Whenever Mom made pancakes for me and my sister, the very first pancake on top had our first initials on them: E for myself, and L for my sister. Asking Mom about this only a couple months ago, she said she’s glad that E and L had all those right angles. If our letters had been harder to produce with the pancake batter, she’d have never introduced the concept.
Did your parents do this for you? And what other cute ways did they have of making you feel special?
I send my daughter a random Cute Animal of the Day text with photos of puppies, kittens, baby mammals, birds, etc. She doesn’t know when it’s coming in, just sometime during school. She looks forward to them and chides me when I miss. I enjoy sending them and will occasionally miss a day to see if she’s noticing. 
My grandparents would wrap two silver dollars with wax paper and put them into cake batter. Whoever received the lucky slices at dinner kept the silver dollar.
Assuming the Heimlich Maneuver was successful.
mmm
My mother sometimes put notes in my lunch that said, “Help! I’m being held prisoner in a school lunch factory.”
My mom hid notes and candy in my suitcase when I went away to sleepaway camp.
I love this. Yes, let me expand my OP to include things that Dopers do for their children and grandchildren, as well.
My dad had a special way of night-time story telling. I could name three random things and he’d make a story out of it. I thought of the most outrageous combinations, but he usually pulled it off to make a short, coherent story out of it. I particularly remember a story about a lion, a hot sandy desert, and a bag of money.
My grandfather used to cut small triangles from cookies and cheese and glue them with butter to our cooked eggs to make them into faces. So the egg would get a nose made out of cheese, a hat out of bread, and eyes drawn on with a pen and eyebrows made out of cookies.
My grandmother gave each plate its own little salt shaker, shaped like a daisy. She would also put all condiments on a lazy susan in the middle of the round table. I loved that.
My grandmother would also put on display in the guest room, the art project you made the last time you were there. So if I stayed over, she would put my balsawood landscape on display, as if it was always there; when my niece came over, no doubt she would put on display something my niece had made. The same grandmother put Christmas decorations next to our beds when we stayed over for Christmas, like a tiny christmas tree or a little house-shaped nightlight.
Me, I have a deal with my 10-year old son about YouTube nights. We take turns showing each other YouTube clips the other has to watch. Last friday he showed me a clip of Eminem and I showed him a scene from the Mozart biopic, Amadeus. My son thought Mozart was the Eminem of his time.
When my son was little, we had a Wednesday afternoon ritual where I would take him browsing toys at Goodwill and he was allowed to choose one toy we’d buy. We would also return old toys. To top off the afternoon, we would drive the car through the car wash ( “here comes the giant soapy octopus!” and he’d get a free lollipop there.
When my son gets a playdate over on wednesday afternoon, I always set out grilled cheese sandwiches and gherkins. It’s our house special, you could say.
Santa and the Easter Bunny always left us a detailed letter along with our gifts and baskets. The letter would mention some great “achievement” we had each made throughout the year and how proud Santa or the Easter Bunny was. I carried on that tradition with my kids too.
Not my parents, but my wife Pepper Mill used to leave detailed letters from The Tooth Fairy to our daughter whenever she lost a tooth.
Mark Twain used to write letters from “Santa Claus” to his daughters when they were little.
My daughter would leave notes for Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy asking questions pertinent to the entity addressed. I would write back appropriate responses (Santa’s favorite cookie is White Fudge Covered Oreos, and the Tooth Fairy’s given name is Esmerelda), making sure to use a unique handwriting style different from my own for each. Santa would also leave cookie crumbs on the plate and a little bit of unfinished milk in the glass. She appreciated having inside knowledge other children weren’t privy to.
It was not something she did, exactly, but for formal dinners like Thanksgiving, my grandmother’s setting included for the salt a tiny dish of crystal about an inch and a half in diameter with a tiny crystal shovel to distribute it. I’d ask for the salt even if I didn’t really want it just so I could play with the shovel.
I had terrible parents but my grandparents and great aunt made up for it.
My Grandaddy gave me a rose for every year I was alive on my birthday, which was the day before his. I pleaded with him to stop when I was 24, so he sent me a dozen roses every year after that until I was 44. He was in hospital when I turned 45 and died a few days later, but I spoke to him for our birthday and he was upset, promising me my roses as soon as ‘those damn nurses let me out of here’
My great-great aunt was a childless English teacher. We played MacBeth - I’d stir the dinner pot while we intoned 'Double double toil and trouble…". We had witches hats. It was great fun. She also taught me Latin and we spoke it as our ‘secrete language’.
My great Grandma (Gradaddy’s mom) would touch my palm in three places to indicate ‘I love you’. She would do it in church or in a shop - anywhere where I wasn’t supposed to be talking. Then she’d smile and twinkle her eyes at me.
I miss them all so much, even after all these years.
This started with my mom and spread to become a whole family custom/prank.
My mother used to buy Red Rose Tea, and each box came with a figurine. She did not want to just throw them out so she would put them in mine and my sibling’s rooms. We did not want these figurines so we would put them back in the kitchen.
So my mom took to hiding them in our rooms.
Which turned into finding and hiding them in each other’s rooms.
As we grew up and moved out the cache of figurines continued to grow, because we still all buy the same brand of tea. No one daring to throw any of them away (now an unwritten rule), the only way to rid yourself of figurines was to pawn them off on someone else. But you had to be stealthy about it because the recipient did not want them either.
After decades of this, we still need to check our luggage carefully at the end of a visit with family, lest you find yourself departing with more figurines than you arrived with. The next generation has already become unwilling participants as well.
I do not see an end to this.
Mom would make what she called “bird’s nest eggs”. Cut toast into sticks and build what was really a little log cabin out of them and then place a poached egg in the middle.
And I make smiley face meatloaf for the grand kids. Place a layer of meat loaf mix in the pan then add green pepper slices to make a smile. Fill around it with more meat loaf mix then two stalks of celery for eyes. When you slice it every piece has a nice smiley face in it.
Dennis
We moved when I was in second grade. But up until then the house we lived in had a cherry tree in the backyard. Mom made pies. But she would spear cherries on a toothpick, roll them in sugar, and then give them to us like an hors doeuvres. We thought is was the biggest treat!
When I was young we’d take driving trips in the summer. This was before many interstates so the drives could be long. After a while one of us (including possibly cousins) would beg Dad to tell us a Gramps story. We’d all have to sit quietly for half an hour and finally Dad would produce a story.
Eventually Gramps would fall into a cogitatin’ fit that would last forty days and nights. After which he’d wake up with the following exchange with his wife.
"I got it. I tell ya Emmy I got it.’
“Ya got what Gramps?”
“I got me an ____ (perhpas an automobubble).”
And automobubble, I ain’t hear tell of no automobubble."
“'Course you ain’t. I just now avented it.”
The inventions were always clever adaptations of something they’d been using.
Once my cousin and I said were were going to collect all the stories. I’d write them and she’d illustrate. Unfortunately, most of the stories are long forgotten.
All these lovely “new traditions” could come from the “Handbook of New Family Traditions”..
Some tips, just when it comes to mealtimes: