I love meetings. I'm Nicholeen Peck and I teach parenting and good communication all over the
world through the lens of self-government and in this video we're going to be talking about
implementing one-on-one mentor meetings.
In this video I'm going to be talking about meetings and why they're so important for
families and then talk about what you can do to make a really great mentor meeting for
you and your child. When I was young, my parents said that we were going to have these meetings
and these meetings were called family councils, that's what they said.
They were supposed to happen every Monday night before we would have a family activity time
but guess what? Family councils quickly turned to family fight and family activity time often times
didn't happen and that's because everyone was so worn out by the family meeting that nobody even
cared anymore about the family activity time. They just needed a break from each other so I'm sure
that you don't want your family to have family fights. Most people don't. I was afraid of family
meetings completely because of the family fights that we had. People get so emotional during
meetings especially if they don't know the real power of a meeting or how a meeting is supposed
to run. In our family, we have three different types of meetings. We have the couple's meeting
which is between husband and wife once a week for 30 minutes, that's right. We time them only 30
minutes. If it goes any longer, it could turn into family fight and we discuss certain things related
to our couple relationship. Then we have the family meeting. The family meeting happens at least once a
week for 20 minutes. Yes, only 20 minutes. We discuss the scheduling for the family and issues related
to the family. We make rules or legislation for the family and we solve problems as a family and
guess what? My children actually like the family meeting because they have a say in how things go.
Many times children get the most frustrated with family meetings because meetings are turned into
lecture sessions and they seem to be times where parents just lay down the law and that doesn't
feel like they're part of a meeting at all. It just feels like they're being preached to. So our
family decided we were going to have a different format for our family meetings and that made it
so that they didn't turn into family fights like I experienced when I was a child but we took the
meetings to the next level. We decided not only will we have couples meetings and family meetings
but we will also have individual meetings with our children. We will have one-on-one mentor meetings.
My dad used to have little interviews with my brothers from time to time. He would spend
individual time doing what he called interviewing. He would ask questions and listen and talk to them
about things that he thought were important and that's kind of like a mentor meeting although
in our family's mentor meetings, we actually have a format that we follow that makes sure that all of
the important things are talked about and so that we don't ever get lost in the conversation to the
point that we don't accomplish anything, which can happen just in a regular conversation. It is those
mentor meetings that I would like to talk about today because the mentor meetings are my
children's favorite meeting. In fact if any child walks in during their mentor meeting, they will
stop talking. They will say excuse me, this is my mentor meeting. I need you to leave the room please
because it is that important to them. They love it. They can't wait for their turn to have time
just them and mom and dad. So, how do you have a good mentor meeting? Let's talk about that.
Before I talk about good mentor meetings, click that subscribe button. There are so many great
videos on this channel related to how your family can better communicate with each other.
You can learn self-government principles and skills just by watching the videos on this
channel. Click the subscribe button now and don't forget that notification bell and then you will
get to see more self-government training for free. It's important to set aside time for your children.
When you set aside your time on some afternoon or evening just for your child, they get the message
that they are important to you. They know parents do a lot of things. You talk to them all the time
about your time and what time you have to be here and what time they have to be there, they
know time matters for you. So when you set aside time just for them, what type of a message does
that give them? It shows them how much you care. So make sure that you schedule these meetings in
otherwise it's too easy to let them slip by. In our family each child has their own mentor journal. The
mentoring journal is where they keep the notes for their mentor meeting. You can see here it says this
belongs to and then with a sharpie, they write their name right there and you can get these books
at teachingselfgovernment.com. Each of these mentor session journals have multiple pages in them. In
fact it's really easy to see what you talked about last week when you're focusing on this
week's page and see how you did it accomplishing those goals. You'll see at the top of the page,
it has a calendar section because the child is going to learn not only goal setting but how to
calendar their life so that they can accomplish things that they really set their mind to.
