How to hold an effective family meeting

With most parents working all day, and children involved in after school activities, clubs and sports, often the only time families are all together in one place is when they are asleep. It is important to take the time to not only let your kids know what is going on in your lives, but find out what exactly is going on in theirs.

Getting Started

Let everyone know there will be some ground rules, and if anyone feels any other rules are needed, they can be discussed.

For ground rules, you need to set some that although may seem obvious – they can get lost in a heated discussion. There should be no interrupting, only one person speaks at a time. There should also be no insults, or derogatory remarks made about anyone. Finally, absolutely no yelling!

Agenda - although it doesn’t have to be written down in any organized format, you may want to either have everyone bring a list of what they want to discuss with them to the meeting, or have a sheet posted somewhere in the house where people can add their ideas to it.

Although you don’t need to appoint someone “secretary”, (you can if you want!) at least one person should take some kind of notes so that if a question arises later you can look back to see what was discussed and what was decided.

All family meetings need to contain some certain components:

The schedule: Everyone needs to let everyone else know what is going on the rest of the week, or until the next family meeting is scheduled. This includes practices, sporting events, other extra curricular activities, dates of school tests, anything that needs to be planned for, or around. Use a large calendar to write it all down, or invest in a dry erase board.

The good: Everyone needs to let everyone else know what good things happened since the last meeting – good grades, won a game, was actually nice to a sibling – whatever, but every person should be able to name at least one good thing.

The bad: Along with the good, everyone needs to talk about what bad things happened since the last meeting, and what was done, or can be done, to correct it.

Concerns: This category may not come up at every meeting, but it entails discussing where problems could arise, and how to stop them before they turn into something “bad”.

You can also add whatever other components you want to add to your own family meeting. The most important rules to remember are: no yelling, no fighting, no insulting, no interrupting, and every gets their own turn to talk about what they want to talk about. Stick to these basics, and you can have a successful family meeting every time.