Family

What Is "Family"?

What does the word "family" mean for you? Whom does it include? Do you see your pet as a part of your family?

Family, that's a strong word. For me, it means to feel secure, to have someone who you can count on, who shares your problems. But it also means to have respect for each other and responsibility.
S., girl, Germany

Family is a really important word. I think it is a word we use about people we love.
L., girl, Denmark

For me my family is something very important in my life because they are people you know will never fail you and I think my pet is a member of the family because all the family love it and every day it is with me.
O., boy, Spain

Family is very important because parents are always with you when you need them and they can also give you pieces of advice with your problems. I think that your pet is an important part of the family, but parents and sisters/brothers are more.
J., girl, Spain

I think family is the most important thing in our life. Maybe a pet can be part of family. We have pets, and we love them so much!
T., girl, Turkey

My Family and I

What does your family mean to you? How important is it for you?

To me, family means a lot more than a relative by blood or marriage. It means the people who accept you no matter who you are, where there's no hatred or judgment. The love of a family should be unconditional, and everyone should try their best to provide all they can for the people in their family, emotionally and financially. Family are the people that everyone deserves to feel secure, and comfortable with, even if they aren't lucky enough to have that. 
Everything people learn comes from the way their family brought them up (presuming they have lived with them all their life), and therefore, everything you are is because of your family. Family are the people that everyone deserves to feel secure, and comfortable with, even if they aren't lucky enough to have that. It does not matter if they are your blood relatives; if they have been there for you all their life, and will be there for you unconditionally for the rest of your life, then they are your family!
B., girl, United Kingdom

I think a family is the most important thing in a person's life. A family enlarges their children, educates their children. I think first education begins in the family. If a child doesn't learn anything in her/his family, I think she/he can't be successful. We must be careful about our families. They are the crown of our heads.
Z., girl, Turkey

Family is important for Turkish people. They take care of each other, love and protect. Sometimes there are arguments, but they are infectious things. Some families are conservative, I mean, they take care of each other more than the other families. They don't give permission to their daughters for going out, don't buy more toys for their sons. Because there can be bad things outside, or while playing with toy guns. Some families are more modern than conservative families. They don't think like that, they do everything their kids want to do, want to buy, or want to play with. It's a kind of showing their love to their kids. Like everything, it shows some problems. In a modern family, kids begin to have doubts that their parents love or don't love them. In a conservative family, kids live with a suffocating people and life.
I have a dream family. My dream mum has black long hair, green eyes and white skin. My dream father has black luxuriant hair, golden eyes and white skin. My dream brother has curly and luxuriant black hair, green eyes and white skin. My dream mum and my dream father are strong, generous, kind, polite people. My dream brother is an amusing and cute person.
T., girl, Turkey

Family is the smallest unit of society. Everybody education starts in the family. Love, respect and morals start in the family. They keep their secrets and share them with each other.
Family is different in Turkey. They love each other with a different love. Family members never leave each other behind. Teenagers sometimes hate their parents but their parents always understand about this situation. If their children fall into wrong paths, they try save him/her. Finally, as Turkish parents say: "EVERYBODY LEAVES BUT THE FAMILY IS PERMANENT ..."
E. boy, Turkey

Family is the main thing in the world. Here you can speak about a lot of things and have relationships. My mother always says: "Family will be there for ever. so sad it is, a friendship could go down."
D., boy, Germany

My family means everything to me.
E., girl, Denmark

Family Traditions

Every family has traditions - meetings, activities you do together, holidays, meals, and many more. Which of these traditions in your family do you like a lot, and why?

Our family tradition is to fly or to drive to Switzerland in the holidays. In Switzerland live my aunts, uncles and cousins. Every holiday we drive there and stay with my aunt. She lives with my cousin there. It's very beautiful there and we do a lot of things together. I like to stay in Switzerland and when I have married I will live and work there.
S., girl, Germany

Every summer, we've got a great family meeting with all our relatives on my father's side. And we are a lot of people, I've got about 16 cousins. It's a lot of fun. When I was younger, every Sunday we did "Sunday activities". We went to the museum or to a theme park or stuff.
S., girl, Germany

We love spending time with our family, we do a lot of things like at Christmas we had a very good time because all our family were together, cousins, grandparents ... and Sunday is a family day because we do a lot of things like playing, meals...=)
P., girl, Spain