This is not just a time to show them how important they are, this is a time to teach them leadership
skills and who do they start out by leading, well this is self-government so they start out by
leading themselves and they are held accountable to you because your role in the family is the
person who is the leader of them. So, you're setting good leadership so that they will practice leading
themselves so that they will then become good leaders one day. Parents can take turns conducting
these meetings or one parent can conduct the meetings every time. But it is usually a good idea
for the parents to conduct the meetings instead of having the child lead out everything in the
meeting. The child can write the form or the parent can write the form either way. So usually we start
out with the question what is your exciting news for this week? This gives the child the
opportunity to say well this week I had my ballet recital or this week I learned how to play jacks
or whatever it is. They can share something that is exciting that they might want to talk about.
This is a great opening question that just kind of breaks the ice but also lets them know that
you care about things that are important to them, not just about them accomplishing things which if
you only talk about goals, they could start to think. Then we talk about their spiritual goals,
we talk about educational goals, we talk about their social goals and personal goals. They may
set goals for exercise, they may set goals to make a new friend or to learn how to become a better
friend. Sometimes they set goals to have a party and so then that week we have to have a party at
our house. Oh, darn. Anyway we do lots of fun things because of these journals and because of
this time where we talk about our goals. We don't just set new goals going forward but we also check
up on what we have done with the goals that we set for the last week and see how we're progressing or
if we need to make a change in the goal and as we go through these areas of focus and talk about our
concerns, our behaviors, our relationships and all of our areas that we're focusing on in our goals
then we write down certain things in the planner at the top like oh, on Tuesday I'm going to invite
over this friend and I'm going to work on you know making friends with people or something like that
or I'm going to work on my music on this day, something like that so that they can start setting
plans for themselves. Then we ask them what is your fun goal for the week? So we want to know if you
think of anything you want to do this week, what would that be? They come up with all kinds of ideas.
I remember one time then we went through this tennis phase where everyone wanted to learn tennis
and it was a really good thing my husband was good at tennis because I don't excel
at that sport very much. I don't know, me and racket sports just don't necessarily get along
but he was great at tennis and they said I have a fun goal to learn tennis and so my husband found
himself week after week with a different child at the park teaching them how to play tennis and then
they wanted to play more and more often. It was so much fun for them to learn tennis from their dad
just because they had a fun goal. Now speaking of doing cool things with mom or dad, on the journal
page there's also a section for the date night. It says date night with mom or dad if it applies. So
my husband set aside Thursday nights for years and years to go on individual dates with his children.
I was with the children all the time and I would do other dates like taking them to the store
with me and stuff like that. But he wanted to do special dates with them. Things like jumping on the
trampoline just them or making something out of pottery or going on a hike together, something that
they would remember doing with dad and they each got an opportunity because we have four children,
they had the opportunity of once a month having a special date with dad on a Thursday night and
he would set that aside in his calendar. This was a powerful time for the children to bond with their
father. When they get the one-on-one time with parents, this increases their sense of identity
and belonging in the family. It's a great bonding time. The children love their mentor meetings. When
you implement these mentor meetings, talk to them about what they will get out of the meetings. They
will get more of their needs met because they can tell you if they have any needs or concerns and
you can answer those if they need you to pay for something like a cheerleading camp or something,
they will get the opportunity to tell you about that if they haven't already. They will set goals
and feel a sense of accomplishment and follow through. They will also not be as bored throughout
the week because they'll have a list of things that they're hoping to work on for themselves.
Everybody becomes more motivated. Let them know what they get out of it and that this special
time just for you and them and that you're setting aside the time because you want to.
This will be transformational for your child as they have these meetings with you.
This is just one element of the teaching self-government parenting system. I would
like to share more of those things with you. There is a free class that I have put on this channel
called the not so known secret for parenting success. It will go into a lot more principles
and skills that you can use to help your family develop self-government and good bonding at
your house. So click on the link to the not so known secret for parenting success now.