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Grace, Grit, and Reorganizing the Respect: Part 4 with Alyson Schafer
33 Plays2 months ago
Welcome to Episode 16, the powerful conclusion of our special series with the acclaimed Adlerian psychologist, Alyson Schafer! This week, hosts Sandy Inkster and Samantha Ennest-Wallis finalize their deep dive into Family Meetings and the principles of Firm and Friendly parenting.
The discussion focuses on key strategies for managing a relationship with a busy, growing child or young adult. Alyson reinforces the need for confidence to ensure consistency, comparing a parent's approach to a mouse running a maze—if the rules keep changing, the child can't learn.
The hosts explore the practical reality of parenting older kids, where a major step is "reorganizing the respect". This means granting wider boundaries and allowing older children the entire week to complete chores that aren't time-sensitive, such as dusting or mowing the lawn. Alyson shares the "Level Three" technique—a family agreement to call out disrespectful "parent speak" or nagging to maintain a culture of mutual respect.
The episode finishes with the profound realization that "it is the long game". Parents must prioritize the relational part over the managerial part of parenting, trusting that their children will learn and that the ultimate "thank you" will be the quality of the lifelong relationship they build.
To see Alyson's videos of her own family meetings—including all the grace and grit—check out this YouTube playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZco_5s7VkjR5q5KrHdyJSGQIxj_dD0sK
If you enjoyed this episode and want to sponsor or support the show, or even ask a question of our hosts, visit the Central Hub at linktr.ee/onthegroundparenting.
On the Ground Parenting is a production of Muskoka Family Focus Parent Education Program. The podcast is produced, engineered, and published by Red Juice Studio.
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Transcript
Introduction and sponsorship
00:00:00
Speaker
Today's episode of On the Ground Parenting is made possible by the generous donations of our listeners. To learn more, look in the show notes or listen to the end of the episode.
Introduction to 'On the Ground Parenting'
00:00:34
Speaker
Hello everyone and welcome back to On the Ground Parenting. Muskoka Family Focus Parent Ed team is offering this podcast to you. any Anyone who has children, whether you're a caregiver, whether you're the neighbor down the street who cares for those kids down the street, come and join us. Have a listen.
How to conduct family meetings and challenges
00:00:53
Speaker
This week, we're continuing the conversation that we started last session with Alison Schaefer. We started to talk about family meetings. This time, we're going to get into what does a family meeting look like?
00:01:07
Speaker
How messy can it be? What do you get into? What are the topics? So, how to get started, family meetings, Check it out. Wow. So starting a family meeting.
00:01:20
Speaker
If people want to get going? Yeah. Okay. A couple of basics. I mean, first of all, now we have chat GPT, so you can probably throw this in and get all, i AI is doing such a good job. um But I would say a couple of core components that I would say, which is first of all, your attitude about it, which is you really want to set the tone that it's a place that your kids want to come and that it's a place where they can be heard.
00:01:44
Speaker
And you really want the agenda to be mostly filled with things that are their problems. You know, if they want to get a guinea pig, write it down, you know, say, yeah and and don't have a sidebar conversation with your partner saying like, we're not getting a guinea pig. We're going to kibosh this. You got to show up fresh.
Building consensus: Real examples and delegation
00:02:01
Speaker
You got to show up real.
00:02:02
Speaker
And mostly things that end up on a list are usually your problem too. Like, so instead of saying mom wants to talk about why everyone's late for school, you can put it on Facebook. Scott wants to talk about not people yelling at him for getting out the door in the morning.
00:02:17
Speaker
It's the same problem, but now you're putting it from the child's perspective. So I like to put the agenda, very few items. I want it to be things that in the moment when there's a conflict ah that we write down who who's, who wants to speak to this, who put it on the agenda.
00:02:31
Speaker
And certainly in the early days, I would start with not so much the problem solving of family conflict. I would say in the early days, just get together, say, what do we like about our family? What went well for us this week? So that you start on a positive note.
00:02:45
Speaker
And then I would do problem solving around the great question of what would we like to do for family fun this weekend? Because you're still going to have to get to consensus. You're still going to have to get everybody on the same page.
