My husband and I have decided that we are going to start having family meetings at our house. I’m hoping that it will open the lines of communication between us and the kids. Plus, it might make life a little easier for us all. Below are a list of things that can possibly be accomplished during family meeting time:
- address any concerns
- allocate and monitor chores
- ease sibling rivalry
- recognition for jobs well done
- promote communication skills
- group brainstorming to solve problems (working together works!)
- resolve family conflicts
- provide children with “ownership” in the family
- create a sense of family
In the next week or so (after doing a little research), I will be putting together the agenda for our first meeting that I hope to hold before school begins. Any suggestions are welcome.
Morocco's Bazaar 
I love this idea. We have family meetings where we outline our chores and go over responsiblities, everyone gets a copy of the outline to refer back to. During our meetings everyone gets a chance to voice their feelings/opinion and ideas.
This has been a really great thing for our family to come together and feel like we’re responsible as a family, not as individuals. We also put a chart on the fridge and everyone marks their responsibilites as they do them, so it’s a visual reference of the work they’ve done, and the credit goes toward special rewards.
Our responsiblity list changes in the summer vs. school year as my stepdaughter is here for a longer period over the summer, and during the school year I include homework and such in the responsiblity outline for my younger daughter.
Oh yeah, in our outline, we also include treatment of one another and household rules. This has been very successful for our family, I think because everyone feels included and we are working together. In our family there’s not his/hers or theirs, it’s all ours!
Many Blessings! =)
I wonder if this will work for a 4 and a 5 year old?
It is a great idea! In our home we call it “family council.” Good luck!