I don’t need to tell you that raising kids and running a home is a whole lot of work. It’s tough to keep everything and everyone organized, juggle all your many responsibilities, and be the kind of caring and responsive parent you want to be.
But one incredible tool that can help you do all that (and more) is regular family meetings. By following a simple family meeting agenda, family meetings can be really fun and incredibly powerful tool to:
- Set rules & expectations in your home
- Strengthen family relationships
- Learn to problem solve effectively
- Help each other work through challenges and problem solve
- Follow through with individual and family goals
And in this post, we’re going to cover everything that goes into starting and running regular family meetings and even give you several family meeting topic ideas to get you started.
Plus, at the end of this post you can grab a free printable family meeting agenda template that can help you easily and effectively plan and run family meetings in your home.
Let’s dive in!
Family Meetings Make Life Easier & More Organized
I haven’t alwatys been a big proponent of family meetings. I mean, I always though they were a good idea. But as a busy working mom with ADHD (and a bunch of kids), there are plenty of things that are “good ideas” that I simply cannot make happen in my already jam-packed life.
But that’s exactly why regular family meetings have been such a game changer in our home once I fully ocmmitted to them.
Because adding this one small habit into our week, it has made our home run so much more smoothly. It’s been so much easier to remain consistent with chores and goals.
And despite a extremely busy schedule, it’s a built in way for our family to connect and bond and for my husband and I to impart important values to our kiddos.
Family meetings isn’t just one more unrealsitic expectation to add to your already packed to-do list. In fact, when done right, they actually help you crush your to-do list while saving you time and effort…and help you create the home and family environment you want.
The Purpose of Family Meetings
The purpose of family meetings is essentially to get your family all on the same page. This includes (but is not limited to):
- Coordinating household management (i.e. cleaning chores, responsibilities, laundry, meals etc)
- Scheduling & planning
- Getting input from everyone about family decisions
- Discussing family issues & problem solve
In your home, family meetings can be whatever they need to be to help you organize and strengthen your family. The goal of this post is to give you the tools to make them work for you.
Getting Started with Family Meetings
Before diving into the family meeting agenda, let’s first discuss the 3 most important steps when getting started.
Step 1: Pick a Day & Time
The first thing you wantt to do when getting started with family meetings is figure out the best day and time to hold it. Pick a time that will be easy to maintain week after week.
For us, we hold meetings Sunday evenings because unlike every other day, we rarely have anything going on during that time. Plus, it’s really nice to start our week having gone over the weekly schedule and talked about the meal planning for the week.
Step 2: Keep Your Meetings Super Short & Fun
As with any new habit, when you first get started with family meetings is to set yourself up for success with actually continuing the habit. And that means making it easy and enjoyable. Making anything easy and enjoyable makes it easier to build it into your scheudle and routine.
And to do that here, I recommend keeping your first few meetings very short and only trying to do 1 or 2 things. For example, this might be letting everyone share what was the best part of their week, going over the family schedule for the week, and then discussing one topic as a family.
(In our house, that’d take less than 15 minutes.)
And then follow it up with some family fun! This could be playing a game together or eating a treat. Making it fun means people will associate positive feeling with the family meetings and look forward to them. Keeping them short makes them easier to build into your schedules.
As family meetings become more routine, you can build in more into your family meeting agenda.
Step 3: Get everyone to participate.
We all like to feel important and like our voices, thoughts, and feeling actually matter. Which is why getting everyone to partcipate in family meetings is going to make them something people look forward to. Family meetings are not a time when mom and dad wax on about something.
They should be interactive discussions where everyone feels important and heard.
I’ve seen this pay off time and again as my kids surprise me by coming up with really amazing solutions to family challenges.
Suggested Agenda for Family Meetings
While family meetings can be whatever works for you, below you’ll find a sample family meeting agenda that gives you a really nice outline for planning and running effective family meetings.
This basics 5-part family meeting agenda is super versatile. But feel free to tweak it to make it work better for you, or throw it out entirely and do your own thing. Whatever works for you!