00:02:57
Speaker
You're going to learn some of the family dynamics because you just know two kids are going to say, I want to go swimming. And the little kid in the family who is angry at his siblings is going to say, well, I don't want to go swimming. I want to go to a movie.
00:03:08
Speaker
And then there you are. Now you're going to have to figure out how do you get consensus Because you cannot use Robertson's rules. in a in No, that's it's not going to work in a family because they're going to set you up.
00:03:20
Speaker
They're going to try to make you divide and conquer and say, see, you always pick what they want. You don't like me. ah You have to really stick with consensus. And I think that if a situation like that happens, and it will, you can just say, hey, listen, you know, we've been talking about swimming, know,
00:03:34
Speaker
versus a movie for the last 10 minutes. We haven't seemed to be able to get everybody on the same page. So I think we'll just slate that till the next meeting. And then someone's going to say, are you kidding me? We're not doing either. We're not swimming. You're like, well, we couldn't come to consensus. We couldn't, you know and some, it could be that the two people who wanted swimming say, fine, let's do what Robbie wants. We'll go to the movie.
00:03:54
Speaker
Or somebody is going to say, well, what if we do the movie this week, but we do swimming next week? And you go, oh, well, that seems okay. How do people feel about that? They'll work to cooperate. This is why we do the family meeting. This isn't an inconvenience from the family meeting. This is actually you using the family meeting to improve sibling relationships.
00:04:13
Speaker
ah So don't feel badly about that. you're You're actually being very effective in that one area.
Long-term benefits of family meetings
00:04:18
Speaker
So i would I would start with family fun. and then let's say that they all decided they were going to go swimming. Then you start giving out responsibilities. Well, who's going to call the pool to find out what time this open family swim is?
00:04:30
Speaker
ah Who wants to get the towels together? Start giving them jobs so that it becomes like a family collective. I would do that for like probably the first four months. if you've got If you've got younger kids, that's a great place to start. And now they've got some of these skills. And so then when you bring in more contentious issues,
00:04:47
Speaker
They've had a little, you've had practice ground and they've had some practice ground. and And hopefully you can tackle something that's a little bit more more contentious. Well, and that expansion and of just that whole, whatever the consensus, whether we're going to the movie, whether we're going swimming, whatever it is we're doing, that expansion piece, I think many people don't see that as the unfolding.
00:05:10
Speaker
That then becomes part of what the children get to do. Because most adults are accustomed to doing it all. Right. So that letting go of and opening up my mind to, i don't have to make all the list. I can just facilitate that process with them.
00:05:27
Speaker
Oh, can I, I mean, it's so interesting that on the one hand, I'm saying this is like, very skills involved. And, you know, you you have to do a lot of flexing for this to happen. But I would just tell you, like, probably the best thing is how much of that time I got back.
00:05:43
Speaker
Because suddenly I'm a parent who gets up in the morning. My kids get themselves up. They don't fight about what we're doing on the weekend. You know, I have my cup of coffee. They're off doing their chores. I don't need to nag and remind them. I'm like, yeah, I front loaded a lot of work on this.
00:05:58
Speaker
But you really do raise these kids who are cooperative and competent and want to contribute and they want to help and they're reasonable.
00:06:08
Speaker
You know, ah we had a magazine. Today's parent was doing like a room makeover from like a child's room to a teen's room. And they came to the house and they assessed both my girls' bedrooms. And they decided that my one daughter's had the better room for the magazine inlay or whatever.
00:06:24
Speaker
So the other daughter was not going to get a ah room makeover. And the the daughter who didn't get the room makeover said like, well, you know, sometimes you win some, sometimes you lose some. That's great. I'm just happy for her.
00:06:35
Speaker
And i I was like, what a mature perspective to have as a kid who's like a tweenager. And in fact, it bothered her grandmother so much that her grandmother said, well, I'll pay for your roommate over. like
00:06:50
Speaker
But she was really completely fine with it. And it's just like, those are the times where you have these little parenting wins where you just say, you know what, like I'm really raising good little human beings.
