Building Family Culture Intentionally | Elisabeth Stitt

Every family has a culture. The question is: are we creating it intentionally, or simply inheriting it?

In this episode of Rooted & Wild, I welcome back Elisabeth Stitt, author, award-winning parent educator, certified life coach, and founder of Joyful Parenting Coaching, for a conversation about one of the most powerful things parents can shape: the culture of their home.

Family culture isn't created through one big conversation or a perfectly articulated set of values. It's built quietly, every day, through the rituals we repeat, the behaviors we model, the expectations we establish, the stories we tell, and the ways we respond to one another when life gets difficult.

Elisabeth explores how parents can become more conscious of what their family is actually communicating about love, responsibility, belonging, conflict, connection, and what matters most.

We also look at the cultures we inherited from our own families. What do we want to carry forward? What no longer serves us? And how can parents intentionally create something different without feeling like they have to get everything right?

Because ultimately, family culture isn't about creating a perfect home.

It's about creating a place where children know who they are, what their family stands for, and that they deeply belong.

In this episode, we explore:

• What “family culture” actually means
• How family culture develops whether we're intentional about it or not
• Identifying the values you want your household to embody
• The influence of our own childhoods on how we parent
• Deciding which traditions and patterns to carry forward
• Breaking family patterns that no longer serve us
• How everyday rituals create connection and belonging
• Modeling values rather than simply talking about them
• Creating meaningful family traditions
• Navigating differences between parents and blended families
• How families approach conflict, mistakes, and repair
• Helping children feel safe, secure, and connected
• Creating culture through millions of seemingly small moments
• How family culture evolves as children grow
• Building a home children continue to feel connected to into adulthood

About Elisabeth Stitt

Elisabeth Stitt is an author, award-winning parent educator, certified life coach through the Coaches Training Institute, retired public school teacher, mother, and stepmother.

After spending 25 years teaching in the San Francisco Bay Area, Elisabeth saw firsthand how much responsibility parents carry and how little meaningful support they're often given. Today, through Joyful Parenting Coaching, she works with parents around the world to develop practical parenting strategies grounded in child development principles, strong family values, and meaningful connection.

She is the author of Parenting as a Second Language and brings more than three decades of experience working with children of all ages, from the toddler years through adolescence and the transition into adulthood.

Her philosophy is simple but powerful: good parenting is created through millions of small gestures that help our children know they are safe, secure, and connected.

Connect with Elisabeth Stitt

Website: www.elisabethstitt.com
YouTube: @elisabethstitt
Instagram: @joyfulparentingcoaching
Facebook: Elisabeth Stitt
LinkedIn: Elisabeth Stitt

Rooted & Wild provides general information for educational and informational purposes only. The views and opinions expressed by guest speakers are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Henry Hawk. The content shared on this podcast is not intended to replace individualized medical, psychological, or therapeutic advice, nor should it be used to diagnose or treat any health condition. Listeners are encouraged to consult with qualified healthcare professionals regarding any medical or mental health concerns.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Rooted and Wild. Every family has a culture, whether they've chosen it consciously or not. It lives in the rhythms of the home, the way conflict is handled, the stories that get repeated, and the values that are quietly reinforced day after day. In this episode, I'm joined again by Elizabeth Stitt, founder of Joyful Parenting Coaching, and one of today's most trusted voices in practical compassionate parenting. A former public school teacher and award-winning parent educator, Elizabeth has spent more than three decades helping families move from chaos and confusion into clarity and confidence. With over 50,000 hours of experience supporting parents and children. And as the author of Parenting as a Second Language, Elizabeth understands that strong families aren't built by accident. They're built through intention, consistency, and realistic expectations. Elizabeth, welcome back to Rudys and Wild.

SPEAKER_01 1:21

Thanks for having me back.

