04 JUNE 2024

Introduction to Family Meeting

Read time: 7 minutes

Hi- I’m Brion, I invented The Family Meeting—a long form conversation scheduled once a week. Devices with screens are put away. And real conversations happen. I always describe it as a mixture of quality family time and teaching important life lessons. And it’s done each week, once a week.

Why did I invent The Family Meeting Framework? I have two boys, 11 and 14 years old. My youngest was struggling with diabetes, and my oldest was becoming distant and struggling with his grades. What was the result of all those meetings…

Some of the origins of The Family Meeting simply came from my own experience with the kids— what I witnessed was really important life lessons being taught to our children in 1 minute intervals. Typically on the way to school and often ending with a door slamming. I knew that wasn’t right. And these topics deserved much more time and attention. It deserved long form conversations.

Is running The Family Meeting easy? No. It’s hard. Is it worth it? Yes. What I have created is proven to work.

Let’s get into some of the details.

Framing of The Family Meeting Framework

The Family Meeting is a framework. It’s a system. It’s a process. And like any system if any of the parts are missing, well it doesn’t work. The value that the system provides no longer exists.
The framework is designed specifically to address your unique family requirements.
In my course and my writing I provide tactical details to demonstrate how the framework works. That is, the true purpose of the framework is to teach you– how to teach. More importantly, how to get children to pay attention. It’s not a method on what to teach. Families will have different values and requirements. You simply slot those into The Family Meeting Framework and off you go. If part of the framework is missing you won’t go far. Trust me I know.

The Challenges

Scheduling The Family Meeting

It was hard to start the process of family meetings at first. 3 hours (in a row) was a big commitment of time.

How The Framework Takes Form

I schedule The Family Meetings in the morning from 9 am to 12 noon. We need everyone to be attentive, and afternoon meetings aren’t as effective.
The kids should be getting up around 8 am. If they roll out of bed at 8:55 am, you won’t have an attentive child at 9 am.
Sunday, the day of The Family Meeting, is a no-device day. This means the kids arrive at the meeting with no devices or technology with screens. In prior meetings, I have taught them the value of being bored and allowing their minds to wander and daydream. This approach has done wonders.

Three Examples of The Family Framework in Action.

One: Before The Family Meeting

Two: When The Family Meetings Starts

Our Family Meeting starts with long hugs. Each person has to hug each other—no side hugs, no quick hugs. I implemented this when I noticed my oldest becoming affectionately timid and rude towards his younger brother. Now, we don’t have that problem anymore.
After our hugs, Mom and the boys sit on the couch, and I have my own chair sitting across from them with a coffee table between us. Once everyone sits down, I review everyone’s weight and how they are trending. Yes, even Mom steps on the scale.
There is a giant notepad and easel for me to organize agenda items and sketch examples of what is being taught.

I highly recommend doing this. Regular weigh-ins can reveal hidden illnesses. I know when my youngest eats too much candy, when my oldest is dehydrated, and when my wife lost weight rapidly, we discovered she had hyperthyroidism. It’s not required, but do consider it.

Three: The Agenda for The Family Meetings

Personally I have studied philosophy my entire life and I know exactly what topics and issues to discuss with my children. If you are curious to know, tell me here.

The purpose is to have long-form conversations between parents and children. If you’re struggling with what topics to address, keep it simple. Focus on teaching them things that benefit their lives—things that are good. This way, they can reach their highest potential, living a life filled with self-esteem and achievement. The rest is up to you.

A few themes to consider:

Remind them it’s important to get good grades. Ask how everyone’s grades are and explain why doing well in school matters. It took me 5 months and 20 meetings to get my son to do his homework consistently. He didn’t realize how much a zero could impact his average. And now his GPA is a skyrocketing 4.0.
Emphasize the importance of eating healthy foods, typically whole and unprocessed. Explain why eating right and taking care of their bodies is crucial. My youngest was overweight, and it took 12 months and 50 meetings to help him lose 30 pounds. He went from being a benched soccer player to the team captain and later ran the distance of a marathon at 13. But that’s a story for another day.

Remember, the purpose is to have long-form conversations as a family. If you’re struggling with what topics to address, keep it simple. Personally, I have studied philosophy my entire life and know exactly what topics and issues to discuss with my children. If you are curious to know what those topics are let me know here.

Focus on teaching them things that benefit their lives—things that are good. This way, they can reach their highest potential, living a life filled with self-esteem and achievement. The rest is up to you.

Here are a few themes to consider:

Academic Performance

Remind them of the importance of getting good grades. Ask how everyone’s grades are and explain why doing well in school matters.

It took me 5 months and 20 meetings to get my son to do his homework consistently. He didn’t realize how much a zero could impact his average. Now, his GPA is a skyrocketing 4.0.

Healthy Eating

Emphasize the importance of eating healthy foods, typically whole and unprocessed. Explain why eating right and taking care of their bodies is crucial.

My youngest was overweight, and it took 12 months and 50 meetings to help him lose 30 pounds. He went from being a benched soccer player to the team captain and later ran the distance of a marathon at 13.

After the Family Meeting ends, the rest of the day is scheduled so the boys are off their devices and playing with each other. That evening, we all have dinner together.

This might be considered rigid, strict, or controlling—choose whatever word you like. And initially, I had no idea how this would be received by my kids.

Let me leave you with this: after two months of our family meetings, a scheduling conflict arose, and our youngest overheard that Sunday morning was not available for The Family Meeting. In a panic, he asked, “What are we going to do? Maybe we can have it on Saturday?”

The following week, our oldest had friends over. In passing, I found him standing in front of the easel, flipping through the pages of the giant notepad. His friends surrounded him, listening to his explanation.

And now today…

I teach concerned parents, typically parents who are business owners, how to organize family meetings. Parents are taught how to run their own family meetings to keep deep connections with their children and have them reach their highest potential.

Social media, video games, overuse of technology, overuse therapy are distracting our kids into isolation and crippling them from reaching their highest potential. This means getting them to reach their full potential has been a bigger challenge than ever. Until now…

I have created an easy way to help parents run their own family meetings and keep kids on track, free from device distraction to ensure they reach their full potential. How?

I spent the last 3 years running my own weekly family meetings with my own boys. I discovered a format that keeps kids focused, aligned with family values ready for them to reach their full potential. After running over 150 family meetings, I have created my own framework parents can replicate. Now any parent can run their own family meetings, keep kids free from distractions and ensure they reach their full potential.

Whenever you’re ready, there are a few ways I can help you

The Family Meeting Framework Course: Join other parents in my comprehensive course. The Family Meeting Framework online course teaches you how to run effective family meetings that build strong connections and help your children reach their highest potential. With over 150 meetings’ worth of experience distilled into actionable strategies, this course covers everything you need to know in detailed, easy-to-follow lessons. It includes over 40 different tactical tips proven to work, spread across more than 6 chapters of content.

The Family Meeting Framework Newsletter: Subscribe to my newsletter, The Sunday Pinnacle, each Sunday you get exclusive tips, strategies, and resources to help you run your own family meetings. By joining the newsletter today, you get the Kids Summer Framework for free and a video course titled “Before The Family Meeting” (for subscribers only). You get it instantly, and it solves the most challenging part of the family meetings—keeping everyone excited to attend The Family Meeting.