Conference moira::parenting

    Monica,  Thanks for starting this note.  I also want to see how others
    have explained their family heritage to their kids.
    
    This is going to be kinda hard for me in some ways.  I am of
    Italian/Potuguese/Irish and English decent and my husband is of
    Italian/Portugese and German decent and my father-in-law is very
    prejudece and shows it infront of my son who is 3 yrs old.  Know Alex
    is a very smart child and understands practicly everything you say to
    him or he hears from other people.  My f-i-l is harsh to mostly
    Italian/portugese and Black people.  I am going to teach my son to
    resept his Italian/portugese decent since most of mine and my husbands
    relatives are show it at weddings, showers, etc.  I want him to be
    proud of what he is and not be ashamed.  He has already asked me about
    Black people and I just told him taht they were the same as him and I
    except that their skill was different and he as never asked about
    anyother nationality since.  We also found somethings about our family 
    history when my parents died and we were cleaning out their home.  So I
    am going to make sure that he knows who his ancestors are and be proud
    of them.
    
    So lets hear how other parents have explained this to their children.
    
    Liz   

    Just started getting interested.  Went back to my parents in Tenn. over
    Christmas and discovered my dad (retired) had been tracking down family
    history.  He has a record of his family back to 1802 and my mom's
    family back to 1760.  I got a copy and he is keeping me updated.  I
    have been sharing this with the kids (8 and 12). We got a copy of a
    picture my great grandfather and the kids found this very interesting. 
    When we were back there at Christmas we took the kids to the farm house
    of my grandparents that was dismantled in West Virginia in 1920s and
    rebuilt in Southern Virginia.  They seemed to respond and understand
    better actually seeing the farm, cemetary where great grandparents are,
    old church, school etc....  It was a good trip!
    
    Mike

     If you aren't as avid a genealogist as Monica, it's good to start
COLLECTING the information early, particularly if your parents (and
grandparents, if still alive) don't live nearby.  If your kids don't become
interested on their own, they will probably get an assignment in school that
will involve tracing their ancestry.   Both of my children have had several
school assignments to trace their ancestry back several generations.  Things
that are frequently asked for on these assignment, other than their name
are:

     -    their birthplace, or birth country
     -    their nationality/ethnic group
     -    if applicable, when they emigrated to <your country>
     -    interesting facts, like the circumstances of their marriage, their
          occupation, etc.

     Oftentimes, there isn't a lot of time to collect the information
(because the teacher doesn't give enough lead time, the child "forgets"
and/or you procrastinate).

Clay

    Monica,
    
    At some point we drew a family tree for my son and filled in as
    much as we could get on each member (full name, where born, etc).
    It's hanging on the wall and makes a nice map of his forbears.
    
    We also taped my mother talking about her family in South Carolina,
    with both factual details and funny stories. I'm halfway through
    transcribing the tape (it's only been six years...) and hope to have
    her annotate the tape. 
    
    I remember hating all this stuff when I was a kid (but then, my
    southern grandparents *loved* to discuss their relatives) but I
    would like to have it available for the day my kids may grow 
    interested. I didn't start getting curious til college, due to 
    earlier force-feeding.
    
    Lucy

    Indeed, which the older members of the family are still living,
    get their stories.
    For further information on collecting family histories, see
    genealogy notes conf VISUAL::GENEALOGY note #18.
    
    I have bothered enough family members enough time that when someone 
    finds old photos, or old junk they immediately say "I betcha Monica
    would like this stuff!" 8-)
    
    Monica

    A nice place to start with collecting family histories is with some
    books you can find in most bookstores, usually begun by a Grandparent
    as a gift to a new Grandchild.  It captures information related to the
    Grandparents childhood, how they met, details of their engagement,
    wedding, children, and details about how the grandchild's parents met,
    married, etc.  There are places for pictures and memorobilia.  Granted
    it is fairly limited to the grandparents and probably their parents,
    but at least it's a bound hardcover book with priceless information for
    your child.  Then of course you can go from there with whatever!
    
    Just a thought!
    
    Lynn
    (Gathering information for her expected bundle of joy...)
    

    This is a very interesting subject.  It is a tradition for a Chinese 
    family to have a  family book.  My family's book goes back to 2000+
    years.  It records how did the "CHANG" family ever started and
    where our ancestors lived and how did we end up where we are now.
    It has detailed information of all current living family members.
    I am still in touch with my cousins.  Our relationship started
    5 generations back.
    
    It is each generation's responsibility to update the family book.
    My Dad is currently in charge of updating the book.  Eventually,
    I and my brother and sister will have to take over the 
    responsiblility.  Another interesting thing is now it is an
    international affair.   We have relatives around the world.
    
