My daughter just turned 21.
She could have asked to do anything. A night out with her friends. A fancy dinner. Instead, she wanted what she’s wanted every single birthday for as long as she can remember: Dave & Buster’s.
And honestly? It made my whole year.
The tradition we never planned to start
Every year, on each of our kids’ birthdays, we take them to Dave & Buster’s. Just them. We’ve been doing it for at least 15 years now. It started when they were little. There are always flashing lights and skee-ball and trading in a mountain of tickets for some plastic prize they’d lose by the end of the week.
We never sat down and decided, “This will be our forever thing.” It just became one. Year after year, it stuck. And somewhere along the way, it stopped being about the arcade games and became about the ritual of it. It’s the one day a year where that kid gets to be the whole point.
So when my 21-year-old looked at me and said she still wanted to go, I realized something. The tradition wasn’t really about Dave & Buster’s at all. It was about us.
Our kids grow up. They don’t stop being ours.
Here’s the thing nobody warns you about: your kids grow up so fast it makes your head spin. One day you’re cutting their grapes in half, and the next they’re voting, driving, and legally ordering a drink. The roles shift. They need you differently. They have their own lives, their own friends, their own plans.
But a tradition? A tradition stays put.
It’s the one thing that doesn’t change when everything else does. No matter how old my kids get, that birthday trip says the same thing it always has: You are still my child. You will always be my child. And you will always have a place here. They don’t have to earn it or schedule it or wonder about it. It’s just true, every year, like clockwork.
There’s something really comforting in that for all of us.
Traditions are the thread that keeps a family stitched together
When kids become adults, families can drift. Not because anyone wants them to, but because life gets busy and big and pulls everyone in different directions. Traditions are what hold the seams together. They give everyone a reason to show up, a date on the calendar that means “we’re still us.”
And the beautiful part is that they don’t have to be fancy or expensive or Pinterest-worthy. Ours is an arcade with loud music and overpriced chicken tenders. That’s it. The magic was never in the place. It’s in the showing up, again and again, for the people you love.
I think that’s the real lesson here. You don’t need a grand plan to build a family tradition. You just need to do one small thing, on purpose, over and over, until it becomes part of who you are together.
So keep the tradition going
If you have a little thing your family does…. whether it’s a birthday spot, a holiday recipe, a silly yearly ritual … protect it. Don’t let it fade just because your kids got older. Especially then. That’s exactly when they need that anchor the most, even if they’d never say it out loud.
I’ll keep taking my kids to Dave & Buster’s for as long as they’ll let me. And if my daughter wants to bring her own kids there one day, while I tag along to lose at skee-ball? Even better.
Because traditions don’t just mark the years. They keep a family together.
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