Family Meeting

One of my favorite shows on television is The E Channel’s era based shows.  I am particularly fond of “Remember The 80’s”; I love this one because I am a product of this Flock of Seagulls hair wearing, parachute pants sporting generation.  I wish I still had those pants, my kids would love them! My favorite music from the 80’s was the Adidas, Kangol and gold chain wearing Run-Dmc. Fast Forward about 20 years… One day I was sitting with the kiddos and a new MTV show called “Run’s House” invaded the airwaves.  This was a show about Rev. Run and his unusual, funny and effective parenting strategies.  While watching the show, Rev. Run was talking about his new book called, “Take Back Your Family:  A Challenge To America’s Parents”. I immediately bought his book and absolutely loved it!  The best advice I took from his book was to start having family meetings.  I know this could sound like Parenting 101, but I believe very few parents actually do this. Jodie and I read the book and Team Sprad committed to having family meetings.  Team Sprad meetings are a time when we make sure we are on the same page, deal with conflict and read God’s Word together. Here are a few topics we hit in our family meetings…

• Calendars: We pull out the calendar and plan the month
• School: We deal with homework issues and friend challenges
• Behavior: We use this as a time to pro-actively work through kids behavior issues
• Goals: We have also used this time to teach our kids to set goals and use our family meetings to chart our kid’s progress towards their goals.  (Note: kids goals, not mom and dad’s goals for kids)
• Conflict: We have 3 kiddos pretty close to age, so as you can imagine we have the whole sibling conflict to deal with.  We use this time to exercise Matthew 18.  We confront, deal with conflict and love on each other after the hard conversations.
• Parent’s report card: Jodie and I know that many times we fail as parents and wound our kids’ hearts.  We use Team Sprad meetings as a time for our kids to share how we have hurt them, controlled them or let them down.
• Spiritual stuff: This is also a time where we get into God’s Word, pray, serve and grow together spiritually.

I encourage all parents to get out the gavel and call a family meeting!  This will keep the lines of communication open and will create an environment of love, trust and honesty.

Do you have Family Meetings?  If so, please share any tips you may have below in the comments section.

  {originally published in 2011}