What's This Famiy's Foundation?

You've decided that your family needs healing. You're taking a stand and you choose to create a home that is filled with peace, joy and love.

What is your first step?

Create a new foundation for your family.

Family stability is based on having a place of unwavering peace and unconditional love but these aren't just foo foo concepts. You have to be willing to do the work.

What does that work entail?

Ask yourself (and write the answers out on sheets of paper) the following questions:
1) What is the mission of my family?
2) What are 3-5 of our core family values (examples: loyalty, respect, trust, integrity, generosity, honesty, etc.)
3) What regular weekly activities do we participate in together to ensure quality time? (not TV or video games)
4) Does each and every member of this family get alone time and privacy and is it respected?
5) What issues are boiling under the surface that we refuse to talk about and why?
6) Is my notion of an "ideal" family workable with our current family dynamic?
7) How do we openly express love? How does each person in the family know$ that he or she is loved?
8) How do we openly communicate displeasure or sadness? Are people punished for speaking their mind?
9) Are there alliances or cliques in my family? How can we dissipate them?
10) Ten years from now, if my kids were to use three words to describe their upbringing, what 3 words would I want them to use?


Once you've gone through all of these questions yourself (in your own private time and space), it's time to schedule a family meeting where ALL members living in the house can be present.

Buy a huge whiteboard, markers and erasers. Nominate someone to be the notetaker (he or she will write everything on the board that is said during the family meeting). This should not be done while eating dinner or directly afterward. Food gets in the way. No TV, cell phones, no video games, no ipods.

Everyone sits around a table and, one by one, you go through the questions out loud. Don't talk about you or your spouse's response until ALL the kids have had the opportunity to speak their minds.

Be sure that your notetaker is writing down all ideas on the board. When you've gone through questions 1-10 and everyone's said how they feel, pull out a big sheet of poster board and color pencils. Decide, as a family, what your core values are and have each person contribute to making a family vision board, or collage where you list your family name at the top, your core values in the middle and paste or color in whatever pictures, words and ideas that best fit your new family foundation. If you're looking for information on how to create a vision board, check out The Complete Vision Board Kit: Using the Power of Intention and Visualization to Achieve Your Dreams where you'll get the A-Zs of making a vision board.

Make this fun! Have a little popcorn and hot cocoa! Take pictures and, when done, put the vision board up where everyone in the family can see it at least once a day.

The key to building a strong family foundation is doing it (and committing to it) together as a family.