Elaine Taylor-Klaus
I’m very excited to have this conversation today.
Diane Dempster
We pulled something out of the archives. This is a true story, right? Some days we wake up with 17 ideas of things to talk about. You were doing some research the other day going through old topics, and we wondered how we hadn’t talked about this yet.
Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Yeah, exactly. This is based on a workshop that I did 10 years ago, and it went through—and it went, “Yep, still pretty much on target.” We’re going to do it again as a workshop or masterclass, but we wanted to at least have a conversation. We’ve teased it enough. Should we tell them what the topic is?
Diane Dempster
Oh, yeah. We can. The topic is family meetings. But before you move on to the next podcast—stop! Family meetings get a bad rap. I think particularly because we as parents have a habit of doing them in a way that is either exhausting for us or daunting for our kids, or something in that vein. So before you move on, we’re going to have you figure it out. When you hear that, you might think, “Are you kidding? Oh no.” You had all these amazing family… We had the best family meetings—so good. And I think we started having better family meetings after I had some ideas and everything else.
It was the mindset and the shift of it, because I think that a lot of times family meetings feel like, “OK, I’m being called to the table by my parents.” When I was a kid, that was a family meeting—I literally had to sit at the kitchen table while somebody wagged their finger at me. We’ve had that habit, so let go of that preconceived notion. That’s not what we’re talking about. No one’s wagging a finger at you, so take a deep breath.
Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Let’s create a new context. The context here is raising a family that feels like a team, whether you’ve got one kid, two kids, three kids, or more. It’s about creating a sense of team and a feeling like—my kid said to me as a young adult—’Mom, Dad, y’all grew a friend group.
Diane Dempster
You were talking in the episode on siblings about the team aspect. This is a great segue into one of the things you can do to make that happen.
Elaine Taylor-Klaus
This is a tool to help foster a sense of team. But to your point, Diane, it’s not something you impose, and it’s not all your agenda. We’ll go through some of this stuff, but the idea behind a family meeting is really to give everyone a place where they feel like a team, come together, and have a safe place for strong communication—where everyone feels heard. It’s fundamentally a place for everyone in the family to feel that their voice matters, their perspective matters, that not everything is direct control.
Diane Dempster
So many of us feel like the only time we talk to our kids is when we have something to tell them, teach them, or check on. We end up in transactional relationships, and parents say, “I want a relationship with my kid, not just transactions.” A family meeting can create a space for transactional work and build relationships. True story: I asked my roommate if she wanted weekly check-ins, and she said, “Just tell me when it comes up.” Not everyone loves the meeting format, but it can be a good tool, and it builds so many things in the family.
Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Yes. And what just came up is that in parenting, we tend to put a solution in place without being clear about what we’re trying to achieve. It doesn’t matter if it’s a binder, a journal, a calendar—whatever system we use, we often start with a solution instead of identifying the problem we’re trying to solve.
Diane Dempster
Well, I think that’s so true with family meetings. It’s like, OK, the Parenting with Impact podcast said we’re supposed to start having family meetings. So what’s likely to happen then? Permission to not do that if you don’t want to. And to not make this another transactional thing. This is about improving communication skills, about fostering a sense of team, about giving everyone a space to feel heard and involved, and to teach self-management. If you’ve got younger kids, imagine all the things that happen in a meeting. Wasn’t there a book called Death by Meaning? That’s one of my lines: Death by Meaning. Part of that comes from the fact that, in the work environment for years, it was, “OK, we’ve got to get everybody together and talk about this.” That’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about a time and an event to connect as a family.
If you think about any team I’ve worked on—great teams, challenging teams—I look forward to our Monday meetings. We start with celebrations, we get to know each other, we share what’s going on in our lives and what’s important to us. And yes, we get business done. It’s a space to talk about how things are going as a team. We want this to be something your kids and you look forward to, not dread.
Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Well, I was thinking about our new team member who started joining our Monday team meetings, where we begin every meeting with celebrations. It was really funny—like with a few new members, their celebrations are always work-related, and the rest of us are like, “This is what I did this weekend,” or “Look at the flowers in my garden.” The other day she said, “Oh, I have a personal celebration,” and we all cheered. Yes! Now you have permission to be human here.
