Family Meetings – parentingideas.com.au
How to use family meetings to improve communication, cooperation and consistency and to develop conflict resolution skills in your kids. Over the next few weeks we will look at family meeting ideas for you and your family.
Start with Encouragement
Start each meeting with an activity where members share positive experiences and learn to express themselves in a safe environment. This needs to be parent-led at first. The chairperson invites each person to:
Say Something Good
Teach your kids to be more optimistic by looking for something good that happened during the week. This teaches kids to positively frame or look for the good in themselves, others or situation. e.g. “Can you think about something good that happened to you during the week?” “What’s something new you learned at school?”
Show Appreciation
Teach your kids to show appreciation to someone for something they did during the week. e.g. “Thanks mum for helping at … this week.” “I liked it when you let me play with your toys.”
Give a Compliment
Teach your kids to give and receive compliments. Invite participants to give a personal compliment to someone present about something they did well during the previous week. The person who receives the compliment needs to respond appropriately too – without embarrassment or deflecting it. e.g. “That was the best game of basketball I have seen you play.” “Thanks, I was pretty rapt myself.” “You packed away your toys every day without being asked.” “No problem.”
Offer Encouragement
If they’ve done something brave (e.g. given a talk at school despite being nervous) then throw a little spotlight on how they did it. Helping a child achieve this type of self-knowledge is one of the keys to effective parenting.
Catch Up
Go around the group catching up on what you have done in the last week. Parents should begin at first. Here are some ideas:
► ONE GOOD, ONE CHALLENGE “Tell us one good thing and one challenge that you faced this week.”
► ONE POSITIVE, ONE NEGATIVE “Can you think of something positive and something not so great that happened this week?”
► SOMETHING NEW, SOMETHING DIFFERENT “Share something new and something a little unusual that has happened recently?”
► SOMETHING AT SCHOOL, SOMETHING AT HOME “What’s happening at school and at home?”
► WHAT’S HAPPENING? Invite kids to briefly talk about their week, anything unusual, worrying or fun happening?