Consistency and confidence in parenting
00:07:01
Speaker
You know, like I'm raising, you get these little data points where you're like, you know what, they're like decent kids.
00:07:06
Speaker
And um yeah, it takes work, but the proof is in the research. you You will get those moments back where you're like, this is why I sat through all the crappy family meetings with Everybody complaining and nobody coming to a decision. It's like I was i was busy making good human beings and it all worked out.
00:07:24
Speaker
Yeah. And I think too about Virginia Satir and her whole, you know, yes like the family of origin theory. Like basically what we're giving our kids is how they know how to relate with and treat other people.
00:07:36
Speaker
Yes. and And so what you're talking about, like it's gritty work, like you're front loading, but it's not like easy peasy. Yeah. It doesn't look pretty, as you've mentioned, but stick with it. Yeah.
00:07:49
Speaker
Because it's coming back to what you had mentioned in the earlier episode, too, about firm and friendly. That's a firm and friendly approach. And it's what our kids are going forward with in knowing how to be with other people.
00:08:03
Speaker
And so, and this is the part to, you know, going back to our earlier discussion as well, which is the parents are overwhelmed with all the information that they have out there. And with that overwhelm, ah they don't have the confidence that they're doing the right thing. So they don't, they don't push through.
00:08:19
Speaker
with consistency because they're kind of like, well, I'm not really sure this is the way to do it, or I'm not really sure this is important. And they question themselves. And so I feel like the greatest gift that I had was that I really knew had, and because of the privilege of my career of working with so many families that It never crossed my mind that maybe I'm doing the wrong thing. Maybe I shouldn't have family meetings or maybe I'm off track here.
00:08:47
Speaker
Like that confidence is what allowed me to have the consistency. And my goodness, like if we look at any learning model, like if you want to teach a mouse to run through a maze, you don't want to be changing all the gates in the maze. You want the maze to be the same so that the mouse figures out how to get to the cheese, right? Right.
00:09:04
Speaker
So a lot of parents in their overwhelm and in their lack of security about their methods, they keep changing things up and then the kids don't learn. And then that just makes for more chaos.
00:09:15
Speaker
And so I think having the theory, having the training, having the experience of working with so many families that I could really nail the consistency piece, even When things weren't going perfectly in the moment, but knowing that I was just like fracking, I'm just chipping away at it, man, like a drop of water on a rock. I yeah i was just fracking my way through parenting, man. I just chipped away, chipped away, knowing I had complete confidence that what I was doing was the most effective way of
Involving older children and balancing freedom
00:09:46
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raising my kids. I i just had that calm confidence through all of it.
00:09:50
Speaker
but it was not always pretty. I don't want people to think that like, I did not have these perfect days. There was all kinds of chaos, but I had this through line that just kept me sane and it allowed me to have that consistency.
00:10:02
Speaker
And I hope people hear it in my conviction as we're talking. so I hope that they can like just hear and believe that with this many years of experience with so many families over 20 years and all the training I've done and around the world with different cultures,
00:10:17
Speaker
It's like, we're really on to something here, people. It's worth doing the work. And i I think if I could give parents confidence, I think that would be one of the best gifts to just have the confidence because that allows you to be consistent. I just really want to interject because I would love to just know if you have any advice for parents who are coming to the concept of parent meetings with older children. Yeah. Yeah.
00:10:40
Speaker
I mean, I actually think older children, they're harder to schedule because they've got their own lives. So you're definitely going to have to say when's a good time to talk or whatever. But you can still start the family meeting ah just talking about things like if it's one year from today and we look back at our family life and we want to say that we had a good year, what would we have to make sure happened in this year? And let's start with having a goal in mind that's mutual to all of us. and then kind of working backwards.
00:11:12
Speaker
And um what you'll find with older kids is they'll often want to talk about like your tone and your respect. And I know with my kids, for example, you know, we talked about how we can sometimes talk down, like we can talk down to one another, the kids can get a little snotty to us and We can get like a little parenting attitude to them.