SPEAKER_00 1:22

Yeah, I loved our first conversation. And for those listening, you can check it out. Elizabeth, today we're talking about family culture. And I'm really excited about this one because as someone, I try to be very intentional about the culture I build for my kids. In some respects, I've done things very differently than the culture I was raised in, even. And some of it I've gleaned from and still use. But then I've had to look at things and really re-examine what do I want to instill in my children intentionally as the culture of my family. So I'm thrilled about this topic and I'd love to hear your take on it.

SPEAKER_01 1:54

Well, you start with a really good point, which is we learn everything about families from the experience of being within our own family. And most of us don't actually have a very good idea of what it felt like to be in somebody else's family. And this is true for our parenting partners, right? That we grew up in family cultures that were different. So we made my first husband and I, we checked all the check boxes. We grew up in the same town, we went to the same school. Uh we had so many similar, we were same sort of religious background, same sort of educational levels, socioeconomic levels. And yet when we actually got married and started creating our own family, we had these expectations of like what's normal or what's natural to do? Like, like what are the rules for being a family? And then, especially when we had a child, it just came to front and center of like, that's not how you do that. What do you mean? That's exactly how you do that. So one of the interesting things about family culture is that we all come from a family culture. There are not very many places until we have children, like until you bring that baby home, where you actually examine closely what family culture looks like and feels like to you as opposed to somebody else. So one of the first challenges of parenting is getting it out on the table and sort of weeding out not the right and the wrong, but the sort of your way, my way, what feels right to you, what feels right to me. And the good news is that there are lots of different ways to do things. And there are lots of ways in which culture, you know, exactly the way you grew up in your family, was the way to do it. And there are lots of other ways to do it too. So that's one idea which I think is important. The other idea, which is important, is that even while we all had our own unique family cultures, we did used to live in more homogeneous cultures. And living in homogeneous cultures meant that external forces defined a lot of things in commonality with our friends living down the street and our friends living around the corner. And that makes things easier for parenting because there's a common expectation. Sometimes you might even have grown up in a city where there, like if you grew up in a factory city where there was a factory schedule and the factory whistle blew at the end of the workday, that acted as like this whole town indication of we're about to have a major shift. So for kids playing out on the play yard, it wasn't this like, oh, I have to go because my mom wants me or my mom wants me home now. The whistle blew. And all the kids knew it was like the recess bell ringing and having to come into class. All the kids knew it's time to go home and to have dinner. And there's a lot which is very restrictive about that, but there's a lot that's very supportive about that. So when you live in a more homogeneous culture, the rhythms of life in each family are more similar. So as a parent, when you're trying to make a decision like, oh, what time does a four-year-old go to bed? Chances are that the four-year-olds around you are all going to bed at similar times. I was um talking with a client of mine uh who's married to an Indian, and I was interested because I was all I'm my second husband's Indian. And we were laughing at the experience of going into an Indian restaurant. If you go to an Indian restaurant around seven o'clock, it's mostly just the Caucasians who are who are eating.

SPEAKER_00 6:31

I know exactly where this is going.

SPEAKER_01 6:33

Right? And as, you know, 8:30, as you are walking out of the restaurant, you'll see whole Indian families walking in, including two-year-olds who are, you know, draped over a parent's shoulder, sound asleep, who are going to be put down on the bench or in their stroller while everybody else is having a meal. Obviously, if you asked me versus if you asked the family coming into the restaurant as I'm going out, what time does a four-year-old go to sleep? We can get very different answers. And so if you're wondering what's right, you don't really have a clear answer.

unknown 7:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:16

And then we add the internet into that, and we have a whole world of people telling us what to do and how to be and and and what's okay. Again, some of that is very freeing. Some of that is like, oh, right. Like we don't have to be put into little boxes. There's not only one right way to do things. At the same time, it can also be super anxiety provoking because it means each and every parenting decision you make has to be your own.

SPEAKER_00 7:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

And you have to figure out yourself.

SPEAKER_00 7:57

100%.

