I grew up hearing the stories. How Grandma and Grandpa started out in a new state with a dog, a truck, a baby, and $10 in their pockets. The mischief and mayhem my dad and his brothers created, often at the expense of each other or their sisters, and much to the chagrin of their saintly mother. The life-threatening illness at my birth, and the miracle of my recovery. They were like colorful marbles in a kindergartner’s pocket. I loved them and treasured them, but hadn’t really given much thought to what research might say about their significance.
As I have examined both personally and professionally what makes for a strong family, I have been surprised several times to find research linking positive personal and family outcomes to families knowing the stories and histories of their families.
As an article in the New York Times stated in a review of some of the research, ” After a while, a surprising theme emerged. The single most important thing you can do for your family may be the simplest of all: develop a strong family narrative.”
Erica Layne of Let Why Lead expanded on this same topic recently, sharing the many benefits of family stories for kids.
The idea that something as simple as story-telling can build stronger kids seems hard to believe. As I said, it was something of a pleasant surprise when I stumbled on some of the research. But it shouldn’t have been surprising at all. My Master’s thesis was on the topic of ethnic identity. The review of the literature in that area is very clear: Knowing where you come from and what you’re about is correlated with almost every positive outcome you can measure. It makes sense that those benefits are not limited to knowing your ethnic story, but extend more personally, to knowing your family’s story and your own.
With this information on my mind, I was excited when Beryl Young offered to share a guest post with you about how to capture your family’s stories and preserve them in a variety of forms. It’s something feel I took for granted in my own childhood, and hope to become more intentional about with my own children.
