Family Culture

Something that I never recognized is how each family has their own very distinct family culture. This past week I have been thinking of different specific tradition that my own family has. I began to think of the family road trips, going to the beach all day as a family, spending quality time together, eating family dinner together every night and etc. In each of our families their are traditions that we want to keep and things we would like to change or get rid of in our own future families. I love many things that my family does but there are things here and there that I want to change. I think the biggest thing that I want to change is by making sure that I am a better communicator because I have noticed that in my family we aren't the best at communicating and avoid it, so we can avoid confrontations. Another thing that I want to implement in my own family is by being more open with words of affirmation and showing affection such as hugging. I think that is something that goes hand in hand with communicating and is a piece of communication. It is amazing how cultural traditions remain even when they have no real reason why they are still being kept. For my own family every Christmas we have a scavenger hunt for our biggest present and that has always been a tradition that I have been excited about.

I think something that I forget to think about is the fact that when people move away there are changes that occur on the family dynamics. From the example in class of the family moving from Mexico to California illegally. This is example made my heart ache because I could imagine the struggles that each family member faced and made me want to help out the family. Something interesting to see was how after the family was finally reunited again in California the family dynamic had changed and couldn't be the same as it had been before. I have seen that in my family as well because I have five older siblings who are married and after each of them got married the dynamic of my family has changed drastically. With each marriage of my siblings the dynamic has changed and we have had to readjust and we have had to fill in the roles of those who are married. It will be interesting to see what happens when I get married someday because then all of the children will be away from home and so it will just be my parents. I am excited to see how my family dynamic will change someday yet again and see what roles each of us will start playing in the future.