SPEAKER_01 7:59

Step one for me for helping parents do that is to sit down and do what I call values work. And that's, you know, I just go through a little exercise where I just say, okay, separately, mom, dad. List out as many values as you can think of that are important to you. And keeping in mind that values are personal. They are not written in stone. They're not given by somebody else. They're personal. So you write down as many values as you can think of. And then you double check the list and go like, is this something I truly care about? Is this something that really is my value? Or is this something which I feel like my mother thinks should be a value, or my father thinks should be a value, or society is telling me should be something I value, should, should be something I value. Do the best that you can to cross all those words out. And anytime you're shooting yourself about it, it probably isn't really a value. Right? Like if you say, Oh, I should be on time more, like, oh, like, you know, time management, that's a that's that that should be a value. Anytime you're saying should, the fact of the matter is that that's not a value to you.

SPEAKER_00 9:26

Yeah, because if it was you do it.

SPEAKER_01 9:28

Yeah, exactly. So you get this list, and then you know, and I say include everything, all aspects, like think of all aspects of your life and include it and put it on there. And then put your parenting hat on and really consider, okay, which of these, and maybe start with which 10 values and then say, well, if I could only teach my children five things, which five things would I teach to them? And circle those. And then if I could only teach my children three things, which would I teach? And put checks next to those. If I could only teach my child one concept or idea, if I could only impart one value, what would it be? And we get a star next to that one. Now you come with your parenting partner, if you're parenting together with somebody, and compare your lists. I have never worked with a couple where there wasn't overlap in the top five. And it might not be the exact same word. It may be, you know, some one person may be saying kind and another person may be saying thoughtful, but when they really talk about it, kind and thoughtful, and their minds are actually very, very close. So now we have a place to start creating our family culture. Now we have some agreement. And I do that pretty deliberately. Again, because we are a society where we're running around like chickens with our heads cut off. And we're it's go, go, go, go, go, go, my job, your job, the kids' activities. It's not going to happen if we don't slow down and break it down deliberately. So I'll just use the example from my classroom. In my classroom, there were three rules allow the teacher to teach, allow the student to learn, be respectful. And really, there was only one rule be respectful. Because it is respectful to allow a teacher to teach, and it is respectful to allow students to learn, especially when you're in a classroom. So before I started teaching, before I plunged into agenda, before I plunged into the to-do list, I spent almost two weeks with my students brainstorming and going through and creating sort of uh you know, almost a word map of what does respect sound like, look like, feel like? What is respect for yourself, respect for others, respect for property. By the time you've done that, you have pretty much covered everything, right? You might not be, you know, all the way over into the realm of love, but a big piece of love is being respectful, right? So that was one that I used in my classroom, you know, that worked really well. Is it the one? Is it the right one? No. That has to come from you and your parenting partner. And if you're parenting by yourself, I still suggest that you go through this exercise. I still want you to know what is your guiding light. What if at the end of the day you haven't gotten anything else right, but you've kept that in mind, then you're gonna feel good about where you are going with your parenting. Once we have a word, a value, a concept, we can begin to build from there. And again, I like to be concrete. And it may be corny to have a family motto or a family mission statement, but that acts as an anchor. We live in a world where so many forces are trying to pull families apart, right? Society does not support families, society supports business, and then all of technology is pretty much, I would say that 90% of technology is pulling us away from our families.

SPEAKER_00 14:09

I agree.

SPEAKER_01 14:20

When we go when we step in, we might all be sitting in the same room. But if we're all on our devices, we are stepping into the world wide web and we're all going different places. And that's uh pulling our kids away from us. So in creating uh a family culture, my preference would always be less uh screen time, fewer screens, fewer, fewer ways of using screens. Not because screens are inherently evil, not because there isn't so much wonderful stuff to find. But it is very distracting. And even good content, even quality content uh delivered to each individual family member uh is robbing you of time when you could be acting as a family together and bonding and creating your family culture.