There’s a lot we could say about the container of a family meeting, but above all else, the purpose is to connect. It’s a safe space to check in about what’s going on in each other’s lives—especially for your kids (and your partner) to feel heard. To feel like their voice is part of guiding the family’s rhythm. Sometimes, as a mom in the early years, I ran everything—what Mom said, what we were doing. The family meeting became a place where they could say, “I don’t like doing that. I want to do this. Can I do it another way?” It became a place where everyone knew they’d be heard at least once a week—and I would actually integrate what they shared.
Diane Dempster
Well, and as you said, think about the things we discussed: we’re really trying to create a team and improve communication. How often do we have difficult conversations and stumble through them cuz we take things personally, or they’re not hearing us? If we learn to communicate with each other about the in-between stuff—which is a lot of what we’re going to fill family meetings with—rather than just the big or important topics, we teach dialogue, listening, patience, and attention. We’re really teaching interpersonal communication skills as part of that, right?
Elaine Taylor-Klaus
For sure. Here’s what I’m going to say: I want to give a couple of techniques. We can’t cover everything, but I’ll share a few strategies. Fair? Diane and I have set the stage by explaining what family meetings are for: they’re about communication and connection, not another vehicle to impose your agenda, but a place for everyone to feel seen and heard. I have a few things I want to make sure we cover. Is there any particular strategy you think is really important?
Diane Dempster
No, I think if we ground in why we’re doing this—OK, we’re not doing this to take care of business. It’s really about teamwork, communication skills, and connection. That’s the grounding, right?
Elaine Taylor-Klaus
So that’s the why of it. Here’s what I want to suggest: if you’re not in the habit of family meetings, or if yours haven’t gone as well as you’d like, my challenge is to do nothing in the first few meetings except celebrate and talk about what’s on the calendar for the week. Don’t tackle any other agenda items at first. You want to set the stage where it feels safe, and they won’t be called to task for a bunch of things. For the first month, schedule a regular time—Sunday evening, Wednesday night, whatever works. I’d recommend not doing it at the dinner table but at another time and place, if possible. And make sure you have fidgets available. I used to bring a big bowl of fidgets and put it in the middle of the family room table.
Diane Dempster
Or you could make it an OK deal if people want to color or scribble or something like that, and not say, ‘You’re not paying attention—you’re scribbling or fidgeting.’ We have kids and adults in our families who might need fidgets to stay focused on something a little more mundane.
Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Exactly.
Diane Dempster
So keep it light, keep it casual.
Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Allow for movement or fidgeting or other activity that’s not distracting, obviously.
Diane Dempster
Well, the other thing you always say is, rotate leaders, right?
Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Hold on for a sec—pause that. I really want to set the stage: at the beginning, the only agenda is celebrations and calendar—this is what to expect this week. Once you start getting into a rhythm—weekly, every other week, or however often—you can shift from just coming together to an actual meeting. Diane, that’s what you mean when it starts to become a meeting, right? Did you keep a journal? We kept a family meeting notebook at our house. Now, go with that.
Diane Dempster
I’m not—so what we’re saying is that we’re gonna get together a few times in a safe space and just connect with celebrations and check the calendar.
Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Exactly.
Diane Dempster
And then I think part of it is talking about what you want to talk about. What do we want this to be a time for? What do we not want it to be a time for?
So you’re creating the framework, the structure as a family, rather than somebody coming in and saying, ‘We’re gonna do this, then this, then this.
One way to do that is to say, “Let’s take turns leading the meeting,” or “One Sunday a month we’ll do it this way, and another Sunday we’ll do it that way.”
That may make some of your kids crazy because they won’t know which Sunday it is.
Elaine Taylor-Klaus
You try different things. You experiment.
Diane Dempster
Yeah, exactly.
Elaine Taylor-Klaus
One technique that can help with that is to keep a family meeting agenda in a separate space, like on the refrigerator. For the first few weeks while you’re just coming together, you can say, “These are things we might talk about at family meetings.” You don’t have to discuss them yet—just keep the list and let everyone start brainstorming what they want to talk about.
Before you start an agenda, let them add items. They might complain about something that week and you can say, “That would be a cool topic for our family meeting—will you put it on the list?”
Diane Dempster
Well, that’s what I love—because if somebody’s griping, family meetings can be a time to air your gripes. The cool thing about what you described is: I’m griping about my brother on Tuesday, and Mom says, ‘OK, let’s put that on the fridge. We’ll cover it on Sunday.’ Now I’ve got four days to downregulate.
And we can set a family agreement that we don’t bring emotionally charged gripes to the meeting. So everyone takes a deep breath, does five minutes of group meditation, or whatever helps your family downregulate before the meeting, so you’re talking about things instead of arguing.
Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Well, I found that half the time they’d put something on the family meeting agenda, and by the time we met, they’d forgotten what it was. That’s fine—when I said, “Go put that on the agenda,” it gave them permission to capture their concerns. Don’t write it for them unless they’re so young they need help. Writing it down helps them clarify their dream behind the complaint.
We often say in the coach-approach that there’s a dream behind every complaint: “What do you really want?” By writing it down, they feel acknowledged. Even if you never address it, they’ve been heard.
Diane Dempster
The other structure I like for family meetings is the magic-three questions: What’s working? What’s not working? And what are we going to focus on next? Some of you in our community know the Taking Aim tool—that’s focusing on one particular thing. In our family, each kid had something they were taking aim on, maybe a behavior challenge with the parents or between siblings. Then, the family meeting became a place to report progress. “OK, this is what I’ve been working on. This is what I’m celebrating: I didn’t lose my cool three times; I went to my room, closed the door, relaxed, then came back and had a calm conversation with my brother about X, Y, Z, and then, Next week I’m going to work on this.”
Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Then next week, I’m gonna work on this. It’s just sort of… so what’s the magic three? Three questions are: “What’s working?”, “What’s not working?”, and “What do I wanna try next time?” Or “What do I want to do differently moving forward?” And the order can be helpful, because if you start with what’s working instead of the gripes, it really brings the energy of the family meeting up. Everybody’s having a great time, everybody’s appreciative of each other. You’re celebrating and connecting before you have to deal with some of the more challenging conversations.
And again, you may not deal with some of those more challenging conversations for a few weeks, and that’s really OK. When you think about—those of you who learned about the independence pyramid that we teach—the foundation is relationship, and then we build trust. Family meetings are a great opportunity to build some trust and improve communication before you get to collaboration, where you begin to work with each other, resolve things, and manage conflict in the family. But if you start off with that, it typically feels to kids like, “I am calling you here so I can tell you what you’ve done wrong.” We want it to feel like, “I’m inviting you here so we can come together and celebrate what’s going well in our family and how we work together.
That’s why I think the calendar is so helpful, because a lot of our kids really do very well when we start the week by saying, “Here’s what’s coming up this week: you’ve got a late practice, I’m working late,” and so on. Setting their expectations for the week can help them become more conscious of time and feel a little less thrown when things surprise them or come out of structure.
Diane Dempster
Yeah. And I think the other thing, just to reiterate, is there are concerns and challenges that come up—and yes, this can be a place to address them. We want to figure out how to handle things in a way that feels safe. For example, if you have more than one kid and one of them is struggling with X, Y, and Z, you might agree on which conversations happen in front of everyone and which ones happen in private. If you’re going to be frustrated about something, perhaps you don’t want to do that in front of the whole family. Part of what you get to design with your family is what goes to family meetings and what doesn’t.
And I think that the reminder is always, you know, we’re not leading these meetings, but we want to be leaders in the meetings. And that’s the important piece: if we’re reactive or taking something personally, it makes the meetings uncomfortable. The underlying goal is how do I create a safe space for me to stay calm no matter what comes up, and how do I create a safe space for my kids to stay cool no matter what comes up?
Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Beautiful. So here’s the bottom line: family meetings are a powerful tool—but the tool itself is not the goal. The tool serves a larger goal, which is connection and fostering a sense of team. It also gives each family member a sense that they have a voice—that they’re heard, seen, recognized, and part of decision-making in this ”team” called family. Even if their input seems minor, that feeling of being heard is super empowering. Over time, once connection and trust are in place, you can gently tackle the real issues that need addressing. And it’s a beautiful structure for that.
Diane Dempster
So, the right time to start family meetings isn’t when things get rough—it’s now.
Elaine Taylor-Klaus
But keep it fun, keep it light, keep it playful. OK, stay tuned—sometime in the next year we’ll do a full workshop on family meetings. So, what are you taking away from this, everybody? What’s your insight? What’s your awareness from this conversation? What do you want to take from this and bring forward into your world this week?
Diane Dempster
Always funny when we forget the wrap-up.
Elaine Taylor-Klaus
And as always, my friends, thank you for tuning in, paying attention, thinking about this stuff, being the conscious parent that you are, and for what you’re doing for yourself and for your kids. You make an enormous difference. Talk to you soon.
Diane Dempster
Thanks, everybody.
