground, but hey unless you are named Smith, you’ll get that). 
We have a pretty regular routine at our house each night. The kids get ready for bed at the same time every night, we read them some books, tuck them in and then leave. They usually play or read in their room for a while and then fall asleep. On vacation, we could not keep the normal routine and since it was a vacation we let the kids stay up later than normal and overall just got rid of the normal schedule. It worked fine on vacation and the kids had fun but now we are back home and we need to return them back to their normal schedule, but we want to do it with a minimum of fuss. Ah, the joys of parenthood. 
I’m back after an enjoyable family vacation. While I won’t say I’m well rested, vacationing with a three and six year-old is never restful, I will say that it was one of the most relaxing vacations I’ve had in quite a while. The main reason for this was all due to my wonderful wife who carefully planned out the details of our vacation. She did such a great job that we just coasted through the week and enjoyed our time together. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that our method is a little anal-retentive, but it did such a great job or alleviating preventable stress on our trip that I felt it was worth sharing. 
For Father’s Day, my family gave me the video game Lego Indiana Jones. It is a funny little game where you play Indy or one of the other characters from and redo different scenes from the first three movies. The catch is that everything is made to look like it is made out of Lego. If you die, your character breaks into little pieces, you build things like cars out of Lego and then drive them, and everyone looks like a little Lego man. It’s a fun and silly little game that I enjoy playing. There is a great sense of humor in the game and I’m often amazed at how much story and dialog they can present in the game when none of the characters can speak. They just make little noises and emote a lot with their faces.