Return of the Family Meeting

Family meeting. Do those words mean anything to you?

In my childhood, family meeting was a euphemism for, someone screwed up and our dad was sufficiently frustrated that he was going to have all of sit down the living room and let us know.

I can see it now, us all gathered around, and he would usually have some bill in his hand, often a phone bill, that had managed to destroy the budget he kept.

For the first moments, all would be silent as he continued staring at the bill in disbelief, still wondering how we could have possibly used the phone so much, or run the water for so long, or used such vast amount of electricity.

He was, needless to say, lucky to be parenting in an era when the only expenses we kids could influence were utilities. Long before one-click buy now Amazon shopping and in-app purchases.

For my current family, the concept of a family meeting has only been something that was invoked as a joke, a bit of empty-threat parody of the sort of family meetings I grew up with.

Someone left the house keys in the front door lock overnight again, once more seeming to invite criminals to either take the keys and drive off with our car, or easily enter the house to carve us all up in our sleep. Or, most likely, both.

Family meeting, some family member will call out and laughter ensues.

That was up until three weeks ago, when the first Ueland family meeting occurred, and I was shocked to discover the potential of a real family meeting to help our family function better.

I don’t know when I first had the idea that some sort of family meeting was something we needed, but it was years and years ago.

So much of our life as a family feels, while something I treasure, far more like the inside of one of those lotto numbered ping pong ball machines than I would like. Exciting, but also pure chaos. 

At some point, the notion of having an opportunity to come together to check in, discuss the good and bad, and potentially course correct, seemed like a great antidote to what is otherwise mayhem.

Yet it didn’t happen. Anymore than those Lotto balls suddenly managed to get their act together and take five minutes to stop slamming into each other and take a moment to reflect on exactly what they are so stirred up about.

Year after year after year, nothing. And three weeks ago, there we all were on a Sunday evening. Finally. It was happening. To be honest, this is another thing that we have only managed as a result of my being on my impromptu sabbatical from work. 

It was only once we were sitting down, and I was describing what I was thinking the meetings could entail and why they were valuable, which would include talking about what had gone well the previous week, not well, what was coming up during the coming week, and anything not coming up that kids would like to add, that it occurred to me that I was essentially stealing a best practice from the working world.

I mentioned this to the kids, that what I was describing was a common part of working life. As part of jobs, you are typically on a team and part of helping the team function well is having weekly check-in meetings.

This prompted some bad dad humor that we would perhaps want to have a family member of the month. It was at this point that Olivia got up to get and went off in search of a box of tissues, thus putting the meeting on hold, which we all agreed was put her out of the running for family member of the month.

The first meeting was genius on a number of levels. The most basic was that son Henry was thrilled that we would cover all the different family events in advance, as he is the most annoyed by the lot of kids to rarely know what is coming beyond, We’re leaving for grandma’s in five minutes, so put some nice clothes on. 

And then if they complain about not having known hear the response: I’m sure I told you.

Another benefit of the meeting was that setting the time to reflect on the week as a group gave us a chance to be a bit more ambitious and creative with our activities. This was a time of year between sports, so we had more time. 

We ended up going to a play for the first time since the pandemic started and then Henry and I went off road biking (single track biking), which is something we have been talking about doing together for years.

Another obvious perk was having an opportunity to talk about emotional family landmines in a calm setting, rather than trying to deal with things were flaring up. We were essentially reminding each other in advance—kids would work on remembering X, parents would work on Y.

And that was that. Family meeting was a hit, as demonstrated by the fact that kids asked about the following week--what time was family meeting? And not: family meeting—nooooo!

I also think there was less friction and more humor and lightness during the week, though I certainly can’t prove that.

In fact, if I were going to get particularly serious and candid for a moment, I would suggest that I had the sense that the ensuring family well being that I sense ran deeper—that it actually had to do with the father figure of the house actually providing a level of family leadership that might have been missing.

I can’t promise anything that profound. I will just say that: based on the first few we have had, I should have started family meetings long ago when I was first thinking of them; and I do hope to be able to report back that I was at some point named Family Member of the Month.