unknown 15:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:19

No, I agree with that completely. I mean, that's something that I I want to do time around the kitchen cooking with my kids and you know, playing games and board games and you know, talking about talking with them and going for walks and and you know, there have been seasons where I, because I was so stressed with work, so stressed with life, the easiest thing was just to put on a movie at night and zone out. The easiest thing was to play a video game. You know, I'm still engaging with them. I'm still, you know, that's what I would tell them. I'm still engaging with them. You know, we're having quality time. I look back on my own childhood and I'm like, oh my gosh. I'm not to throw my parents under the bus, but like that was a lot of the quality time we did have was like watching TV. And I always thought I didn't have a connection as much as I I wanted, you know, and in my later years in life. And I'm like, it's such it can be such a thief, such a thief of of time, and and and so I'm in this coming season of my of my life with my eight up to 15-year-old four daughters. I'm going, man, I have like three more years, maybe four with my oldest, you know, I don't want to be on screens all the time. So that's a conscientious shift, you know.

SPEAKER_01 16:36

Yes. Yeah, and let's be clear that even the television was pulling us away less because as a society, we were watching the exact same shows because there just weren't that many shows. So if you were watching television on Sunday night, you were watching, you know, X show. Um, I watched many shows with my parents that I would have never watched on my own, um, like Carl Sagan and his billions upon billions of stars. Um, I mean, I remember Cosmos. I remember watching it. I don't remember loving it or being super interested in it. I don't think it's something I would have pursued myself, but it was what was on, and we watched it together. And so again, a little bit like the church service, it did become a common thread of conversation.

SPEAKER_00 17:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:31

Uh and we did have dinner times. And, you know, if you are creating a home culture and you want bang for your buck, the corollary evidence between families who sit down and eat together at least four days a week and thriving outcomes as teenagers, higher GPAs, more likely to be on a sports team, higher SAT scores, less likely to be engaging in drugs and alcohol, more likely to put off um sexual interaction, sexual activity. Right. Like so many measures where how we measure a child's healthiness at the you know high school level for the low price of having dinner together.

SPEAKER_00 18:15

Yeah, that's incredible. Absolutely incredible.

SPEAKER_01 18:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:19

You know, I I have a certificate in fermentation through Harvard, and we talked a lot about culture, like bacteria cultures, you know, and the idea being like in order for a certain bacteria that that's desired to have to pro to multiply and produce, it needs to have the ideal environment and the ideal ingredients that it likes to thrive. And and of course, like when I heard that and learned about that, I correlated it a lot towards many other areas of life, including you know, parenting. There there has to be intentionality behind it. And I love that you're presenting that this is something you're advising parents to do and to make that list to be intentional about it, because culture is something that does happen by accident too. You are establishing culture whether you are intentional about it or not. And sometimes you go, well, this is just a fact of life, this is just the way it is, and that's how you parent. I remember when I first started parenting with uh my wife at the time, and it was basically like, oh yeah, like we were, we thought we were on the same page, and then we weren't. It's very clear that we both had very different childhoods, even though we had some similar values. And so I love that you talk about the intentionality of that.

SPEAKER_01 19:39

So that makes me curious. Can you give us an example of a time where your desire maybe to make your child happy or to allow your child to be the individual and to meet their needs as an individual came in direct conflict with what you were trying to create as a family culture.

