Positive Parenting tool: Family Connection Time

Interested in creating more connection in your family and reducing power struggles?

Try a weekly a positive parenting tool: The family meeting, to practice gratitude, share highs/lows and empower kids as problem solvers!

Here’s how we’re structuring it right now and will continue to tweak it as we go:

1. Gratitude/Appreciations/Celebrate
2. Highs/Lows
3. Family schedule review
4. What’s not working? Problem solving.
5. Topic/Learn something new
6. Fun game/activity and Snack/treat

I know what you’re thinking…  uh, that looks like TOO MUCH time/work/energy etc. Trust me, you just have to try it!

At first my 7 year old daughter looked at the agenda and said, uh, that sounds boring. But we ended up having a really good time, AND I can already see the difference it is making in our family. 

Just like a personal review/check-in or meeting with your team at work, it really grounds us and aligns us as a family for the week and gives everyone a place to be heard and valued.

It’s a tool meant to bring the family together once a week to connect, align, celebrate, work through issues together, and have fun! It’s incredible the life skills your kids learn – appreciation/gratitude, speaking up, active listening, problem solving, negotiating, follow through amongst many others.

We’ve had some amazing results and I even received an unexpected, really sweet appreciation from my husband that made me tear up! (I’m telling you – this Family Connection Time might be life-changing for you too, not just for your relationship with your kids, but with your partner as well!).

We were inspired by the Family Meeting in the Positive Parenting Solutions course. I haven’t been able to get into audio books or podcasts, but I do enjoy listening to the PPS audio lessons when I’m working out! If you’re interested, I share a bit about my experience with the course at the end of this blog post.

Want to learn a little more what our family meeting agenda consists of? We walk through each section below. 

1. Gratitude/Appreciations/Celebrate

We take turns expressing gratitude and appreciation or celebrating another family member. Our kids totally get into this and get excited remembering things throughout the week.

If your kids are not used to expressing gratitude, they’ll need some help at first (both for finding things to be appreciative of, and how to express it). As parents, you can start and give them a better understanding of what they can say.

Remember, nothing is too small! I actually like calling out the small things as it shows our kids that even the smallest gesture of kindness or effort is noticed and can uplift someone else.

2. Highs/Lows

This is something we added as my friend, L, had shared this idea some time ago and we’ve been loving it for daily check-ins with the kids!

At the family meeting, it’s an opportunity to look back not just on their day (during daily check-ins), but a bigger picture view of the week. We often remind them that the downs in life are normal (we are allowed to be sad and upset!) and those feelings may feel big and overwhelming in the moment, but when we take it all in with a bigger perspective, it may not feel as world-ending as we might have initially felt.

We don’t want our kids to believe that they must always be happy (that’s unrealistic and self-sabotaging), but it’s important we try to create an environment where our total positive moments outweigh the negative ones.

3. Family schedule 

This part of the meeting is meant to align on schedules and needs (professional, social, etc) for the week and is really useful for families with lots of coordination needed for work schedules, appointments, and extra curricular activities etc.

As I work from home and my husband only goes for his 24 hour firefighter shift 1-2 a week, we don’t struggle with this as much. We still slot time for it though because we let our kids choose their after school activities for the week (see the DIY kids activities planner we made!) while my husband and I coordinate on appointments and social activities for the upcoming week.

This helps clear up any confusion (‘oh I thought you knew we had to do that this week’), and helps us as parents, prepare mentally and physically, for the activities the kids have chosen for the week. For us, this means that we know in advance which days the kids want to paint, go for a bike ride to the park, do a treasure hunt hike, etc and can plan around it. This helps avoid us all defaulting to screen time (sometimes we are so tired and busy, it’s easy to fall into this slump!). 

We allow our kids to choose up to 4 activities each day after school – a mixture of activities they can do themselves, as well as some that require supervision. This dedicated time during Family Connection Time allows you to review and make actvitiy scheduling changes as needed due to other existing commitments.

4. Problem solving

The most powerful part of our Family Connection Time!

Our kids get really excited and the most creative here. This would seem surprising, especially if we bring up issues we are experiencing with their behavior.

But in the Positive Parenting course, we learned that kids actually love helping with problem solving (it feels empowering!). We might not be able to nip the behavior in the bud right away (as we feel it would if we just do it OUR way), but the process obtains buy-in and commitment from your kids as they were involved in proposing and testing out different solutions! And funnily, sometimes the kids come up with really easy solutions (that you might already even do!).

