Family Meetings

I really must credit my wife with coming up with some unique ideas for our family over the years.  With me working fulltime when our kids were young and my wife either working parttime or in graduate school, a lot of the parenting fell on her.  As with any family with three children under the age of ten, squabbles and issues arose.

I do not know how my wife came up with the idea but one of the best things we ever instituted was a weekly family meeting.  In these meetings which occurred every Sunday, we could discuss issues that arose during the previous week, talk about upcoming activities, discuss service charges (more on that later), and pass out allowance for the week.  To be fair, we rotated among all five family members who would chair the meeting.  And to ensure there was a record of any discussions or agreements made, my wife and I would alternate handwriting minutes.

This notebook holds theses minutes, now over 30 years old.  According to the oldest minutes, we started these meetings on May 5^th, 1991 and continued them through 1997.  In these meetings, the first order of business was to read the previous meeting minutes.  Then Mom or Dad would announce service charges with these amounts being deducted from each child’s allowance.  Then as with many meetings, there would be “Old Business” and “New Business” followed by a formal adjournment.

At that time, there was a continuing issue of kid’s belongings being left out overnight.  The house we lived in at that time had common areas on the first floor (living room, dining room, den, kitchen, bathroom), with all bedrooms on the second floor.  To be fair to all family members for the ease of use of these common areas, we asked each child to take their belongings (e.g., clothes, toys, schoolwork) up to their rooms before bedtime.  For each item that a parent took upstairs after bedtime, the child was assessed a 10-cent service charge (in that very first meeting, our daughter thought the charge should be 5-cents but since my wife was the predominant one picking up, she stated she should be allowed to set the price).

Each child’s allowance was gaged to their age.  Looking back at these original minutes, it is interesting to see that weekly allowance amounts were, $1.75, $1.50, and $0.25, from oldest (age 9) to youngest (age 4, you can see why our daughter, the middle child, objected to the service charges being 10-cents as one or two items left out a night during the week  could (and did on occasion) eat up most of her allowance.  Each year around their birthday, they would get a raise.  At some point, we began to give out monthly allowances as with the kids getting older and having more activities, we could not always find the time to meet every Sunday.

In January, of 1992, I began to type up the minutes after the meeting so they could be easily read at the next meeting, but this did not last long.  Sometime later, I typed up a blank form which captured the routine items obviating the need to hand write these items each week.

In these early meetings, we also established some common agreements as well as expectations for each family member.  In 1995, we formally documented these agreements for our two oldest in Behavioral Contracts (another of my wife’s initiatives).  They were two pages long, included consequences for non-conformance and were signed by each child and my wife.

One of the best features of these meetings (as captured on the blank form) was “Problem Solving.” Here, any issue could be brought up and openly discussed, without emotions (hopefully but not always), judgement, or harassment.  Everyone was allowed to offer input or suggest remedies.  Over the years many issues were raised and jointly solved with everyone’s input.

For example…

Tomorrow everyone is going to the dentist.  Mom suggested that since brushing teeth is important to protect teeth, everyone who wants to eat sweets should brush their teeth regularly.  All agreed.

And…

Mom and Dad are doing all laundry and M and C don’t even put clothes up when they are back in their room.  Too much work for Mom and Dad.

AGREEMENT: M and C will do their own laundry.  Will keep clothes basket in their closet.  M and C will fold and return to their room.

But not always…

C doesn’t want to do dishes anymore.  C presented a joint plan that M did not agree to.  No further agreement reached.  Agreement stands unchanged. (C left meeting at this point.)

As our kids got older, these family meetings continued although not every week sometimes every other week and occasionally just monthly.  Our oldest son graduated from high school in 1999 and went off to college.  Our daughter (a year younger), graduated from high school in 2000 and also went off to college.  Obviously, we all got much busier prior to that as the last dated minutes in the notebook are from February 1^st, 1998 (although there is a single meeting documented in February 2002 with just our youngest son).

Occasionally, when our kids came home from college (and after they married) they would read through some of the minutes.  It usually turned into a hilarious laughing fest reading some of the old minutes and revisiting some of the issues that were raised so many years ago.  Memories that in all likelihood, would have been lost forever.  These meetings and the minutes are truly a legacy all thanks to my wife.

A final note I just realized in writing this post, that our three kids all now have children about the same ages as our own kids were when we started having these family meetings in 1991.  On occasion, witnessing our kids reading through these old minutes, remembering poignant memories, and sharing a laugh or two makes me wonder.  Will our kids decide to start having formal family meetings with their kids?  I recognize this would not be something in their spouses’ lives growing up but maybe, just maybe, my wife’s wonderful idea will live on into the next generation.

Thank you, sweetie, for such a wonderful idea you initiated!