00:11:31
Speaker
And so we decided we didn't we didn't want that. We didn't want to be a disrespectful family. We didn't want the tone. We didn't want the attitude. So we came up with this thing called level three. And if it started to look like, ah you know, one of us was getting like a little bit naggy or talking down and whatever, we would just say level three, which is like, bring it up. Like where we we have decided as a family that we don't want to be this base.
00:11:55
Speaker
We don't want to be base. Not you, not me. And so my kids corrected me like level three, mom. I'm like, Oh, good. Yep. That's my tone. Sorry. I'm falling back into parent speak. I'm getting back into the nagging, you know, ah if you didn't have your head screwed on, how would you even remember how to go? You know, I mean, like it's so, we just, we just have these things that are just like these parenting lines that we just forget. If you like actually stop the clock and like, that's a really ignorant thing to say to another human being. it's like, darn right.
00:12:23
Speaker
You need to tell me to level three. but i mean, yeah. It's just because that's what people say to children. doesn't mean it's a nice thing to say to another human being. I want to talk to you more respectfully. So we had this thing called level three. And I think that older kids can take on kind of more sophisticated ideas like that. And it's probably going to be about respect and also about like, they really need wider boundaries. Like I think we tend to think that Things should happen on our timeline.
00:12:49
Speaker
So I'll give you an example in my family. Like we still had family chores, but I'm like, you know what? My kitchen is chaotic if I expect you guys to unload the dishwasher and you know, whatever. And then I can't make dinner. And meanwhile, you're at choir practice or you're at a friend's house after school whatever.
00:13:03
Speaker
I'm like, how about I keep all the things that keep the house moving as my responsibilities and the things that don't need timelines like dusting or mowing the grass. Like, I don't care if the grass is long, like what, but we made an agreement that they would take the non-time sensitive jobs, but they had to be done before they got car privileges on the weekends. So I wouldn't drive them to a friend's house or take them to the mall. Thank God we lived in the country. So that really actually really impacted them.
00:13:31
Speaker
Yeah. But they thought that was quite reasonable because the truth is they needed the entire week to decide when dusting fit in their schedule because they're busy chatting with friends and going over here and everyone's going over to the Dairy Queen and I got to keep up with what everyone's, I'm like, I don't care. just long You got a whole week to figure it out.
00:13:48
Speaker
So I think you really have to kind of have wider boundaries for how they are going to run their own lives that, you know, we we got to kind of step back and Not just assume that everything's going to be tickety-boo on our timeline, right? So I found family meetings were really helpful for letting them kind of show up as an adult and reorganizing the respect for the fact that they have a life.
00:14:10
Speaker
Reorganizing the respect. I love that so much. Yeah. The image that came to mind for me when you were just talking, Allison, is that, you know, when you talked about broadening, I thought of a manual transmission. And we really need to put in the clutch before we change gears. We need to give that whole machine time to...
00:14:31
Speaker
listen, reflect, fit it in. And so many times the conflict arises because it's my agenda and things aren't happening according to they what I have perceived to be right in my mind.
00:14:46
Speaker
And having the faith that our kids learn as much from mistakes as they do from successes, I think parents are very paranoid about kids making mistakes. And they think things like failing a class,
00:14:58
Speaker
Again, I'd rather have my kid fail a high school class than fail a university class. You know, yeah, I guess you're going to summer school. But I so treasured the relationship over the performance goals that I was never willing to have a fight about that stuff. I really let them know that your education is is your own responsibility.
00:15:17
Speaker
And my mother was a teacher and she never checked on my work. You know I figured it out, you know, good enough. Yeah. I have a Bachelor of Science and a Master's in Counseling. I figured out somewhere along the line how to study without a parent over my shoulder, know checking my my homework, correcting my papers.
00:15:32
Speaker
I think it's the believability, though. think that's the key point for me is that you were buoyed with the believability from your parents. Yeah. Yes, yes. That's part of that, like setting up the pillars and the foundations from which the seeds help grow, you know, a child with good mental health and confidence and competency and resiliency and all those things that that we want, right?
