Guidelines for Effective Family Meetings
9/15/2002
- Establish a meeting time that compliments the wide range of interests and activities that are so often part of the daily lives of families today. As meetings are conducted, establish and stick to agreed upon time limits.
- Encourage everyone to bring up issues. Write them down and keep the list until the next meeting so that they can be discussed in order and reviewed for progress.
- Don’t permit meetings to become gripe sessions. Instead, serve as an example to demonstrate solution-oriented and nonblaming problem solving. Use your communication skills. Listen with sensitivity and speak with respect for feelings. Never put down family members when they share their thoughts and ideas.
- Don’t use family meetings to attempt to solve one person’s problems. Meetings are not therapy sessions. Use the meeting to provide everyone with the opportunity to identify concerns and to offer suggestions for how those concerns might be resolved. Use effective parenting skills for solving those problems involving the behavior and attitude of individual family members. If needed, seek professional help for guidance.
- Remember that all family members need an opportunity to be heard and to develop leadership skills. No one person should have control over meetings. Take turns leading the meetings and encourage everyone’s involvement in an age-appropriate way.
- Make sure a problem is resolved or that a plan for resolving the problem is developed before going on to the next issue. Then evaluate decisions at the next meeting.
- Follow through on agreements. At the time agreements are made, build in fair and logical consequences for broken agreements but also focus on how everyone will benefit through cooperation and sincere effort.
- It is vital that all members of the family participate in the meetings as equals. This is particularly important if parents want to encourage productive and active participation. Providing equality in family meetings is also an excellent way to increase children’s self-esteem and sense of importance.
