Tag: struggles

November Check-In: Family A

This past month’s goals proved incredibly difficult to meet.

As with other families involved in this challenge, life seemed to get the best of of us this month.  While we did spend a good deal of time engaging in kith and kin related activities; unfortunately, these activities were not as purposeful as we had hoped.

We did engage in the hike the kids had requested, created a shelter in the living room, answered countless random questions, and built many a fire; we (dad especially) sought to engage in some level of structured learning experiences as well.  This is where we feel we have continued room for growth.

Because of this, we have decided to stick with this value family for another month.  The activities we are most interested in focusing on this next month include:

*Hiking (using jet boil, animal tracks, map reading, etc.)

*Educational activities (reading, puzzling, lego building, etc.)

*Engaging in supportive relationship building/growth as siblings/kind people

We will commit to planning at least one activity weekly, with the kids input, for at least one purposeful, meaningful growth activity per week.  (with the hopes of continuing to encourage kith and kin and growth throughout the week.)

We hope we can find a way to integrate the busy holiday season and our goals of living our values daily (so many ways to give during the season, but also so many ways to get lost in the materialism.)

October Check-In: Family C

After discussing and laying out our values with our family, Mom and Dad checked in with our family’s progress. We’re embarrassed to say that we have not progressed as intended. We decided that our failure was primarily due to a lack of a control-document or process. Our plan is to devise a working system by end of month, in order to hold our family accountable to our values. This will help us into the future, as things are bound to get more hectic with a little one on the way!

Potential solutions included a picture (Easy to follow and use for the kids…and Dad), a simplified SOP (Editor’s note:  SOP=standard operating procedures or an agreed upon, easily understood set of expectations that all concerned individual share in order to meet a shared goal), a printed control document and more structured verbal check-ins during family dinner. Mom and Dad feel that we could employ a blended strategy of all solutions.

“It’s rudimentary, but fun and engaging.”

We will put up a picture, which shows our values, so that we can easily reference our values and remind us to live them.  Our picture will be placed under our family calendar in our kitchen and can also be seen from our primary eating space. The reason for that placement is that the proximity may assist us is because we play a game at dinner called, “Sweet and Sour”. The objective is to get someone to share the day’s Best and Worst as a spark of conversation. The fun is in being the first person to call out a fellow family member (or guest) and ask them for their input. We ask that the first topic be the Sour, so that we can end on a positive note, the Sweet. It’s rudimentary, but fun and engaging. Most importantly, it is a great tool with which we can learn about each other’s perspectives.

Photo by rawpixel.com on Pexels.com
Photo by Jonathan Miksanek on Pexels.com
Sour before the Sweet in Sweet and Sour game during Family Dinner.

Additionally, going forward we are setting a goal to focus on one value per month. We will ensure we are living these values purposefully and proactively. At dinner, when our family is together, we will discuss how we exemplified that particular value. If we have not used that selected value that day, we can discuss where we could have used it or if it was appropriate for the situation or not.