Every household is different, sometimes in weird ways.
What are your weird household rituals?
At my house, it’s with my son. He’s 6, and insists that every morning he has “hot chocolate” simply warm milk with a little Hershey’s mixed in. Not just hot chocolate, though, it has to be 3 hot chocolates, in 3 of his old sippy cups. It’s OK if they’re only 1/3rd full, as long as he has all 3 of them.
I suppose I could tell him that his days of sippy cups are over, but I’m loathe to take away a comforting ritual.
I find the best way to do away with a comforting ritual is to update it with a new more relevant ritual.
I have a morning ritual of convincing my dog Slater out of bed. He likes to mope in the mornings and thoroughly enjoys just borrowing into the blankets. Unfortunately he needs to pee before I leave for work, so usually I just sit there and talk to him even though I know he doesn’t understand a word.
One of my sons has two stuffed hedgehogs that he likes to pretend are actual pets. Their have opinions on matters, and must be consulted. They need to be included in games and activities. And naturally, if we go camping, the hedgehogs simply must come along, because they love to go camping, and we wouldn’t want the hedgehogs to feel left out. The hedgehogs act as “go-betweens” when I want my son to get some chore done.
To the outsider, I’m sure it’s very odd when I pretend to consult a stuffed hedgehog to remind my son to brush his teeth. But totally normal, in our household.
When anyone leaves, she has to recite a long list of stuff. It starts out with “Be back at three o’clock, and be fast, …” Somewhere in the middle is “keep your hugs <gives hug> and kisses <gives kiss>” She’s 4.
She has a music box/light that has to be on and pointing at a particular spot on the ceiling before she can sleep. Her stuffed animals have to be arranged just so.
I always trim my toenails at night, in the dark, while sitting in my recliner. I don’t cut them, I file them off with a coarse emery board. I know it’s strange, but it works for me.
Our fish have us trained to turn on the lights to their tanks first thing in the morning and feed them. Which is the cats’ cue to jump up on the table and take a drink of fishy water. How cat tongue has not met fish flesh is beyond me, but they all seem to have worked out a carefully choreographed ritual.
My daughter, now almost 10 (yes, that micropreemie you all cheerleaded me through is going to be 10 in February!) still must have her goodnight song. It started when she was a newborn, and it’s Pavlovian at this point. I don’t think any of us could sleep if I didn’t sing her her song. I know one night will be the last time I sing it, but I hope that night was not tonight.
Just confirming that otherwise your granddaughter is neurotypical? Some of the above traits, in isolation, might suggest something on the autism spectrum.
My three year old son insists on “hugs and kisses!” at bedtime or when he’s being dropped off at daycare or otherwise about to be apart from Mom and Dad for a while. This is a very specific ritual of two hugs and two kisses on each cheek. The way he presents his cheek to me and demands “hugs and kisses!” is just too adorable.
More of a running gag than a ritual I guess, but when my wife and I order Thai or Indian or Mexican, I’ll almost always get something really spicy, then pretend to be surprised about how hot it is. Tonight we got carry out from Chipotle. I got chips with hot salsa and went on for a while about how every time I get this salsa they make it too damn hot.
For at least 20 years, our family meals have used the same set of flatware. The handles are all a sort of round tube that is hollow inside. One of the forks has something inside that rattles when shaken (a piece of casting detritus, I assume).
We have a tradition that the holder of the “shaky fork” is relieved of any cleanup/kitchen duties that evening. If anyone is caught “testing” the forks before selecting one from the drawer, that person is automatically assigned cleanup for cheating.
Guests are somewhat surprised when the family sits down to a meal and everyone grabs their fork and starts shaking it.
I thought I was the only one who did this. Every day at 6 am I’m outside with our 3 dogs. We all pee. Sometimes they will run down to the meadow to take a dump. I wait till I’m back inside.
Kinda sucks on a Sunday, after falling into bed, drunk, at 4:30 am, to be woken by dog kisses at 6. But then again there’s comfort in habit.
I like to step outside my back door and pee on my plum tree for my first morning pee, it sounds a little odd but really feels so much better than going to a bathroom.
Regarding peeing with the dogs, if I was properly equipped, I’d be doing it.
The family tradition that I can remember at the moment is always putting individual boxes of sweetened cereal in Christmas socks. It was the only time that I let the kids have that kind of cereal, so they really looked forward to it.
When my brothers and I were teenagers and learning how to drive, my mom would always end a goodbye with “and drive safely!” Someone pointed out to her that she was saying “and drive safely!” more often than “I love you.” So now, going on thirty years later, her goodbyes always end with “drive safely, and remember you’re loved!”. I dig it.
