First Family Meeting of the New Year

“I have two hands but I cannot get you two fish,” said my youngest son in the middle of the year’s first family meeting.  We all stopped talking, wondering what he meant.  This is my youngest son’s trademark, his own little quirk, to say things, or do things, out of the blue. 

“What?” I said.  Though we had the “talking spoon” out, everyone was speaking out of turn until J.J. said this. 

“I have two hands but I cannot get you two fish,” he repeats.  Then he adds, “It’s a Vietnamese proverb.” 

“Where’d you hear that?” said my husband.

“From my teacher,” he said.  “It’s about multi-tasking.” 

“Do you know what multi-tasking is?” I said.

“Yes,” said J.J.  “It’s when you try to do a bunch of different things at one time.  And you can get frustrated.  Like right now.  Everybody’s talking at one time and I’m frustrated.  BACON!” 

It was true.  We hadn’t had a family meeting in over a month—and it sure felt like we were back at a point where we were all multi-tasking and we were all frustrated.  Everyone was talking out of turn and interrupting one another.  In the past month, rules slid.  Star charts had been put away and never brought back out.  We were retreating back into the old routines we had as busy people who ran in and out of the house we shared, not really connecting.  Even this meeting had to be broken into two smaller segments on separate days in order to allow for everyone to meet. It brought a realization for all of us; the family meetings had been doing something good for our family.  We needed them. 

It was hard to get back into our new routine.  We had to remember our “talking spoon” for taking turns in the meeting.  We had to remember the roles we created to take turns in the meeting (leader, scribe who writes about the events of the meeting, other note-taker for writing down our ideas rather than the scribe, mediator who calls out “BACON” when we all need to be quiet and calm down, timekeeper, and reader who reads back and reviews notes). We had to remember our guidelines that we had all created for our family life, such as the use of positive behaviors over negative behaviors (this time we decided to print them out and post them on the refrigerator).   But it was worth it. 

We created new chore charts for who does what chore each week (and decided we’d rotate it to allow everyone to learn and do different chores).  We created separate “star” charts which have only one box to “star” for chores, one box for academics, one box to “star” for self-organization, and then we discussed resolutions, goals, and action plans.  We made individual goals and put a box on the new star charts for those. For example, my daughter decided to face her fear and work towards being a goalie.  My oldest son wants to improve his swimming. My husband and I both chose to improve our health, but with our own action plans.  Then, we decided we wanted to do a family goal. The kids talked about the good things in our family, and the things they want to improve.  They decided they wanted to make our family even better…and on top of the action plan they started?  I’m not kidding…after all that “hemming”and “hawing” from the past, they decided we should continue family meetings.  Now we have a box on our star charts for working on our family goal.

 As usual, we finished with our favorite part--choosing who would get to pick a family activity for next week.  This time everyone had new ideas of what they’d like to do when it was his/her turn to pick.  Who was picked?  What did that person choose to do?  Well…I guess I’ll have to say… that’s for another post!  May you have a wonderful day with all the wonderful people in your life. 

Family Meeting #5--Traditions

“Well, I think a tradition we have in our family is to color our hair,” said my youngest son at our latest family meeting.  The kids started to giggle and I don’t think I helped matters any when my jaw dropped open.  Luckily, my son (J.J.) giggled, too. 

            “What do you mean that we color our hair?” I said, innocently, blushingly even, but well knowing that yes, I do put highlights in my hair—just a little.

            “Well, like in the summer.  Our hair gets lighter and now Dad had some white hairs (to which my husband’s jaw dropped amid more laughter) and so I think that’s something that is a tradition in our family,” he explained. 

            “Well, that is something that does happen to our family’s hair, that’s true,” I said.

            My oldest son (Jay) interrupted, “Mom, just don’t even speak.  You sound like Marge Simpson.”

            “I sound like Marge Simpson?” I said.  “Like from “The Simpsons” TV show?” More laughter. 

            “Yes, I’ve been thinking that all day and I’ve been waiting to say it,” he said. 

            “Definitely Marge Simpson,” said my second son (C.K.).  All I can do is smile and laugh at myself, too. 

Our meetings were first sidetracked by the Thanksgiving holiday and then by two of my kids getting sick with this coughing/fever thing (let’s face it—it’s either a coughing/fever thing OR the throw-up/diarrhea thing:  both “old hat” by now around our house and not worth mentioning, though I prefer the coughing/fever thing to the latter…anyhow…).  The sidetrack is not only did I get the coughing/fever thing, but it turned into pneumonia.  I’ve never had pneumonia and as the old southern saying goes, “when mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy”.

Family Meeting #4--Day 23

Our family meetings are falling into a routine. The meetings are having effects on our family that we never realized would occur.  We are starting to learn about one another in a way that we hadn’t learned about each other before. 

Our meetings now start with letting everyone know our business for the coming week, then our discussion of self-achievements, family achievements, and our new topic—telling other people in our family what we appreciate about them.  Although compliments and achievements may seem like something that doesn’t need to be said in a family, or shouldn’t have to be said, these words bring smiles to each person in our family.  An unintended result of this part of the meeting is that we learn more about each other.

Family Meeting #3--(Day 16)

This week was a change as the kids actually begged for the family meeting.  We had so many interruptions during the weekend that we ended up having our family meeting during dinner, but that worked out well as we decided on pizza (a favorite, rare dinner—YUM!).  Although we need a lot of practice communicating, it seems like we are accomplishing something…though I’m not sure what!  We are almost done working on our actions and consequences board.  Also, we reviewed upcoming weekly responsibilities for school and work—so that everyone knows “what’s going on”, and we added a new part to our discussion of individual achievements and family achievements—we each had to say something we liked about one another.  This worked really very well.  I think it’s a “keeper”!

Family Meeting Two (Day 8)

The kids actually asked to have our team meeting this Sunday. I’m taking that as a good sign! I came armed with “star charts” and information from the little book, Building Family Communication by the William Gladden Foundation, just published this year. (A review of this booklet can be found in my blog’s Family Resource Reviews section). Before we even sat down at the table, someone had found the “talking spoon” and my daughter had tacked up a huge sheet of paper for our discussions. We discussed upcoming weekly events, positive achievements that each person had this week, reviewed our use of the word “BACON” to halt arguments during our meeting time, and then discussed positive and negative verbal and non-verbal messages based on the Gladden book. Then, we got down to the nitty-gritty. It went a little bit like this, more or less:
MOM: Okay, let’s start with our next item: Positive Family Achievements. Five minutes.
LIZA: Well, we behaved at the football game last night.