Conversation
What Should We Talk About at a Family Meeting? 25 Questions to Get You Started
Grouped by what the week needs, not by age.
Share this
- Time in real life
- Pick two. Five minutes.
- The change
- The family asks two real questions at their next meeting instead of improvising.
- Ages
- 5–18
- Reading
- 7 min
Reviewed by Sian Trombley, CCCFounder, Thrive Family Company
7 min read
The most common reason a family meeting fizzles is not resistance. It is that nobody knows what to ask after "so, how was everyone's week?" — a question that reliably produces the word fine.
These are questions that get a real answer. Choose two. Twenty-five in one sitting would be an interrogation.
Checking in
- What was the best ten minutes of your week?
- What was the hardest part, even if it sounds small?
- Is anything coming up that you're quietly dreading?
- How much sleep are you actually getting?
- Is there anything you've been meaning to tell me and haven't got round to?
Planning the week
- What's happening this week that the rest of us don't know about?
- Does anyone need money, a lift, a form signed or a specific item of clothing?
- Which evening this week is going to be the tight one, and what would help?
- Is there anything we should say no to?
- When is the one meal this week we can all be at?
Solving something
- What is the most annoying thing about how our mornings go?
- If you could change one rule in this house for a month, which one and why?
- What keeps getting forgotten, and where does it get forgotten?
- What's a job nobody wants, and what would make it less bad?
- What do we argue about most often? What is that argument really about?
Connection
- What is something you'd like to do together that we haven't done for a while?
- Who made your week easier, in or outside this house?
- What do you wish I asked you about more often?
- What's something you're into at the moment that I don't really understand?
Celebration
- What did you work hard at, whether or not it went well?
- What is something someone else in this family did this week that you noticed?
- What went better this week than it did last week?
Changes coming
- What's changing soon that you have questions about?
- What do you want to know about it, and what would you rather not talk about yet?
- What would make the first week of it easier?
Try this week
- 01Write three questions on the back of the agenda sheet before the meeting starts.
- 02Ask one planning question and one connection question. Nothing else.
- 03Answer the connection question yourself, first, honestly.
- 04Let at least one person pass without comment.
The therapist's perspective
A question that gets a shrug is not a failed question. Children frequently answer days later, in the car, when nobody is looking at them.
Keep this list somewhere physical. The moment for a good question rarely coincides with the moment you can find one.
Sian
Founder, Thrive Family Company
Share this
Continue in Family Meetings
The Five-Minute Meeting for Impossible Weeks
The weeks a family most needs a meeting are the weeks there is no room for one. This is the stripped-back version — five minutes, standing up, still counts.
When One Parent Isn't Sold on Family Meetings
A reluctant partner is not an obstacle to work around. Here is how to have the conversation honestly — and what to do if the answer is still no.
The Meeting Where the Rules Get Rewritten
Rules set for a nine-year-old rarely fit a thirteen-year-old. Here is how to renegotiate them deliberately, before they are broken into obsolescence.