00:15:56
Speaker
And I think as parents, we we get a little bit too focused on the micro. Like I think of it as like a Petri dish. You know, we're we're the gel that we're growing these kids out of. I think about the Petri dish, like do my kids feel loved? do they feel valued? Do they feel that I'm a safe person today?
00:16:12
Speaker
to talk to, you know, do they know that they have unconditional love? They'll figure out all the other stuff. They're going to date stupid people. They're going to fail courses. They're going to buy dumb cars that they shouldn't have spent money on. don't know. They're going to go out and do all their dumb things.
00:16:24
Speaker
And that's great. That's how they're, that's how they're going learn, you know? So it's like, it's a total joy now that my kids are 30 and 31 and both are getting married this year. And And they did all those stupid growing up things that I did too, you know, but they're like wonderful adults. It's, it's so
Reflections and encouragement for family meetings
00:16:41
Speaker
gratifying. But if you would have like just taken a snapshot of any week in grade 12, I mean, I'm i'm pretty sure, ah you know, my blood pressure would have been over the roof, but I i was smart enough to bite my tongue and say, this too shall pass.
00:16:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:56
Speaker
Well, it's been a real joy listening to you and diving into this topic of family meetings and all the little subsets that intersect with family meetings. It's just been delicious.
00:17:08
Speaker
And um i wanted to mention to you that we finish up our sessions typically with a reflection of, you know, what sprouted up for me, what rose up from the ground type of thing. So Sam, what sprouted for you?
00:17:21
Speaker
For me, the piece that's going to stick with me the most that really is taking root is the idea of reorganizing the respect. I think that's really a stage I'm at right now with my 21-year-old in my house. And I really needed that little touch point tonight because we've been struggling a bit. So um thank you for that. That has really been a ah huge gift for me.
00:17:43
Speaker
Oh, that's, I'm glad. Thank you. Thank you. I'm glad that was impactful. Allison, what about you? You know, I think about how I would like parents to just get started.
00:17:54
Speaker
Just trying to take away some of the overwhelm and to say, trust yourself and and just get started. And I think that's why I like those family meetings in the beginning where they're just like, what what are we going to do for family fun this weekend?
00:18:06
Speaker
Like just just that, just get started. And please go visit my YouTube channel that has all those videos of my kids. doing it across the years because and the reason why I say that it's not because I'm like oh home movies who wants to watch other people's home movies but it's because I think it does a good job of setting the tone and I think that getting started and getting the right tone is is something that i really want to land for parents I and I hope I hope they're inspired from what we talked about Thanks. And, um, and we will link that in the notes to make it easy for people to find the videos. And I want to encourage everyone. We've watched them before, Samantha and I, when we were together on zoom. Yes. Yeah. So, oh, there, they really are, you know, on a little microscopic episode of what it's like to be in a family. And it's just, your kids are being delightful kids and, uh, we're getting, yeah, the grace and the grit.
00:19:02
Speaker
Um, I love that grace and grit.
Parenting: Relationship building over management
00:19:05
Speaker
Yeah. What sprouted up for me is it's really that notion of it is the long game, you know, to just changing that mindset of like, you know, in this moment, I've got to get them to, to listen, to respond, to be, to blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:19:22
Speaker
And it's not about that. It's not about that. In that moment, how am I interacting with them, you know, influencing a deeper understanding of relating? Yeah.
00:19:34
Speaker
There's the managerial part of parenting and then there's a relational part of parenting. And I think we spend a lot of time being managerial and you're really, you've said it Sandy, you know, again and again, like that relational part is the sweet spot that we need to get a little bit more comfortable about getting into.
00:19:49
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's been a sweet spot with you, Alison. Thank you. Thank you. And we'll see you again on the next on the ground parenting. Bye.
Podcast credits and donation information
00:20:10
Speaker
On the Ground Parenting is a production of Muskoka Family Focus's parent education program. It is made possible by the generous donations of listeners like you. If you'd like to make a donation, sponsor an episode, or just ask a question of one of our hosts, go to linktr.ee forward slash on the ground parenting.
00:20:27
Speaker
On the Ground Parenting is produced and published by Red Juice Studios. To learn more, go to redjuicestudio.com. Thanks for listening.