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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   3762 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 20, 2023

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For those of you who are parents, what were your favorite experiences/things to share with your children? For those of you who aren't, what are your most meaningful memories of things your parents shared with you?

I'm thinking of books/movies/tv shows, camping trips, activities, sports, video/board games, puzzles, family stories, hobbies - anything you can think of that was meaningful.

Reading aloud to your family, particularly when your children are relatively young, is a wonderful and memorable tradition. Of course you should read with your children to help them learn how to read, but that involves sitting with them viewing the page, asking them to sound out words, etc. What I'm talking about is sitting around in a living room, no phones or tablets or other screens, everyone listening to one person read. For this exercise with grade school children I particularly recommend E.H. Gombrich's A Little History of the World, William J. Bennett's The Book of Virtues, and a lot of Rudyard Kipling. As children get older, swap in classic novels as well as challenging nonfiction.

Also, assuming you are American, get your children to the Smithsonian museums in Washington D.C. at least once between the ages of about 9 and 14. The museums are free to enter, so you only have to pay the cost of travel. The National Gallery of Art, the Museum of Natural History, Museum of American History, and the Air and Space Museum are especially remarkable. I have been to museums across the country and while there are some good experiences to be had everywhere, ultimately none favorably compares.

The main experiences that I think do hold a candle to the National Mall are either one-off ticketed experiences or noteworthy natural features of the (mostly, western) U.S. (Redwoods, Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, etc.). You can't really pack several of those into just a day or two, and that makes a difference. For example, standing beneath the Saturn V at the Kennedy Space Center is a really unique experience that you can't have in Washington, D.C.--but traveling to central Florida, driving out to the coast, shelling out the admission fee, seeing the whole park in 4 or 5 hours, and then wondering whether you should grab a couple hours at the beach or just drive back to Orlando for the theme parks, lacks a density that the National Mall can deliver every day, several days running. (And as a bonus, you might Notice something amusingly culture-warry, like the peculiarly mono-racial character of certain Smithsonian occupations...)

Everything on your list of examples also works, of course, but one you seem to have missed entirely is cooking together. I suppose, given the prevalence of Meal Bars in rationalsphere culture, it is something we tend to overlook, but "family recipes" are a thing for a reason. And I've not thought of this before, but it occurs to me that "going out to eat as a family" was, in my own childhood, a somewhat formal affair, and a memorable one, while today it seems to be quite a commonplace occurrence for many families. I wonder just how much "favorite experiences" and "meaningful memories" depends on a conscious choice by parents to organize a group effort to do something that would be easier to just handle alone, such that it is clear that the real, meaningful point of the activity is to be together.

Thank you for the kind recommendations, and apologies that I've been too busy to revisit this thread until now.

For this exercise with grade school children I particularly recommend E.H. Gombrich's A Little History of the World, William J. Bennett's The Book of Virtues, and a lot of Rudyard Kipling. As children get older, swap in classic novels as well as challenging nonfiction.

Never heard of any of them! I will follow up and probably benefit from reading them myself.

Also, assuming you are American, get your children to the Smithsonian museums in Washington D.C. at least once between the ages of about 9 and 14. The museums are free to enter, so you only have to pay the cost of travel.

I spent some time in DC! I agree, it should definitely be a bucket list item, although I got a lot more mileage out of the monuments, congress, white house, congressional library, etc. than the museums. Perhaps the calculus is flipped at that age.

And I've not thought of this before, but it occurs to me that "going out to eat as a family" was, in my own childhood, a somewhat formal affair, and a memorable one, while today it seems to be quite a commonplace occurrence for many families.

It's true, to the degree that I somehow reached adulthood with a complete ignorance of cuisine beyond meat and potatoes. To a degree that someone had to explain to me what to do with mangoes, cilantro and other not-very-exotic foodstuffs.

The Air Force museum at Wright Patterson AFB in Dayton, OH is also extremely impressive, and free. Not a lot else great around it, but it's in a good location to be a road trip stop.

Going to second the reading aloud thing. My family would alternate who would read the stories between the best readers each night, and it remains perhaps my fondest family memory of all. We would read all sorts of things, but LotR and Of Mice and Men stand out to me. The former because it started a long obsession with Tolkien's work, and the latter because there is nothing quite like sobbing along with your family to a beautiful book as you try to choke out the words.

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