1. Check-in or Ice Breaker
When you first sit down to the meeting, you want to do something that helps get everyone feeling good and in the right frame of mind. Starting a conversation where everyone gets some input is a great way to do this. You can do this in the form of a “check-in” or and “ice breaker”
Check-ins are where you talk about how things are going, both for individuals and the family as a whole. I would recommend starting your meeting with just one (or maybe 2) and giving everyone a chance to contribute.
Here are some possible questions to get things rolling and start discussion:
- What was the best part of your week?
- What was the biggest challeneg you faced this week?
- What things are going well in our family?
- What things could we do better?
- What good things have happened this week?
- What could help us be a better family?
- Goal check-in (sometimes we share individual weekly goals in our family meetings and will then follow up with each during the next meeting)
Or if you want to mix it up, you could do some kind of fun ice breaker that gets people thinking and sharing. Some ice breaker ideas:
- Rose, Thorn, and Bud: Everyone shares a rose (a positive experience), a thorn (a challenge), and a bud (something they’re looking forward to).
- Favorite Memory: Share your favorite family memory and explain why it’s so special to you.
- Dream Destination: If you could go anywhere in the world together as a family, where would it be and why?
- Show and Tell: Bring an item of personal significance to the meeting and share its story with the family.
- Superhero Identity: If you could have any superhero power, what would it be and how would you use it to help your family?
- Desert Island Picks: Choose three items you would take if stranded on a desert island and explain your choices.
- Compliment Circle: Go around the circle and give a compliment to the person on your right.
- Family Trivia: Create trivia questions about family members or past events and see who can answer the most correctly.
- If I Were…: Complete the sentence “If I were an animal/book/food, I would be…” and explain your choice.
- Dream Job: Share what your dream job was when you were a child versus what it is now, and discuss the reasons for any changes.
- Highs and Lows: Share the high point and low point of your day or week. This can help kickstart deeper conversations.
Note that if one of my kids is grumpy and doesn’t want to contribute, I never force it. My goal is to keep things happy.
(I have 4 girls, so let’s just say we have a lot of feelings in our house)
So I say something along the lines of “I’m sorry you’re not feeling great and it’s okay if you’re not feeling up to talking. I’m just really glad you’re here. Our family is not complete without you.”
I find that by the end of the meeting, their mood will have improved substantially and they’re usually ready and willing to participate.
Looking for more conversation starters? Check out some of brilliant ideas from Tina at Mindfulamazing.
2. Scheduling & Logistics
Next, go over everything that’s coming up in the week. Make sure you have everything on the family calendar and that everyone is aware of what’s coming up. Make any arrangements in order to get people where they need to be when they need to be there.
Need some cute monthly calendars? Check out all the free monthly calendar templates here.
3. Family Business/Other Discussion Topics
This is where you go over any agenda items you need to go over when it comes to family and home management. Possible topics:
- Set goals for the week
- Meal planning
- Challenges & solutions
- Concerns for others
- Say something nice about each family member
- Things to celebrate of fix
See section above with family meeting discussion ideas if you’re looking for a more comprehensive list.
4. Mini Lesson
You don’t need to have a mini-lesson in your family meeting. But as a busy parent with kids heavilty involved in a lot of activities, I love having a built in time to teach my kids important principles to help them be good humans.
Holding family meetings with mini lessons is a great way to engage with kids on important topics while keeping the discussions light and interactive. You can also rotate this assignment and ask other members to do this.
Here are 20 ideas that can be adapted to fit the age range and interests of your children:
- Budgeting Basics: Teach kids about money management, saving, and budgeting using examples from family expenses or their allowances.
- Time Management: Discuss the importance of time management and share techniques like making to-do lists or using a planner.
- Healthy Eating: Talk about nutrition and the benefits of different types of foods. You could also plan a healthy meal together.
- The Importance of Exercise: Share why physical activity is important and brainstorm fun ways to stay active as a family.
- Online Safety: Teach them about staying safe online, including privacy settings and recognizing unsafe situations.
