A Family, A Team

This is our family.  We are a blended family.  We've had our share of problems surrounding this situation.  How to work together as a family unit, show solidarity and defining each of our roles within the family unit.

Recently, we've decided to try a new approach.  One that aims to pull us together as a coherent, cohesive, cooperative family "team".  A family unit who genuinely cares about the goals, objectives, morals and values of each individual as well as the family as a whole.

It has two parts.  The first part was deciding on and writing down our family rules.  The rules this family lives by, in our house as well as out and about.  Here are our family rules, signed by each family member and posted on our refrigerator:

---

Next, we have a weekly family "meeting", which will be regularly scheduled for Sundays, when we sit down together and write down five goals each for the upcoming week.  These can range from things on our individual to-do lists, things with which one of us might need help from another of us, behavior improvement goals, weekly steps toward a larger individual or collective (family) goal.

We believe this will (and in its first week, has already started to) bring us together as a cohesive, cooperative team and drive us toward accomplishing things important to us, while holding us accountable to one another.  We have the opportunity to lift each other up, keep each other and ourselves on track, and if we ALL of us complete our five goals by the end of the week, we have a family reward, chosen at the family meeting.  We each have a small personal reward we can achieve, too.

Here is our first week's goal sheet:

Yes, little Thomas is just seven months old, yet he is absolutely included on our goal sheet each week, even from such a young age.  That way, it is not foreign to him as he grows older, and of course, because he is a big part of this family... TEAM!

I'm excited to see how this helps our family grow over time.  It's very similar to ideas I had as a child that just weren't implemented, because... well, I was only a child.  What did I know, right?!

Hehe... Let me know if you do anything similar with your family, or if you have any questions for me.

Have a great Friday!

~ Chandra