I don’t know why I have always resisted thinking more carefully about family values. Maybe I thought it was unnecessary? Frivolous? Tedious? Maybe I was worried it would turn out we didn’t have any values after all? 😉
In the past few years I’ve looked at loads of parenting courses and books and so many have a similar prescription – determine your family values first, then schedule your days, choose your activities, plan your holidays, solve that problem, etc.
Of course it makes sense to establish a framework of “why” you are behaving/want to behave a certain way in your family. But I think I assumed it would be too stilted, too formal. I couldn’t picture myself saying “We value X in this family so you must XX.” So what was the point?
I also thought I pretty much knew what was important to us – surely that was enough and I didn’t need to spend any more time on this?
FAMILY VALUES = KEY MESSAGES FOR CONVOS WITH KIDDOS
Then something happened (ahem, I *might* have been reminiscing about the long-lost ability to go to happy hour after work) to remind me of a key part of the big city job I had once upon a time. (Stick with me here…)
In the early days of my (happy-hour-supporting) career I was a publicist in New York City. This job is usually much less glamorous than it sounds. But for me, what balanced out the frustrating bits of the job was not (only) the free samples, but what it delivered in life skills. Whatever you think of the media industry, the best publicists are jaw-droppingly good at getting a message across, which is a pretty useful thing to know how to do.
One of the most useful things I walked away with was having internalized the concept of key messages. Whether we were strategizing a campaign, writing a press release, chatting with a journalist or training a spokesperson, everything went back to the key messages: a brief list of the most important things to communicate related to the client/topic we were promoting.
A bit like having a mission statement for a conversation.
USE YOUR WORDS
As a parent I have begun to think a lot lately about how I use my words. Obviously, this is a familiar battle cry of parents of young children – urging children to use their words rather than melt into tears, or hit, or throw their plate across the room.
But it’s also a chance to make a bigger impact on our kids — we are talking anyway right? We might as well take an extra breath so the words we choose reflect the bigger picture of what we want for our family, now and in the future. We know they must be listening more than they usually let on.
Knowing our family values – our key messages – helps determine what those words are. We all have words and phrases we use so much that our facial muscles seem to deliver them of their own accord. (Often, it’s the ones that make me look around to see where my mother is hiding. Or is that just me??) Incorporating our family’s key messages into these words and phrases will make our daily interactions that much more meaningful.
And now that I’ve recently started down the path of figuring out how to more thoughtfully celebrate the upcoming holidays, it now seems more obvious than ever that it would be helpful to know what the key values, messages and words are for our family.
SO WHAT DOES THAT LOOK LIKE FOR US?
There are loads of resources and prompts out there to use as you are clarifying your family values. (I found some wonderful inspiration from Frida Be Mighty, then made quite a few tweaks and additions of my own. You can find my full list of journaling prompts here.)
In essence, you take some time to write about what makes you happy, sad, proud, frustrated, etc., as a person and as a parent, as well as the things you want and don’t want for your family, and the like. Then you go back and look for themes.
![](https://i0.wp.com/ordinaryinfluence.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/thanksgiving-leaf-on-gravel.jpg?resize=1024%2C685&ssl=1)
After my first pass, here’s ours:
Empathy
(connection to others; appreciation of diversity)
Mindfulness
(gratitude; properly looking after our resources, our bodies, and our world; intellectual curiosity; acting thoughtfully and purposefully)
Light
(divine light in the sense of spirituality; the lightness of an upbeat perspective; daylight in the sense of fresh air/nature; the power of an inner glow/breath to calm our spirits).
I like that we can interpret these three words to help evoke a broader sense of what we know is important to our family.
IN REAL LIFE
So (ideally), in real life, my typical reaction of “I know your sister knocked down your tower, but we don’t push,” becomes “Your sister accidentally knocked over your tower because she was trying to see what you were doing. That must be frustrating. But how do you think it would feel to be pushed and shouted at when you were just trying to be curious about something?”
The former sounds a bit hollow and relies mostly on big brother’s ability to employ will power in the heat of the moment. Probably not the best strategy for any of us, let alone a frustrated six-year-old.
The latter shows empathy, one of our core values, in three ways: empathy for the frustrated “victim,” empathy for why the curious “culprit” committed her “crime” of knocking down the tower, and empathy for why the “culprit” is now also upset at the “victim’s” actions. There is also the implication that curiosity, a supporting value, is important in our home.
I’m making the point – not to push – in the moment, but in a more meaningful and memorable way. The bonus is that by applying one of our family values – empathy – we have (hopefully) also helped to diffuse the situation by letting everyone involved know that their feelings are important.
This is a loaded process, so I have a feeling we will want to revisit it. But for now, this is enough.