The Family Meeting

What to do when it's just not working?

Try a family meeting.

My hubby and I have been feeling some major Parent Burnout (see post about that HERE). We've been struggling with feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, and the desire to just get away from our kids lately.

We were talking it over and I was grateful to hear my husband was feeling the same tension and stress from the kids too. Now, he understood what I was trying to tell him about how tough it's been lately. 

We decided to have a brainstorming session. We sent our older two outside while we had a parent pow-wow. We wrote down all our suggestion, good, nuts, and great, all down and then agreed together what we thought would be most helpful and then sat down to have our Family Meeting.

We called back in the kids, dealt with the current drama that had been going on outside in the brief period of time we had been talking, and go down to business. 

Image Credit: Positive Discipline

We talked about the issues going on in the household: Stress, drama, unkindness, arguing, bickering, and whining.

We shared what solutions we had come up with and put them into place: A reward system for kindness and calmness, a list of responsibilities daily for one of them who struggles with feeling overwhelmed, and a 15 minute timer to help with transition periods.

Awww.

*Sigh*

Relief. Just having a simple plan and putting it into place as a family unit, as a team, felt great. We are all in this together and we need to work together to make home a peaceful place. It's wonderful how such a simple family meeting can be so effective and powerful. It's a great way to help solve problems when things get really rough.

Photo Credit: WalkingInHisFootsteps

Have you ever held a family meeting? Do you think that's something that could benefit you and your family? If so, give it a try and see if it works well for your family.

Much love and keep up the good work, mamas,
-Joy

PS- The things we implemented to help with behaviors have been working so far. Yay!