For example, my son has been a very picky eater lately and started throwing tantrums when he didn’t like his meal (without even trying it). We explained to him how sad and upset we felt when he told us our food was disgusting. We were tired but we took time and care to cook a healthy meal for him. We asked him how he would suggest solving it. We went back and forth on varying solutions and then suggested that he could pick one meal per week.

He lit him and said he’d like to have burgers and pizza once a week. We said ‘sure!’, since my husband already makes homemade burgers with delicious brioche buns and homemade pizza each week.

But just the process of having him request it, and us agreeing that we’d oblige, gave him a sense of empowerment. To him, we weren’t having burger and pizza because we, the parents, had decided it; it was because he suggested it, and we together as a family agreed on it.

Remember, we may already have a potential solution that our child may be amenable to, but it’s not about the right solution – it’s about the actual process, this journey, that helps develop our children’s confidence, ability to speak up for themselves, listening skills, negotiation skills, etc.

I know, it sounds unreal, but we have had many problems solved this way, including school snacks, frequency of sweets/treats, tantrums about bathtime, tidying, etc. I am not going to lie – it’s not perfect every time, but it’s such a relief that a majority of the time, it isn’t a struggle!

Note: Please be prepared, and encourage, your kids to bring up issues they have as well and add them to the agenda during the week. Even our 5 year old is articulate enough to tell me that he didn’t appreciate me yelling at him for something during the week (Like Amy in the PPS course, I am a recovering yeller…).

You can post the following week’s agenda somewhere accessible for everyone to add to (e.g. the fridge). Since our kids are young, I usually will add an item they mention to the agenda myself, but we actually work off a template I made for our meetings in Notion and everyone in our family has access to it via their mobile device – phone or tablet).  

Also, whatever we land on to test out as a solution that week, there needs to be full consensus and commitment from everyone in the family. I like to document the issue and the commitment. If the problem persists, we can check back in the following week to discuss alternative solutions.

This is awesome because we can give opportunities for kids to test out a solution within a specific time frame before they have to understand that it didn’t work and we will need to move on to try something else. If the child was not part of the decision for the solution, it would be much harder to get them to move on to try a different solution.

5. Topic/Learn something new

If you are just beginning to do weekly Family Connection Time/Family Meeting, you might want to skip this but if your kids are interested (ours were!), feel free to incorporate the opportunity for someone to teach the family something. The kids get a real power hit from this!

It gives them the feeling of authority, or leadership. As our kids are still young, I’ve suggested that we can pull a question from the question jar, or someone passionate about a topic can teach the rest of the family something. Right now, our kids are really into animals so most of the time, we get to learn about a new animal.

I’d recommend using this opportunity to discuss interesting news or other relevant current topics, especially if it can help you weave in family values, or allow kids to see different perspectives.

6. Fun game/activity AND Snack/treat

We gotta wrap up with FUN, of course! We want our children to look forward to Family Connection Time, not dreading it and waiting for it to be over. We slot our meeting on Sunday mornings after breakfast. We’ll pick a quick game to play (silly ones are great!) and enjoy a snack/treat together before going on to get ready for our Sunday plans. To make it more special, you can even choose a fun game and a treat that you only have at the end of Family Connection Time.

 

Are you practicing positive parenting? What tips and strategies have you found most useful? Let us know in the comments below! We are always open to learning new things to help us on our parenting journey.

 

Positive Parenting Solutions course by Amy McCready

As I mentioned above, the idea for our Family Connection Time was born from the Positive Parenting Solutions course by Amy McCready.

I’m a life-long learner in all areas of life, both professionally and personally; especially when it helps keep me in alignment with my goals – one of them being a better, more-present and compassionate parent. My husband and I started the positive parenting course over a year ago. I’ve completed all the lessons but I still use the mobile app to listen to the short lessons for tips, tricks and helpful reminders.

As with most things, it’s hard to remember all the things you “should” be doing, and often we fall back on what we already know. These lessons help serve not just as “reminders”, but also give you real-life examples and a toolbox, to try out different things in varying situations. 

If you’re not ready for the flagship Positive Parenting Solutions course, I recommend checking out her free 60 min class, or the Ultimate Guide to Motivating your Kids course ($19). The free class provides some great aha moments and learnings, but heads up – she does pitch you her Positive Parenting Solutions course at the end – so feel free to close it out at that point if you’re not interested.