152 - The Family Meeting
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There's something about meeting regularly as a family that brings you together, not only in a practical way—which it does—you can talk about the calendar and your schedules and your plans, but emotionally you can connect and you can share things you're looking forward to or problems that you're having, and I didn't have this growing up.
We didn't meet regularly as a family, but it's something that we've started to do recently and it has been such a joy. Today I'm going to share with you the simple outline that we follow for our family meeting and I hope it's helpful to you.
For the full episode, hit play above or read through it below.
Every Sunday night we have dinner together as a family and our kids know it's family meeting time. This is not something we have done for very long so I'm going to go ahead and give that disclaimer, we're kind of new at this, but it's working well.
We're kind of getting in the groove of it and this is going to be a pretty short and sweet episode. I just kind of want to tell you the outline that we follow for our family meeting and tell you a few examples of what's happened and kind of how it's been fun and helpful for us even while our kids are little and hopefully it will just spark some creativity for you and your family, or give you an idea of how you could have a family meeting.
I think most people think—oh, if we're going to have a family meeting, you're expecting something bad to happen, or to be said. It's like if a family member dies or some issue comes up or something really hard to talk about. Like, all right, everybody come on in it's time for a family meeting.
Well, Will and I decided we didn't want every family meeting to be centered around a big announcement of some kind, whether it's bad or good or whatever. We wanted family meetings to be something regular for us, a place for our kids to feel safe to communicate to one another and to us and yeah, just to kind of rally around each other.
So I've gone through this course that I love, it's called Positive Parenting Solutions, my friend Amy McCready leads the course, it's really fantastic. I'm an affiliate for the course, because I believe in it so much. I don't talk about it ever, I should talk about it more, because I'm an affiliate, but honestly it just, it's something Will and I are going through again, like currently, for our kids. It’s very practical with helping you navigate a lot of parenting challenges.
This is a total side note, but I think there's like a module in there for potty training—I think that's worth the price of the course alone. I listen to it every single time I potty train a kid. Anyway, that is a total rabbit trail, but in this course, Amy talks about having family meeting and this is where I wanted to give credit because this outline for a family meeting comes from this course and we've modified it a little bit to fit our family, but this is where we got it from and it's just really, really helpful.
So on a Sunday night, we're all eating dinner and that's usually when we kind of kick off family meeting, is when we're eating dinner. She says, you can do it, it doesn't have to be over dinner, but we've just decided to kind of do it at dinner because it fits in our regular routine. But you start it off with appreciating every individual person in the family.
I love this. You pay each person a compliment or tell them something they've done that you really appreciate that week. And so, you know, first we start with Milly and we'll all go around and say something that we really appreciate about Milly. And then we'll move on to Lyndon. I'll say the same thing and oh my goodness y'all, Lyndon lights up during this time. I mean, all of our kids do, but I think Lyndon is our little words of affirmation girl, because she soaks it in and will not let us skip this part ever, she loves it. It’s been really sweet to kind of notice that in her, too. So then we’ll go to Beaufort and we’ll go to Benji and we do Mommy and Daddy.
And it's really sweet to hear, you know, these kids just pour into each other and say things they appreciate about each other even if it is like—Hey, I like that you play with me. It's really sweet to have that time to affirm one another and to do it in front of the rest of the family. So, that's how it starts.
Then we ask if anybody has anything they'd like to talk about, is anyone upset about anything? Is anyone happy about anything? Are there any issues or feelings in your heart that you want to discuss with the family? And so we, if somebody says yes, I want to talk about this, or I want to talk about my birthday coming up, or I want to talk about a friend at school. We say, okay and we'll let everybody kind of list the things they want to talk about and then we'll let each person have a few minutes to share their heart.
The little ones don't usually do this, but some of my older ones do. They talk about their expectations for something like their birthday or a trip that we have planned coming up, what they're most excited about and it's just, I think my favorite thing about that is it's just a place and a space for them to feel heard and listened to. I think that's going to become more important as they get older.
After we have the appreciation time and then we kind of talk about any issues or problems or things on their heart that they need to talk about, we go over our weekly schedule. So it's Sunday night that we meet, we say—okay, let's talk about this week. What do we have going on this week? Usually we ask them and they kind of look at us like, I don't know, Mom and Dad, you guys tell us what's going on this week.
So then we’ll tell them, you know, it's a normal school week. You have school these days and on this night, Mommy and Daddy are going to go on a date and you know, this weekend we get to look forward to this. And so we just kind of talk through our week and that helps them kind of know what to expect for the week, which helps them take ownership over their week, which is really great.
And then the last thing that we do that's part of the family meeting while we're kind of sitting down as a family is we pay them for their chores that they've done. So they bring us their chore charts and we pay them for their chores and so they really look forward to that as well. And it's nice to have a time set aside in our week where we look at their chore chart, see what they did, and then we pay them for their chores.
We do commission-based chores, meaning we don't do like a set allowance. We kind of pay them according to what they did and the chores that we pay them for on their chore chart are above and beyond, things that are a little bit harder for their age, things that really help the household. It's not like their normal chores that we expect them to do to contribute to the household. Anyway, that is another topic for another time but bottom line is we pay them on commission and we pay them Sunday nights after the family meeting wraps up.
The last, last thing, I know I just said that was the last thing, but this is really the last, last thing. The last, last thing that we do is something fun, we try to end family meeting with something fun. The first time we ever had family meeting, I think we turned on the Hokey Pokey and we all got in a circle in the kitchen and did the Hokey Pokey, which is just fantastic and they all loved it.
So obviously when you're thinking of fun things, it's important to make it age appropriate, but it's just sweet and they always ask, what are we doing tonight? Oh, and we always have dessert. So we usually end it with like dessert and a fun thing to do and that's kind of how we kick off our week. I will say family meetings can take awhile. So as I'm talking this through, I'm realizing ways that we can improve, because we need to start dinner earlier or just start family meeting earlier because it starts to really creep into bedtime and you do not want your kids going to bed late on a Sunday night before you start your school week. So I think we might try family meeting maybe in the afternoon sometime, or I don't know, maybe kick off the family meeting with a fun board game or something first and then maybe just end with dessert.
Bottom line is, take these ideas, take the time of appreciation, or take the “anybody need to share issues, or problems or things on your heart?,” or planning your schedule—take all of those things and you can put them in the order that works for you and do it at a time of day or time of week that works for you.
I really encourage you, if you don't have a regular family meeting to start, it has been so sweet. We've all looked forward to it so much and I hope that this has just given you some ideas on how to have a family meeting that you can look forward to that will bring your family together.
I’m gonna close with this quote that I love by George Bernard Shaw:
“A happy family is but an earlier heaven.”
Thanks for listening and I'll catch you next time.
