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The Importance of Family Meetings
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Many Parents often ask how they can help their child to develop good character as well as good social and life skills.
The answer is that it is very easy to teach these skills at a very early age by having regular family meetings. What better safe environment is there for a child to feel a sense of belonging and significance? Where a child can accept accountability in a safe environment, encouraged to admit mistakes, voice their fears and know that they will be supported to find solutions instead of experiencing blame and shame.
The benefits of introducing family meetings are numerous and include the major benefit of creating good memories through a family tradition. The meetings should scheduled be held on the same day each week and the duration of each meeting should be approximately 30 minutes.
Family meetings provide an opportunity and atmosphere where parents can model all of the skills they want their children to learn. Children will learn listening skills, brainstorming skills, problem-solving skills. They will also learn to co operate, show mutual respect and last but not least they will learn to identify the good in others.
Parents also have valuable opportunity to communicate with their children without losing authority. Parents are able to avoid power struggles by allowing their child to speak opening about a lot of issues. It is important that parents listen in a way that allows the children to understand that they are being listened to, as this also results in the children learning to listen when it is time for the parents to voice their opinion.
During family meetings parents should encourage their children to:
- Discuss home or school related issues that have been bothering them.
- Brainstorm solutions for these issues.
- Compliment other members of the family.
- Show respect and listen to other members of the family when they speak.
- Show empathy when other members of the family have a problem.
- Offer suggestions to assist the member who is troubled.
- Discuss openly their attitude to school, their school friends and teachers.
- Discuss their social interest and friends
- Discuss challenges that may be prevalent in the coming week.
- Evaluate solutions that were put forward the previous week.
Family meetings present an opportunity for parents to establish essential events, ie. who needs to be driven where and when during the upcoming week?
Discuss any special events coming up and confirm meal planning which is essential if the parents work and older children have activities that may interfere with the regular meal time.
There are obviously some Do’s and Don’t in running successful family meetings, one of the major Do’s is that it is important to nominate a Chairperson, a time keeper and obviously some to record the meeting.
The responsibility of each person is as follows:
- The Chairperson starts the meeting, asks for compliments to begin and reads out the weekly challenges and controls the meeting allowing each member of the family their time to address the meeting.
- The Timekeeper can keep everyone on track so the meeting doesn’t go on and on and get out of control.
- The Recorder’s job is to write down all the ideas that are brainstormed. Use of a meeting journal can be great fun. If a solution is found then the recorder can circle the solution, if a solution cannot be found for a presenting problem then the recorder can table the problem for future discussion at the next meeting
- It is important to rotate these jobs so that everyone has a chance to feel important.
Another very important DO is to start each meeting with compliments, because compliments create a positive atmosphere. Children also learn that it is important to look for and recognize the good in people. If this is awkward in the beginning it may be useful to have each member write the compliment on a piece of paper and hand it to the Chairperson, who then will read the compliments out. In time and with practice the children will feel better about voicing their compliments to each other.
DO encourage the children to be ready for the meeting by having them write down their concerns and problems.
DO each child to brainstorm for as many solutions as possible. Remember the purpose of brainstorming is to come up with as many solutions as possible, so don’t discount any solution put forward without it being considered.
DO focus on solutions and resist blaming and criticizing
DO ensure that a meeting is held each week without exception.
DO ensure that meetings don’t go over time keep them to 30 minutes maximum.
DO ensure that there is a special dessert or treat after each meeting
DON’T expect perfection. It is not uncommon for siblings to quarrel, however, if children and parents learn to identify the good in each other, negative tension is somewhat reduced.
DON’T use family meetings to give lectures and exercise parental control.
DON”T expect children under four to participate, it is better to wait until they are in bed otherwise they can be very distracting.
DON’T give up on your family meetings if things get tough. Remember when the going gets tough the tough get going.
If parents really understood the value of family meetings, it would be their most valuable parenting tool.
One of the biggest and most destructive problem we all face today is lack of communication. In today’s modern society most of us l live in the fast lane. We all seem to be constantly in a hurry, family rarely get to sit and eat dinner together, due to either parent working late, children participating in outside activities or sitting at the computer playing games. This lack of communication results in alienation of family members and can result in a dysfunctional family life.
The scheduling of family meeting each week is a positive way to combat and can assist in indentifying and resolving problems, not allowing them to fester and escalate into major problems.
Understanding this how can you not want to have weekly family meetings?