Family Board Meetings
Family board meetings have become foundational for building and strengthening my relationship with each of my kids. The time our kids are born to the time they turn 18 will include about 940 Saturdays. 322 of those Saturdays have already past since my oldest started 1st Grade! It’s not that much time I have to spend with them when I consider the other family events, tasks, and chores that require my time and attention.
I quickly began to realize how little time I have with them. They have more face-to-face time with their teachers than me. Extra curricular activities and time they want to spend with friends also takes away a chunk of my time with them. But what about Dad time?
This is why Saturdays are very important to me. I want Saturdays to be “Super Saturdays”. I want to make sure I have plenty of one-on-one time with each of my kids.
I have already been spending one-on-one time with each of my kids, but Jim Sheils’ book The Family Board Meeting outlined some great ideas on how I can make our time together even more special. He points out that we have 18 summers to create the lasting connection we want to have with our kids.
How we spend our time and summers together do matter. If we intentionally invest and spend our time well, we will nourish, build, and strengthen our relationships.
What Is A Family Board Meeting?
A board meeting is held every quarter or 90 days. It’s a special time each of our kids get to spend with just Mom or Dad for a minimum of four hours. We have them plan a fun activity to do together, a restaurant to eat at, and place to reflect and talk without our screens and distractions.
A family board meeting only has three guiding principles:
- One-on-One Time
- Intermittent Tech Fasting
- Fun Activity with Focused Reflection
One-on-One Time
This is the simplest and most overlooked principle. Create time to be focused, intentional, and alone with just you and one of your kids.
Have them plan their board meetings with just Mom or Dad. It has made it super fun for us. When the event is their idea and they can see it on the family calendar, it makes it so much more special and exciting! Learn new principles, skills, or new things about each other.
Intermittent Tech Fasting
Disconnect to reconnect. Turn off all technology including your phone (unless that’s part of the activity). If you don’t turn your phone off, at least put it on airplane mode so it can only be used as a camera. There can not be that one text or other distraction.
People look at their phones an average of 80 times per day. Imagine what that does to our relationships when we are one-on-one with our spouse or kids, our phones go off, and we take our focus off of them and put it towards our phone. It’s so discouraging and distracting and actually does something to our brain and pathways that just derail us.
Give them time to talk and let them drive the conversation. Giving them our undivided attention will communicate to them that they are what matters most… not what’s on our screens. It will also produce more connected conversations.
Fun Activity with Focused Reflection
At the end of your board meeting, you have to save time to talk. When you are one-on-one for four hours, doing a fun activity that they chose to do, you’ll have decompression where everyone will be more relaxed. The lines of communication start to open up again where you can have focused reflection and time to talk.
The opening question is
What was your favorite part of the day and why?
That simple question has helped us uncover things our kids are going through or scared of. It’s the starting point of our communication. It’s planned at the right time where we have already shared this magic day together.
Strengthening Our Relationships
Our kids continually ask when their next board meetings are. We haven’t wanted to stop doing them after starting them. I spend regular one-on-one time with each of my kids, but once a quarter, I make it extra special through family board meetings.
We have developed a new level of trust and continue to strengthen our relationships. The more time we intentionally invest into each other, the deeper and more connected we become. Family board meetings have become setting points for our relationships.
One of my favorite parts of The Family: A Proclamation to the World says:
Happiness in family life is most likely to be achieved when founded upon the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ. Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities.
I highly recommend having family board meetings. Call them whatever you’d like… but do them. Take your kids on dates, give them your undivided attention, and gift them the best thing you can give them… your time.
You can use the same templates I use to plan out my Family Board Meetings, Date Nights, and Super Saturdays.