How to Share Your Family History with Your Children
Everyone wants to know where they come from. Getting your kids involved in family genealogy is a great way to boost their self-esteem and teach them about their history. Interactive family trees, genealogy maps, family reunions, and conversations with older relatives are engaging ways to share your family history with your children.
Sharing stories and involving them in your genealogy research can get your kids to love family history. It’s our goal at MyHeritage to help you tell better family stories with an international records database that’s helped grow over 53 million family trees.
The Benefits of Sharing Your Family History with Your Children
Sharing your family history with your children has been proven to boost their self-confidence, improve their self-esteem, and even lower anxiety. Understanding where we come from enables children to develop stronger connections, supporting their overall wellbeing, by giving them a stronger sense of purpose.
Intergenerational storytelling has also been shown to have a positive impact on teenagers and young people, helping them navigate hurdles and understand their personal identity. Your family history can help your children feel more connected to their heritage if they have a rare name or a traditional surname.
5 Ways to Share Your Family History with Your Children
You can get your children involved in family genealogy at any age, but it’s important to curate your approach to suit their age. Younger children under 12 do best when learning in interactive ways, such as through stories and creative tasks, like writing out a family tree. Older children, especially teenagers, can be exposed to more information and may be naturally inquisitive about their family history.
Here are 5 ideas for how to share your family history with your children:
1. Make Storytime Personal
Your family tree is full of heroes and role models for your children. Tell your children about them through stories, whether it’s about an aunt who lived in Italy or a family connection to a major historical event, such as an Olympic Games.
Finding your heritage by your last name can help you uncover a whole culture of stories and folklore to share with your children. These stories can get your children interested in history and the world around them.
2. Build Your Family Tree
Making a family tree helps your children visualize their ancestry and understand where they come from. Keep it basic to start by drawing a family tree that focuses on three generations – your children, you, and your parents.
It’s easier for your children to understand the concept of a family tree when they can see how people are related to each other. As they get older, you can get them involved in your family tree on MyHeritage, including using image tagging to help them put faces to names.
3. Go on a Family History Tour
Show your children where they come from. Make your family history a show-and-tell experience by going on tour. Take your children to your grandparent’s house or show them historical locations on Google Maps. If your ancestor was one of the millions of immigrants who entered the U.S. through Ellis Island, consider a trip to the Big Apple to walk in their footsteps.
4. Create a Genealogy Map
Most children are visual learners and seeing names written down in a tree format might not engage them right away. Give them more context by visualizing your ancestors’ world with a genealogy map. You can follow an ancestor’s life journey if they immigrated or showcase your DNA results in a genealogy map to show your children their heritage.
5. Talk to Older Relatives
Older relatives are a wealth of knowledge and a link to the past. Ask them to sit down for an interview or Q+A with your children to share their memories. Don’t want to do something as formal as an interview? Get your children and older relatives involved with fun card games to spark family history conversations.
Build Your Family Tree for Free with MyHeritage
Sharing your family history with your children has never been easier with the help of MyHeritage. You can create your online family tree with access to billions of records and by collaborating with other members. Read our guide on 7 tips for successfully tracing your family tree to get started today.
