What's Your 'Familect'?
The crown jewel of all parenting hacks
How you do ever really know if you’re parenting right? Especially in this age of information overload where contradictory and often extreme information is poured out by keyboard experts.
I try to avoid the internet and books, and instead search for simple reassurance in how others mum and dad on television, in podcasts, at our local café and our kids’ school.
Recently I unearthed what I believe to be the crown jewel of all parenting hacks listening to Joe Brumm talk about being a father.
For those who don’t know Joe is the architect of Bandit Heeler Australia’s most revered dad, and the creator of the globally celebrated cartoon Bluey.
Brumm told Hamish Blake he believes a crucial element in being a great parent is cultivating family in-jokes.
“It’s just those repeated rituals that you have as your family that are often completely idiosyncratic to you guys that really mean a lot to your kids,” he told the How Other Dads Dad podcast.
Thinking about it, he’s right. Our silly stories, songs or nick names for eachother if repeated become powerful family traditions. These tiny ‘had to be there’ moments then make up a comprehensive and funny family lexicon. A ‘familect’.
“Private jokes in your family are just about the most precious ore we can mine,” says American clinical psychologist Wendy Mogel.
She urges parents to seek humour over high achievement from their kids with researching proving our kids will be happier if we simply get down to the business of making lots of memories.
Thirty years on, my family still finds it funny remembering how I called myself ‘umbum’ for years, unable to pronounce Annabelle.
Right now our 18 month old babbles, ‘Oh my goodness,’ when any accidents happen around the house and I get happy butterflies wondering if it’s one of the in-jokes that will unite our foursome for decades to come?
As published in Village Voice 2023