- First Aid Basics: Cover simple first aid knowledge, like what to do in case of minor cuts or burns.
- Environmental Conservation: Discuss ways to reduce, reuse, and recycle, and why it matters for the planet.
- Emotional Intelligence: Talk about recognizing and managing emotions, empathy, and the importance of communication.
- Household Chores and Responsibility: Assign age-appropriate chores and explain the importance of contributing to household tasks. For more help on chores, check out How to Get Kids Excited About Chores.
- Setting Personal Goals: Encourage kids to set personal goals, whether academic, personal, or hobby-related, and discuss steps to achieve them.
- Importance of Reading: Discuss different genres of books and encourage a love of reading. Maybe start a family book club. You could also follow with a trip to the local library.
- Understanding Different Cultures: Teach about diversity and the importance of respecting different cultures and beliefs.
- Basic Cooking Skills: Share some basic cooking or baking skills, focusing on simple recipes that kids can help with or do on their own.
- Pet Care: If you have family pets, discuss the responsibilities involved in caring for them.
- Gardening: Talk about how plants grow and the basics of taking care of a garden. You could even start a small family garden project.
- The Importance of Sleep: Discuss why sleep is important for health and how to maintain a good sleep schedule.
- Water Safety: If relevant, teach about staying safe around water, including pools, beaches, and lakes.
- Good Hygiene Practices: Cover the basics of personal hygiene and why it’s important for health and self-esteem.
- Conflict Resolution: Teach strategies for resolving disagreements in a healthy and respectful way.
- Gratitude and Positivity: Discuss the importance of being thankful and how focusing on positive aspects of life can improve mental health.
5. Treat and/or Fun Family Activity
Perhaps the most important part of the family meeting agenda: the fun. I find that finishing off the family meeting agenda with some fun–whether with a treat, playing a game, or participating in another family activity (see section below for more ideas)–makes kids excited for meetings.
And this doesn’t have to be complicated or super planned out. We often have ice cream sandwiches, popsicles, or root beer floats for treats because they’re super easy. We’ll also play a game as a family (like Qwirkle, my kids all time favorite game!), have some arts and craft time, or occasionally do a family movie.
Tips to Make Family Meetings Fun and Effective
Now, I’ll be honest: I know that the thought of a family meeting may not sound like the most exciting thing in the world.
And maybe you can already hear your children complaining about having to do this new thing when they could be enjoying screen time, playing with their toys…or basically doing absolutely anything else other than sitting around and doing whatever this “family meeting” thing is.
And while it may indeed take a minute to get buy-in from your kids, I can tell you that holding regular family meetings can actually be extremely fun and something kids look forward to.
While getting started might take a bit of effort, the rewards will be more than worth it. The tips below can help you have fun and successful family meetings:
1. Keep the meeting short, fun, and upbeat.
Which can be admittedly tough if there are grumpy attitudes. Keep smiling, keep your cool, and just make the meeting short if needed! Keeping it positive and fun will have your kids associate happy feelings with the family meetings.
2. Have treats or snacks when you finish
Anything that includes treats gets serious buy-in from my kids. This could be I pick up some ice cream sandwiches or fruit pops, or I might even make it super special and actually make cookies. This makes it special and gets kids excited and looking forward.
Sometimes, we’ll actually make something (like cookies) together and then deliver it to neighbors. Which is a family activity, treat, and service project all in one!
You may even consider allowing someone different to pick out the treat each week. Rotate through each member of the family to give everyone input and make them feel special.
3. Plan a Family Activity
We often will throw in an activity after the family meeting. This could be a simple craft, taking a walk or bike ride as a family (weather permitting), playing a board game, or watching something together.
In our home, we’ll get out crafting supplies and create together (I don’t really do structured crafts), play Qwirkle, or watch something together like a Studio Ghibli movie or our favorite TV show as a family, Father Brown.
4. Allow kids to lead or give presentations
Giving kids more opportunities to share or take responsibility can also make meetings more fun for them. This could be letting a child lead a discussion, teach a short lesson, or even give a little presentation on something they’re passionate about.
