Making Family Memories: Trade-Off Between Traditions and Novelty
Recently I realised that my way of making memories with kids might actually be entirely wrong.
In fact, what I think they will remember from their childhood might be completely opposite to what they will actually remember. Let me explain.
I love novelty. Nothing lights me up like experiencing something new, finding a place I haven’t been to, and discovering it for the first time. I love the thrill of exploring a pocket of nature that was always a 20-minute drive from home, yet I never knew about it. Add stumbling upon the most charming little cafe on the way home and enjoying well-deserved coffee and treats in the sunshine, and you have a description of my perfect day.
By extension, I like to plan our family weekend/holiday adventures in the same vein by asking myself:
What is something we would all enjoy, but we haven’t done yet?
Yet, recently I had a realisation — most of my favourite childhood memories are not one-offs. In fact, memories that my childhood was made of are memories of family traditions. Which are, by their very definition, the same things we did every year in exactly the same way—quite the opposite of novel experiences.
This includes memories such as:
- Summers in Istria: fresh fish on the barbeque, long afternoons reading on our terrace, the excitement of watching tennis matches on balmy nights.
- Ski holidays in Austria: early morning ski runs when snow is fresh and crips, all of the kaiserschmarrn and germknödel in ski huts, evenings spent playing card games.
- All the advent traditions: cleaning our boots St.Nicholas, buying a Christmas tree, decorating our house, re-watching Home Alone, and culminating with a grand finale — magical Christmas Eve filled with presents and family card games as we await midnight mass.
Yes, there are some memorable one-offs thrown in there — our trip to Italy’s amusement parks or a local air show, but they are really just tiny stand—out islands in a sea of repetition.
I know I am not alone in this sentiment, as similar thoughts were echoed by another mum/memory-maker Savala Nolan in her piece On Being The Memory Maker (also known as mum).
The science of memory-making doesn’t seem to be definitive on the one-off vs. traditions debate. However, it does confirm that memory-making is far from straightforward and that what we remember is shaped by a variety of family and cultural factors.
As I try to reconcile all of this and work out how should this realisation shape my family memory-making efforts, the key question on my mind is:
How do I help make those core childhood memories for my kids, but not get bored-out-of-my-brain myself?
Here is what I will try:
- Prioritise grown-ups while kids are very little: Given my kids are both still under 3, they are not likely to remember much of what happens now/in the next couple of years (the jury is out on this, but general consensus seems to be that long-term memory making starts at ages 3–4). So this is a great time to experiment before establishing traditions. We can also use this time to take those bucket list trips that are fun for adults before being condemned only to hotels with waterparks for a while.
- Inject a dose of novelty into traditions: We might go to see Christmas lights every year, but we can go and see them in different suburbs.
- Use the child-free time to inject novelty & adventure into our lives: Novelty date nights from pre-children days can get reinstated.
- Mix-up our holidays: Spend a portion of our holiday time returning to familiar places and a portion exploring somewhere new.
I can frequently check in with myself to see whether this is effective and whether our lives are filled with sparks of joy. As for kids' memories —I guess we will know in 20–30 years.