SPEAKER_00 20:06

Yeah. Well, I I think that I went into parenting with these rose-colored glasses, thinking, oh, I'm gonna be like the male version of Mary Poppins, you know, like it's gonna be super fun. And and it and it was and and still is. But when it came to conflict, when it came to discipline, um, I was raised with a very authoritarian format. And it was like this is the the there's only one way or the highway, you know. And and that's kind of how I first went into uh when it came to conflict or discipline. I I I knew what one way of doing it, you know, and that's how I was taught. Whereas my wife at the time, she she was basically more relational, and she had a very, very, very relational mother and very engaged relationally, and they didn't have a whole lot of um discipline. It wasn't that they were misbehaving, but it was it was more just not as authoritarian, a bit more I won't say permissive, but a bit more on the relational spectrum of things. And so we kind of initially went into it thinking, well, I'm just gonna parent the way I I learned. And I realized real quickly, I remember the first time I kind of handled it the way I was raised with with my oldest child, and I remembered how that felt for me. And I was like, ooh, there's gotta be a different way. And so I have adopted a perspective which I've I said previously in the previous episode, but it was this logical loving limit. Is it logical and is it loving to have a limit? Okay, now there are certain components where is it for my child's best or is it for my convenience that I'm making this rule or this, you know, the whole in the old days they say children are to be heard, but not Seen but not heard, right? And is that for the adult's convenience or is that for and is is it always or is it sometimes? You know, there's certain occasions like being at a funeral or at church, you mentioned, you know, um, or you know, at a formal dinner where yeah, this is a time to be respectful and sit still and be quiet. And there are consequences if you're not, you know, so you learn to be respectful of others. But on the other side of it, if it's just our family and we're connecting around the table, I want my kids to have a conversation with me, you know, and so it's not always like, you know, don't talk over each other, but let's talk. And so there was, I really had to deconstruct a lot of things, a lot of things, and really go, what was what's my motivation really in this? And what's the outcome I'm hoping to achieve for their longevity in this life, their their their well-being, their growth, as opposed to my in the moment convenience.

SPEAKER_01 22:58

Yeah. And by the way, let's be clear, you are a human being as well, and you have needs, and you do have a right sometimes for your needs to take precedence. Yeah. Um, especially when we think of the put your own oxygen mask first on, like, you know, if you've had just a day and you're coming in with a headache and you're sitting down at the family table, the usual chaos uh that might be typical for your table might work. And then we might have you might you might need something else tonight. You know, because I'm the parent and I said so, that doesn't, that doesn't really fly so much. But because I'm the parent and I'm the holder of the big picture, and because at the end of the day I'm responsible for all four of you, sweet darling little things. Yes, I do get to play the parent card. And the parent card says, tonight we're gonna be quieter.

SPEAKER_00 23:59

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01 24:00

Tonight we're not going to, it's not gonna be quite so chaotic. Yeah. So I want to go back a little bit to the idea of um society pulling us away. Technology definitely pulls us away from each other and from our families, but honestly, our activities and our extracurriculars also pull us away from our families and from being grounded. And again, there's this there's a balance here, right? We're always looking to see how do we expand the individual and allow the individual to be their own person and to grow in the direction that they want to grow. But we have to balance that with who are we as a family and what does it mean to have family time and to be less busy so that we have some time for introspection and some groundedness. There's the pendulum in my mind has definitely gone way too far over to um organized activities. I talk to so many families where you know the weekend, instead of being a release, a relax, a let go, a little expansiveness or spaciousness, it's it's even crazier because instead of putting kids you know at the same school, now there's soccer games in in four different directions.

SPEAKER_00 25:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:35

And I think this is very detrimental to our emotional health, our mental health, our physical health. And it's very, very hard for parents to hold some boundaries around that without feeling and fearing that they are ruining their child forever. Or perhaps more kindly put, that they are closing the door to some future opportunity for their child. And that's a little heartbreaking to think that you're closing the door to a child's future opportunity. At the same time, I invite you to really reflect on what is the cost of that potential possibility. I I'll give you one uh especially egregious example. I happen to be, most of my coaching is via Zoo. I happen to be um dealing with a family uh in person. I so I talked to the kids, so I ran into the kids and I talked to the kids, and they both had their soccer uniforms on. And I was like, soccer, I thought that was a fall sport. Like, no, we play year-round soccer. Oh, then you guys must really love playing soccer. And I kind of got the eh shrugs, and I'm like, you don't just love soccer? Well, soccer's okay. We like soccer. Like, all right, well, what would you like better? And one said basketball and the other said gymnastics. And so then I was chatting with mom and I was like, Mom, I'm just curious. You've got a first and a third grader playing soccer year round, and yet they don't just absolutely love and adore playing soccer. That's a lot of soccer for something that they don't just absolutely love. She's like, Oh, God, I know. She said, but you know what? In this town, if you're not playing soccer year round, there's no way you're gonna make the high school soccer team. And playing high school sports was so important to me. Like that was such an important part of my high school years.