    We will definitely pass the family book to our children.  Our
    only problem is our kids must learn to read Chinese first.
    Or We just have to come up an English version.
    
    Wendy  

As Monica is aware, I am also rather interested in genealogy.  I have not
yet really thought about how to share this with Melissa (2 years 10 months).
However, just the availability of the information will make it possible
for her to get started as adult if she isn't interested as a child.  I suspect
that taking her along for some of the less academic aspects of genealogy may
kindle some interest but I could prove it.

Wendy, if Trivia Pursuit is correct, a CHANG family book must be quite large.
They claim that that is the worlds most common family name  8^{).

Dick

I can relate to .4, during my teen years I wasn't too interested in
family history, but now that all my grandparents are gone I'm starting
to dig into some of it.  My mother has kept a lot of stuff and I'm
holding onto whatever I find too.

Our kids are only 4 and 2 so we haven't instilled too much family
history on them, but we do have some pictures of my grandparents (and 
their cars) on a wall.  You see, I have the luck of posessing one
of the many cars my grandfather owned, a 1924 Studebaker, and am in
the process of restoring it.  That will be a very real and fun link
to the past.  The car was passed down to my father almost 15 years
ago and I didn't get it until I was 30.  Anthony will probably
have it passed to him around the same time too, unless Samantha
turns out to be more mechanically minded!

Dave

    My mother has recently been writing letters to her grandkids.  In these
    letters she has been writing about incidences in her childhood that she
    remembers happening to her or things she remembers being told.   I have
    been saving these letters and enjoying them very much myself.  I second
    the opinion in contacting your relatives that are still alive and
    getting them (if they are able) to write what they remember about their
    childhood and their families.   Its truly amazing some of the things my
    mom has remembered and mentions in her letters to the grandkids.  Of
    course, my daughter only being 5 is not that interested at this time,
    but hopefully someday she will be interested in her mothers side of the
    family, and since I was so far removed from them ( they lived in
    Georgia and we live in South Carolina) I only got to see them once a
    year at the most, I really wouldn't be able to tell her too much about
    them......
    
    
    Sarah

    Alex is eight, and only now beginning to get a grasp of how long a
    century is, for instance.  I try to frame a family event in terms of
    historical events ("before the Pilgrims", instead of "in 1617").
    
    Her reading homework last week was a book on medieval feasts, which
    offered me the perfect opportunity to tell a genealogical anecdote
    (though not medieval; what would you call 1617, post-renaissance?).  We
    can trace back to August of that year, when King James I (of England,
    VI of Scotland) arrived at our ancestral home :-} for a 4-day weekend. 
    He was apparently quite a character; for one thing, he didn't dismount
    until he was in the banquet hall.  Anyway, he approved so mightily of
    the steak he was served that, in his cups no doubt, he *knighted* the
    loin of beef.  Sirloin!
    
    I wouldn't want Alex to OD on "begats" either, so the only other item
    she's aware of is the fact that a distant great-uncle survived the
    sinking of the Titanic.
    
    Leslie

    
    Sir Loin???  Thou art jesting, surely?!
    
    
    Jamd

    Nope, I'm not, though King James may have been.  The legend is printed
    in the literature at Hoghton Tower, (Lancashire?--can't remember),
    England, where the visit took place.
    
    Leslie

    A custom in many families and ethnic groups is to name children after
    deceased relatives.  Some families name after living relatives.  Some
    pass on "family" names, using them as middle names, for instance.
    
    Any of these practices are a living link to the family.
    
    We named our daughter after her paternal great-grandmother, Ilona
    Steinhart.  The first Ilona Steinhart was of Hungarian descent. (Ilona
    means Helen in Hungarian.)  She married a Viennese and they both
    emigrated to America after the Anschluss (invasion of Austria),
    narrowly escaping the Nazies.  With them came my husband's father.  For
    me the name commemorates the Jewish people's survival of the Holocaust
    and the continuation of life.
    
    Ilona's middle name is Marie, after her maternal great-grandmother
    Mamie (nickname Minnie).  She was a tough lady who weathered the
    Depression, putting 2 daughters through high school and post-secondary
    education after her husband died.  
    
    Both great-grandmothers personify the virtues of strength,
    steadfastness, commitment, education, and culture.
    
    Laura
    

    Laura's note in .14 reminds me of why my kids' middle names are family
    names.  James' middle name, Tucker, is for my mother-in-law; Hollis'
    middle name, Maclean, is for Great-Great-Grandmother Nelson.  
    
