FoolProof Family Meeting

Family Meetings are powerful tools to promote teamwork and encourage

children to take responsibility for their actions. The problem is that they can
be long and boring. Traditional versions of a family meeting ends up with
parents dictating to children what chores they need to complete and
behaviors they need to stop. Consequently, most families only get through
one to two meetings and never have them again. This version will family
meetings is both foolproof and fun.

The key is to hold the family meetings every day for no longer than 15
minutes maximum. This way you can easily change strategies from day to
day until you find one that is effective and enforceable. If you miss a day,
you can pick up where you left off the next day. The problems won’t go
away…they’ll wait for you!

Complements: Start each family meeting with compliments for one

another. Go around the room and have each person give a compliment
about others kind actions, respectfulness, peaceful behavior, etc. Make
them quick and keep them positive. If someone doesn’t have one, they can
pass but don’t let this be a daily avoidance!

Problem Of The Day: Open up the meeting to any problems that family
members might be experiencing. Allow children to come up with there ideas
about what is a problem. It might sound trivial, when it comes from a child,
but you want everyone to have a voice if you want everyone to be
“responsible and fun to be around”. Pick one problem to focus on.

3 Possible Solutions: Ask family members to come up with three possible

solutions to the problem of the day. Three total. Not three each. Encourage
children to come up with at least one idea. Don’t worry if the solutions don’t
work. You will have the family meeting again the next day and the day after
that and the day after that. Let natural consequences be a learning
opportunity about what solutions work and what doesn’t. Parents have
“veto” power over any solutions that wouldn’t be healthy or safe. Ice cream
for dinner isn’t the best solution for the family :)