SPEAKER_00 27:54

Oh, gosh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:56

I was like, okay, I see you not wanting to close the door on that opportunity. I said, at the same time, you're taking a big risk. You're taking a risk that your kids aren't going to resent you, that they're not gonna get to middle school and absolutely loathe soccer because they've played it so much and you've made them do it, that at an age and stage when their ability to rebel and push back at you is so loud and so vocal that you're more than happy to like give give up because you can't handle it. Like, as I said, like first and third grader anticipating high school, that's especially bad. But I see parents fall afraid of this all the time. So if you don't have some guidelines in place for your family, and this is where, like, this is where structure supports things, I think, like having a family, coming to a family rule or agreement of how many hours of extracurriculars can we afford without it stressing every part of the system out. And so one of the distinctions you might make, for instance, I I did sixth through ninth grade, I danced six days a week. Difference is I rode my bicycle. So, you know, my riding, my going to ballet six days a week, it didn't, it wasn't, it didn't add to somebody else's burden.

SPEAKER_00 29:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:26

And it didn't detract from somebody, you know, my sibling's opportunity because my mother was driving me to ballet. Now, eventually it did um start interfering with dinner at a later stage. And I look back at that and I think, wow, that was really flexible and nice of my parents to make some adjustments in order for me to be able to. I mean, part of what happened was I got better and the better classes got later in the day. It's so it's important, I think, for parents to sit down with each other and to say, what's our guideline going to be? And it's kind of like where I mentioned um, you know, I have a guideline about birthday parties and how many birthday parties your kids can go to, not because it's birthday parties aren't great, but because it takes time away from the family.

unknown 30:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:15

And they're almost always on those precious Saturday afternoons when we might actually have time to do something together. You know, for an activity, you might say, again, like I can handle six to eight drives, six to eight, my kids doing six to eight activities a week, or six to eight appointments, let's say, not activities. So if I have one child, I could probably afford to have my child in ballet six days a week without stressing things. If I have two children and each child wants to do something, they're now each doing it three times a week. And if I have three children, they're doing it two times a week. And if you have four, oops, if you have four children, you're gonna be, it might be seasonal. I love one family. I had a family who had the value of it. Our family, we support each other. We were really talking about well, what does that look like? And and the four the parents were sad. They were really sad because doing activities, having their kids in activities meant divide and conquer. It meant mom was driving with one child one direction, dad was driving with another child another direction, and the third child was, you know, somebody was getting carpooled or getting dragged along. And they reflected and they came to a family decision. One sport a season. Not we're all doing soccer. One child, one sport. So they did have to kind of decide, you know, oldest child gets the fall, middle child gets winter, youngest child gets the spring. But then the whole family would go. And the whole family went the one direction. They would bring, they would bring the picnics and the food, and mom had a to-go kit for the littlest, so that when she was at her older siblings' games, uh she had stuff she liked to do that she only did when she went to when she went to uh her her brothers or sisters' games. That was a very deliberate creation of who are we as a family. We're a sports family. Okay, we're a sports family. It's not something I get, but okay. I recognize they're probably more sports families than non-sport families. We're a sports family, but we support each other, we're there for each other, we cheer and root for each other, and if we're gonna do that, it's gonna be one kid, one sport a season. Now, I haven't followed up, so I don't know three or four years out. How does that look and how have how much have they been able to manage keeping it that way? But I love the thoughtfulness with which they put that together.

SPEAKER_00 33:08

Yeah. That's great. Well, I feel like we can keep going deeper and deeper into this component of family culture. For those who want to learn more about Elizabeth, you can learn more at elisabethstitt.com. And the link is included in the description box. And you can also acquire her book, Parenting as a Second Language. Elizabeth, thank you so much for joining us here at Root is Wild.

SPEAKER_01 33:30

My pleasure.

SPEAKER_00 33:31

And for all those who are with us, until next time.