How many times have you thought to yourself as the head of your household that we really ought to have a meeting, a family meeting? The minute you say, a family meeting, if it’s anything like my household, everyone cringes. . It is important that members of the family have an opportunity to be heard. It doesn’t mean we have to agree with them, but if they won’t be heard one way, they will be heard through their behavior. If we can get them together in a place where people can share what they are thinking, share what they like and don’t like, and share what they are feeling, this will serve as a family forum.
So we, at Deliberate Directions, came up with this concept of an ALERT meeting. My 18 year old, Robyn, suggested it could stand for
Always Letting Everyone Realize the Truth. And we think the key word in here is REALIZE. An invitation to hear someone once again doesn’t mean we are going to agree or that they are going to tell you the truth necessarily but it is an invitation to hear. This is a suggested format. One could modify it to address any particular needs the family has.
Click here to download form (PDF)
How to use the form
- Everyone gets a form. One person is put in charge of keeping a master sheet.
- At the top, you will notice a spot to list all the participants and the date.
- ACCOMPLISHMENTS AND CONCERNS - Add what worked this week and what didn’t work this week. Everyone gets a chance to speak. If someone is prone to going on and on like most dads are, then you could use an egg timer to limited it to 3 minutes a piece. While family members are talking, everyone could take notes on their paper.
- FEELINGS – Share how everyone felt during the week. Example would be: I felt used, or I let you borrow the car and you came in late and I didn’t know what to do and I felt foolish.
- GOALS for the week. Maybe just a few simple goals can be listed. 10% shift will get us about a 310% result… one or two goals then a strategy… Each person can have a goal or the family can have a goal. An example is for a family- maybe it might be no yelling for the whole week. For Some families that would be an accomplishment. We know it’s difficult to hear each other when we are yelling.
- STRATEGIES What is going to help us reach our goals?
What would we do if someone started to yell? You might develop a code word like glasses or glue or a sign. Then that would tell us if anything like that was happening.
- EVALUATE we can evaluate the week from 1-5, 5 being great and 1 being poor. Everyone at the meeting gets to circle one independently. You don’t want to see who is circling what. The majority rules and the person with the master sheet writes down how the majority felt. The master copy might be tacked up on the refrigerator to serve as a format for everyone to refer back to all during the week, a cornerstone so to speak.
Next week or the week after, when we have another ALERT meeting, the curriculum or the agenda is already set by comparing ourselves to what we wrote down. I tried this with my own family and several others and found this to be quite effective.
Good luck.
Rob
