Family Meetings the Kiddos Will Love

I don’t know about you, but before I had children, I always thought of “The Family Meeting” as a serious, maybe even somber event, in which there were discussions of major life issues or concerns.  I myself didn’t grow up with formal family meetings, so my image of them must have come from some of the 90s classics like Full House (as an aside, finding out that Bob Saget is actually a vulgar comedian and nothing like America’s dust-busting dad Danny Tanner did a number on my psyche).

But anywho, after I became a mom and started reading my way through many parenting books, and became a member of groups like Positive Parenting Solutions (founder, Amy McCready), I came to understand that family meetings can be a really treasured weekly family event.  There are myriad ways to structure your own family meetings—the important thing is they bring the family together, weekly, in a positive way.

Here is the structure of our family meetings:

1.  Prayer – in our home, we start our meetings with a prayer of thanks for the week.  It quiets everyone, and focuses us on gratitude.  And if your family doesn’t pray, skip this or consider a one minute gratitude meditation to serve the same purpose!

2.  Love Notes – so, I don’t actually mean physical love notes, but I think of this step in our meetings as “Love Notes,” because we go around our circle, and each family member notes something he/she appreciates, loves, admires, or respects about each other person in the circle, preferably regarding something specific that happened in the past week.  So, I might tell Carter how much I appreciated his help doing dishes, or how much I loved my one-on-one time reading with Kensley.  For little ones (like my three-year-old), this step is a little challenging, and she’s usually more general (mommy, I love to play with you), but I love seeing her mind working down that path of reflection and gratitude.  And by far, the BEST part about this step is seeing the smiles the kiddos cannot contain as they get lathered in love by their family.  It’s also a wonderful way to encourage us to find love and gratitude even when we’re in a negative mindset.

3.  Calendar – admittedly, covid has rendered this step a little less necessary since we’re mostly staying home, but in a typical weekly meeting this step allows us to get a handle on the activities of the coming week, and discuss any coordination issues.  We use this family calendar, which I love, and which comes with a page of stickers for holidays, dentist and doctor appointments, vacations, etc., for the kids to put on the calendar, which makes them feel helpful and involved!

4.  Allowance – in a prior post, Two Ways to Revamp Allowance and Chores to Reduce Entitlement, I discuss detaching allowance from chores, and relabeling “chores” to describe them more accurately as “family contributions.”  In this way, allowance becomes about money management, and children learn that they contribute to the family because they are a family member, not in order to be compensated.  At this point in our meeting, we give both kiddos their allowance, which they split between spending, saving, and giving.  And I like that this has the added bonus of teaching the kids a little money math as they split up their allowance!

5.  Fun Family Activity – while we admittedly don’t always have time for this last part of our meeting if we’re pushing bedtime, it’s definitely one to try to include as much as possible.  It should be an activity the kids suggest and are excited about (within whatever boundaries you set), like a family board game, puzzle, or charades.  Especially during those times of life where parents are particularly busy (always?!), having this set family activity time every week is so important, and so special. 

As far as timing of your meeting, pick a time your family can commit to as routinely as possible during your week, so it’s a known entity in your weekly routine.  For us, our family meetings happen on Sunday nights, which I also find is a wonderful way to end the weekend and start a new week.

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This time raising our littles can be overwhelming at times, but it is so precious and fleeting.  Our weekly family meeting ushers in some much needed gratitude and reflection into this time of life that we too often live in fast-forward – I hope it does the same for your family!