    One thing I've tried to do with my kids is "Today in Family History."
    For example, March 20 is the birthday of my dad, my oldest sister, and
    one of my nieces.  March 1 is the day we moved into what we all regard
    as "the family homestead," 123 Kearsarge Street in Pittsburgh.  Dad
    sold the house after Mother died.  May 9 is my father-in-law's
    birthday.  May 15 would have been Mother's birthday.  Etc.  I've also
    started telling James about "when Grandfather Fagan was a boy" and
    "back in the olden days, when my mother was a little girl."  I'm trying
    not to turn it into a federal case --  like other noters, I got turned
    off on the family history, especially my mother's family history,
    because it got shoved down my throat when I was a kid.  If the subject
    comes up naturally, I'll say something.  For instance, some of the
    Disney "Sing-Along Songs" videos feature songs from the turn of the
    century, songs that I can remember my mother's mother (born June 24,
    1891) playing on the piano.  So I'll say "That song was popular when
    your Great-Grandmother was a young woman," or "My mother used to sing
    that to me when I was your age."  Something like that.  Time enough for
    them to learn that my mother's family drank and gambled the family
    fortune away...that which wasn't lost in the Panic of 1897, that it.
    :-) :-)

    
    I have not read all the previous replies, but here is what we do to
    inform Rasika (4 yrs 8 months) about her "roots".  We will start this
    with Bhavika (2 yrs 8 months) when she is about 3.5 yrs old. 
    
    We tell them stories about when we were children -- stories about us
    and our lives growing up in India.  We do it EVERYDAY at bedtime. 
    It works well. We pick subjects based on what is going on in 
    Rasika's life at present. E.g, if an Indian holiday/festival/religious
    occasion is approaching, we talk about how we parents celebrated it as
    children; if it is about a picnic at her school, I tell a story about
    my third-grade picnic. We talk a lot about our families by storytelling
    about occasions where relatives and friends gathered for special times. 
    The easy part is that the topics for storytelling are never-ending.
    The hard part is recalling the details about our childhood. (memory
    access failures :-)
    
    Actually this started, quite by accident, as an alternative form of 
    story_at_bedtime. I found that Rasika was more interested in
    stories that I "told" rather than stories that I "read" from a book.
    It was rather difficult to recall general stories; I found it easier
    to recall something from my own childhood. We now call it the
    "when_mom/dad_was_small" story and it has become a staple at bedtime. 
    We read a book, turn off the light, cuddle together and tell her one
    story. 
    
    An anectode ... ....
    I have told Rasika the names of all my best childhood friends.  
    Recently, we visited one such friend in New Jersey.  She was pleasantly 
    surprised to hear long-forgotten details about our friendship from Rasika. 
    I too felt good as I watched my child connect with my past. 
    
    Another funny anectode ... ....
    At some point, I realized that Rasika thought that mom and dad grew up 
    together.  As my husband and I told her our stories, I think she was
    fascinated by the fact that we lived in completely different households
    and had different sets of friends. One day (she was about 3.5), she
    said, "So, Mom and Dad are friends,  not brother and sister, right
    mom??   
    
    Pam (who has extracted this topic and will read at leisure)
    

    I guess I'm like most of the others in that I wasn't too interested in
    our family history when I was younger.  My mom is very big on this and
    I felt she pushed it too much.  But, now I'm interested in hearing
    about it and I try to give Sarah little bits and pieces even though
    she's still too young (11 mos).
    
    When I call my grandparents in Florida, I'll tell Sarah that we're
    calling her nana's mommy and daddy or that her Aunt Laurie is mommy's
    sister just like Aunt Lois is nana's sister.  I explain to her how we
    decided to name her Sarah, my grandfather is terminally ill with cancer
    and we weren't sure that he was going to make it for her birth so we
    picked an S name, and that mommy (Susan) is named after nana's
    grandmother (Sophie).  We recently discovered that Sophie's mother's
    name was Sarah, so it was nice to know that we have more history to
    pass on, as well.
    
    I'll definitely wait until she's older to tell her about our more
    abstract history, like how my grandmother's sister and brother were
    married to each other.  No, there was no incest going on here, my
    great-grandmother was a widow with 5 children when she married my
    great_grandfather with 3 children, their union produced my grandmother.  
    My grandmother's sister from her mother's side married my grandmother's 
    brother from her father's side.
    
    I recently found out that my father has 4 half siblings that stayed in
    Poland when his mother, father and 3 full siblings immigrated to the
    US, my dad is the only one in his family to have been born in the US.
    His sister's and brother are still looking for them.
    
    There's just so much.  I hope I take it slowly with her and can keep
    her interested, if not, hopefully she'll develop an interest when she
    gets older.
    
    Susan