South Africa is a unique country that blends so many cultures. There is something so important about helping your child connect to their own culture as a way to help them feel grounded and to instil pride. In this month’s blog, we bring you five fun ways to celebrate your own heritage and connect with your history and your child.
1. Create a family photo book
We are getting a little lazy when it comes to family photos, using Facebook or Instagram as our personal photo albums or keeping the photos stored on the cloud. And what about all those older family photos that pre-date this new technology? There is something really important about preserving photos in hardcopies, whether it is to keep them as future heirlooms when tech formatting inevitably changes, or having the simple experience of sitting around a book of photos and sharing “remember whens” with your family. Starting this Heritage month, work together on compiling a beautiful photo book that not only compiles key current family photos but also contextualises them within the greater family lineage. This is a wonderful year-long project that can serve to teach your kids about where they came from while preserving the past and all its glory.
2. Create a family recipe book
Food bonds people across generations. Gather old family recipes, reach out to loved ones and relatives locally and overseas and even investigate traditional recipes from your own heritage. Now combine them into a beautiful family cookbook. Work on it with your kids, testing the recipes, decorating the pages and writing up the stories about the person who shared the recipe. This is a beautiful way to bring culture alive through taste and togetherness.
Create an updated family tree
Work with your child on a family tree diagram that you can then decorate with craft details and photos. Make sure to include cultural elements like flags, traditional outfits, special occasions and icons to denote your family’s origins and to teach them about where you all come from. To make it fun, add in little stories of the people you are including, like sayings or inside jokes, and you can even add your pets in there. This artistic activity will bring together the current family story with the artefacts that bond them to those earlier beginnings.
4. Start a new tradition
Rituals bond families in important ways. Not only does it punctuate a very busy lifestyle but it also serves an important bonding function in joining the family together. Consider starting a new ritual as a family where you repeat the same activity consistently over time. This can be something linked to your religion or culture, but it can also be something fun that the family likes to do together like taking a hike together on the same Sunday, at the same place, year on year. You could make homemade gifts for each other on a special holiday celebration, or you can start a family movie night once a month. This can grow to be something everyone looks forward to and your kids remember later in life when they have kids of their own.
5. Embrace song
Music and song is a unique way to transport you directly into your culture’s heritage. But let’s face it is not always easy to find opportunities to sing and dance together. Especially when all your child wants to listen to is the new Taylor Swift album. But here is an idea: download traditional music onto your phone and play it in the car while on school runs and between extra-mural activities. Even with this music softly on in the background, your child will begin to associate these sounds with being with you. Which will, in time, help them connect to where they came from.
The bottom line
While it is so important to connect your child to their wider cultural context, the best place to start is by connecting them to their own. This can have a long-term lens where you focus on the past, or it can have a more immediate view by focusing on creating connections and rituals in the present. This is an important focus for families to feel connected to each other, their ancestors and the various places they call home. Happy Heritage Day everyone!