5. Be consistent.
Holding weekly meetings–even short ones–will greatly benfit your family. So pick a day and time that works for your family and don’t schedule things during that time.
Build a regular time for family meetings into your schedule so it’s easy to follow through and everyone comes to expect it.
6. Encourage everyone to participate in discussions.
Keeping the environment safe and free of criticism will go a long way to help this. Tip number 7 below can help with this…
7. Establish ground rules.
Creating ground rules and expectations can help foster a safe space to share and open up and establish effective communication practices. These might be things like:
- Everyone Participates
- One Person Speaks at a Time
- Listen with Respect
- No Devices
- Start and End on Time
- Confidentiality (What’s discussed in the family meeting stays within the family)
- Use “I” Statements
- Stay on Topic
- Positive Attitude
- Agree to Disagree (It’s okay to have different opinions)
What to Discuss in Family Meetings
Family meetings are a great opportunity to discuss a variety of topics that can help you get organized and work together as a family. They’re an excellent way to impart family values, engage in problem solving, and strengethen your family ties.
You can dicsuss the smae topics each week or mix it up. Do what works for you.
Here are some examples of things you might discuss in family meetings:
- Schedule: Review the family calendar for upcoming events, activities, and appointments to coordinate transportation and responsibilities.
- Household Chores: Assign or rotate chores, discuss any issues with the current system, and consider ways to make household tasks more efficient.
- Budget and Finances: Talk about the family budget, including savings goals, upcoming expenses (like vacations or big purchases), and any adjustments needed to manage finances better.
- Meal Planning: Decide on meals for the week, assign cooking days to family members, and make a grocery list together.
- Educational Goals: Discuss school performance, homework routines, upcoming projects, and any concerns or support needed.
- Family Goals: Set short-term and long-term family goals, such as saving for a trip, improving health and fitness, or learning a new skill together.
- Conflict Resolution: Address any conflicts or issues between family members, providing a safe space for everyone to express their feelings and work towards a resolution.
- House Rules: Review, establish, or update house rules, including screen time, bedtime routines, and expectations for behavior.
- Health and Wellness: Talk about any health concerns, plan family fitness activities, and encourage healthy eating habits.
- Personal Check-ins: Allow each family member to share how they’re feeling, what’s going well, and what challenges they’re facing. You may check in with the issues discussed the previous week.
- Celebrations and Acknowledgments: Recognize achievements, milestones, and efforts of family members, celebrating both big and small wins.
- Family Projects: Plan for home improvement projects, organizing tasks, or family crafts and activities.
- Vacation and Outings: Discuss ideas for an upcoming family trip, weekend outings, or visits to relatives, and start planning logistics.
- Screen Time and Technology Use: Set or review guidelines for screen time and discuss online safety. Want help? Grab this free printable screen time rules chart.
- Community Service: Choose a community service project to participate in as a family, fostering a sense of giving back.
- Emergency Preparedness: Review emergency plans, including what to do in case of a fire, natural disaster, or other emergencies.
- Feedback on Family Meetings: Reflect on the family meeting process itself, discussing what works well and what could be improved for next time.
Remember: these are just ideas for what you can cover. You may only cover one or two items in a meeting, as our gaol is to keep them short and effective. However, even woth short meetings, over time you’ll be able to cover a wide range of important topics and have many meaningful discussions.
Download the Free Family Meeting Agenda Printable PDF
Family meetings are incredibly powerful tools that can not only help your family get organized, but can also strengthen family relationships, help members achieve goals, overcome challenges, and overall improve your life. Follow the tips and advice here to get started.
And to help you put all this into practice, I’ve created a free printable family meeting agenda template that you can use to plan your own family meetings. Sign up below to get the template sent straight to your inbox.
You’ve got this!
Free Family Meeting Agenda
Ready to make it easy to reap all the benfits form family meetings? Grab the free printable family meeting agenda and tip cheat sheet.
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