Last night, while out with 2 awesome friends, we had a discussion about families and helping give your children that feeling of belonging. What one friend shared was starting to teach your kids at a young age some things that your family does and doesn't do.
This was her example. She is teaching her kids that they don't say the Lord's name in vain. So, they don't say "Oh my God" - but they say "Oh my goodness". They recently found it necessary to inform their oldest child this and in doing so - always add their last name to the statement. Let's say their last name was Smith - "the Smith family doesn't say 'oh my God', we say 'oh my goodness'" (or whatever).
I just love this concept - a way of letting your kids know that all families are different and do things differently and that's okay, but letting them know that "the Smith family does it this way". It really gives the kids a sense of boundaries and helps define some gray areas of what some families do and what some families don't do. Not that either is right or wrong, but just to make it clear to them of what is expected in THEIR own family.
*We also talked about how important it would be when doing this to not take it to the extreme - like your family is some elite group of people or something. I could see how this could get out of control. (ie: "the Smith family only wears clothes from the GAP" - or whatever!). So, there would need to be a fine line drawn between character qualities, stuff like that, versus the "our family is better than that other family" mentality...
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