COUNSELORS' CORNER JANUARY 2nd

1/2/2022 4:21 pm

Food For Thought

Catching up on my reading was something that I was looking forward to doing over winter break. I am currently reading the book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, by Isabel Wilkerson (which I highly recommend!) as I continue to grow in my understanding of racism. 

I also went back to the many open tabs on my computer of the articles that I skimmed, but never really read. So for today’s “Food for Thought,” I wanted to introduce the concept of familect, described in this National Geographic article as “the secret words and phrases shared exclusively among the members of a household.” 

For instance, in the Kassoy house when we thank one another we always say, “Yanks!” This word emerged in our familect because my middle granddaughter always substituted a “y” for “th” and with that “yanks” was born.  As Connie Chang describes in her article, “though it might just sound like a family being silly, building a familect can have emotional benefits for kids and adults.”

As I spent time with my nuclear family over the holidays, I was mindful of words and phrases that were passed down from my grandparents (some may actually have been a form of Yiddish?) and from my parents (many of which I can’t even figure out how to spell…like the one my mom used to describe what she was doing when she stirred a raw egg with a fork before using it for baking). And the list keeps growing as my children and grandchildren have added new words, as well. The researchers remind us that familect  “helps us forge connections to family members, creating a cohesive unit bound by a shared, secret language.” I hope you have fun thinking about all the words in your familect.

Be well and yanks for reading this week's post!

Felice (and the rest of the counseling team)