Family Meeting – Lesson 6
Each of you should bring these tracking sheets with your entries:
- Problem Solving Pre-Planning Sheet
- Problem Solving Entry Form
Welcome to week 6’s Family Meeting! This agenda is to help you organize your meeting and family practice session. It includes skills to practice from the week’s lessons, plus SFP activities each person did during the week. You can print this agenda, or have it on a phone, tablet, etc. to look at during the meeting.
NOTE: We recommend you open Family Meeting Agendas on a laptop, computer or tablet during your meeting, so the whole family can follow along.
Family meeting rules:
- Use an agenda.
- One person talks at a time.
- Everyone gets a chance to talk, if they want to.
- No one puts anyone down.
- Keep it short and sweet!
Each week, during your Learn & Earn Lessons, each family member is asked to share ideas. The Family Meeting is a time to review those ideas.
At every meeting:
- Compliments: Say something you like about each person
- Calendar: List activities or events each person has scheduled for the upcoming week
- Past Business: Discuss your SFP activities progress and rewards
- New Business: Discuss current SFP goals and practice skills
- Value Message: Share pro-social family beliefs
- Have Fun! Games and treats
Repeat This Week’s Power Phrase:
Most difficult issues can be resolved using the 7 Steps of Problem Solving and Win-Win Negotiation, while ‘Pre-Problem Solving’ helps keep kids out of trouble.
Agenda Item #1: Positive Practices
Review
Positive Practices. This week you committed to using Positive Discipline and have used a form for tracking how this is going. Discuss this as a family. How is the practicing coming? Are kids and parents remaining calm when mistakes happen and need to be corrected? Are kids accepting “No” nicely?
Pre-Problem Solving. To avoid problems before they begin, we can train our brains to think ahead. That way we recognize anti-social traps that we can avoid. “Pre-Problem Solving” skills give us practice. They help us recognize the negative consequences that could result from bad choices, and say “no.” You can develop these pre-problem solving skills by using the “P-OK-E & C” steps below.
BELIEVE
- You have personal power to make choices.
- There are two types of choices: pro-social or anti-social.
- Every choice has consequences—something good or bad will happen as a result.
- Your choices are based on what you think will happen. Think twice! Your first idea might be wrong.
- You are responsible for any harm you cause others or society, and you must pay for, or make amends, to correct it.
THINK
- Think ahead of possible problem-causing situations you might be asked to participate in.
- Test it—Give each situation a four-question “P-OK-E & C” test.
- Consider the negative consequences if you did it. Ask for others’ advice.
- Practice saying “No” using the 5 Cs (below). Do something good instead.
- Congratulate yourself for using smart power.
TEST
- P-I-U test: Is any Part Illegal, Immoral, Unkind, Unsafe, or Unethical?
- Is it OK with my parents, the public, and the police if I do it?
- If Everyone did it to me, would I honestly like it?
- Consequences: What could happen if I did this?
Directions
Let’s look at the entries made already, and add some more for practice in this meeting.
First, read your family’s Problem-Solving Pre-Planning entries below, then add more here: Problem-Solving Pre-Planning Activity
Your Family's "Positive Practice" Entries
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Review your family’s Problem-Solving Pre-Planning forms, and then add some more for practice in this meeting.
Family Tracking Sheet:
Agenda Item #2: The 5-C’s to Stay Smart and Safe
Review and Directions
A smart way to say “no” and still keep your friends! When pressured by friends to do something you don’t want to do, or you know is harmful, it can be hard to say “no.” Practice using the 5 Cs to help you to say “no” in a nice but firm way, and still keep your friends. You’ll be glad you did!
Agenda Item #2: Win-Win
Review
“Win-Win Negotiation” is the skill of finding solutions that satisfy both parties. To do that, you need a creative mind and a desire to be fair, respectful, and generous.
Right now, in this family meeting, start to develop that mind-set by reading aloud and agreeing to these core values of Win-Win Negotiation:
- We agree to find solutions that will benefit both of us and that we both feel good about.
- We agree that we will negotiate using the family values we have committed to live by, like generosity and unselfishness.
- We agree to use respectful “I-Messages” when stating our position–what we want and why it is important to us. Understanding the “why” allows us to seek other possible solutions that neither of us thought of.
- We agree that we will “LUV-Listen.” (Listen by trying to put our self in the other’s place, show Understanding by repeating back main ideas, and Validate the other’s points of view, even if we disagree.)
- We agree to brainstorm other possible solutions—other than the things we said we wanted—but that would satisfy us both.
- We will choose one option we agree on. We will write down the details, then sign and abide by it.
Your Family's " Win-Win Negotiation" Entries
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Directions
Problem Solving Entry Form: This tool is provided in SFP-FindingHome and should be used every time there is a problem you are trying to solve. Eventually you will learn these steps and the process will become natural for you to use in other aspects of your life: with friends, at school, at work.
Read through the entries your family has already made (listed below), and then add some more here: Problem Solving Activity
Your Family's "Problem Solving Entry Form" Entries
Oops! We could not locate your form.
Problem Solving Entry Form: This tool is provided in SFP-Finding Home and should be used every time there is a problem you are trying to solve. Eventually you will learn these steps and the process will become natural for you to use in other aspects of your life: with friends, at school, at work.
Go through your family’s entries, and then add some more here. If you don’t have a printer, you can still write down ideas in a notebook, using the PDF as a guide.
Family Tracking Sheet: