The Un-Perfect Family Council: Moving from Agenda to Connection

The popcorn hit the floor somewhere around the third verse of "Called to Serve." My seven-year-old had been using his cup as a drum and my teenager had her face in her phone and the baby was trying to climb over the back of the couch like it was an obstacle course at the county fair. I was supposed to be guiding a family council about summer schedules and instead I was scooping popcorn kernels out of the carpet with one hand while trying to remember what the point of any of this was supposed to be. I almost told them we would try again next week when I had a better plan and a more cooperative audience. But something made me stop. Maybe it was the look on my teenager's face when she glanced up and saw me on my knees picking up popcorn. She looked tired too.

So I just sat down on the floor where I was. The baby climbed into my lap, the seven-year-old abandoned the drumming and asked if we could talk about the zoo trip, and the teenager put her phone down. And the family council happened on the floor with popcorn crumbs in my hair and a toddler chewing on the edge of the lesson manual.

That was the night I stopped trying to do family councils right and started trying to do them real.

How to Hold a Family Council with Young Children

I used to think a family council required certain things like a start time, an agenda, a prayer, a lesson, and a problem to solve with a solution everyone agrees on. These are not bad things. But they assume a kind of order that does not exist in a house with small children. If you are looking for examples of family council agendas for LDS families, you will find plenty of templates online with bullet points and time limits and room for everyone to share something. I have tried them. They work great for about three minutes.

Here is what it turns out a family council actually needs: a willingness to be together, a willingness to listen, and a willingness to let the conversation go where it needs to go instead of where the agenda says it should go.

The night the popcorn spilled taught me something about how to hold a family council with young children. They do not need a structured meeting. They need to feel that their voice matters and that the grown-ups are not just waiting for them to stop talking so the real discussion can start. When my seven-year-old asked about the zoo, he was asking something real about our family.

I started letting the kids set the agenda in an informal way. I started paying attention to what they brought up in the car or at dinner or during the ten minutes before bed when everyone is finally calm. Those moments are the family council.

LDS Family Council Tips for Teenagers

The shift for me started with my teenager and the realization that I had been doing discipleship completely backwards. I spent years thinking it meant teaching a lesson, preparing something, delivering something, and making sure the children absorbed it all. It was a one-way street and I was the driver and everyone else was in the backseat trying not to fight over the armrest. But when I started paying attention to what my teenager actually needed, I realized the best LDS family council tips for teenagers have nothing to do with running a meeting and everything to do with letting them show up on their own terms. The concept from The Quiet Transition: Letting Your Child Lead Their Own Faith applies here too. Sometimes the most important thing I can do is hand over the leadership and trust my teenager to take it.

But I started to notice that the real discipleship was happening in the spaces between the lessons. Walking home from the bus stop. Sitting on the edge of the bathtub while someone brushed their teeth. Driving to practice in the fifteen minutes of quiet when a child who does not usually talk starts talking about something that happened at school.

The Small Rituals of Connection article helped me see this more clearly. Discipleship at home does not have to look like a family council agenda. It could be a question asked sideways in the car. It could be a child choosing the scripture for the night. A parent saying I do not know the answer either but we can figure it out together counts too.

And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. - Deuteronomy 6:7

I have read that verse a hundred times, but I am only now starting to understand it differently. The phrase "talk of them when thou walkest by the way" is not a metaphor. It means while you are actually walking, while you are in the car, while you are standing at the kitchen counter eating a piece of toast because that was breakfast today. The teaching happens in the walking.

What to Do When Family Councils Go Wrong

I cannot tell you how many times our family councils have turned into arguments. Someone does not want to do their chore and everyone has an opinion about it and suddenly we are not counseling together anymore. We are just fighting about the dishes.

What I have learned is that the argument itself is not the real problem. The problem is that I used to treat the argument as a failure. I thought a successful family council was one where everyone agreed and nobody raised their voice. But that is not a council.

The Book of Mormon teaches that "the voice of the people" carries real weight (Mosiah 29:26). And the voice of the people is not always polite. It gets loud and frustrated and it sometimes takes three tries to get to the actual problem because everyone is arguing about the surface thing instead of the thing underneath.

I started a rule in our family councils that I call the emotion check. Before we try to solve anything, we say how we feel about it first. I am frustrated about the chore chart because I feel like I am the only one doing the work. I am sad that nobody helps with the dishes without being asked. When we say the feeling out loud before we try to fix the problem, the fight loses some of its heat.

And if it gets too hot, we stop. That sacred pause I wrote about in The Sacred Pause belongs in family councils too. It is okay to say we are too tired for this tonight and to try again tomorrow.

How to Encourage Children to Speak in Family Councils

The real goal is to teach children how to counsel together so that when they leave this house, they know how to talk through hard things with the people they love. They need to know their voice matters. They need to understand that disagreement is not the end of a relationship. And they need to learn how to listen before they speak.

I have started asking my children what they think before I tell them what I think. This is harder than it sounds and I am still learning how to encourage my children to speak in family councils without pressuring them. I have opinions about everything and I have been telling them my opinions for years. But I am trying to let them go first. What would you do? How would you solve this? What do you think we should do about the screen time problem? Sometimes their answers surprise me and sometimes they have a better idea than I would have come up with.

The teenager is the hardest one for me to trust in this process. She is old enough to have real opinions and strong feelings and I do not always agree with her. But I am learning that the council is about her voice mattering in this family, not about getting her agreement. She can counsel with the Lord on her own and that is the whole point.

That is the whole thing, is it not. We are not raising children who will sit in family councils forever. We are raising adults who will counsel with their own families and with the Lord. And the only way they learn that is by practicing it now.

Frequently Asked Questions

My children are too young to sit still for a meeting. What do I do?

The location does not matter as much as you think it does. Try holding your council while you are walking the dog or during bath time or in the car on the way to school. Small children often talk more freely when they are not sitting across from you in a formal setting.

What if our family councils always end in an argument?

Try a rule where everyone has to repeat what the other person said before they respond. It slows things down and forces real listening. If it still gets too heated, call a pause and try again later. Arguments are not failures. They are signs that people care enough to keep talking.

How often should we actually have these councils?

There is no right frequency. Some families do best with a weekly check-in. Others prefer to talk through things as they come up. The most important thing is that the door is always open. Your children need to know that they can bring a concern to you at any time, not just at the scheduled meeting time.

What if my teenager does not want to participate?

Ask them what would make the council feel worth their time. Teenagers are often willing to engage if they have real ownership over the conversation. Let them pick the topic. Let them run the discussion. Sometimes the best thing you can do is step back and let them lead.

I am still figuring out what this looks like in practice. Some nights we have a beautiful council where everyone listens and shares and we come away feeling like a team. Other nights we barely make it through the opening prayer before someone is crying and someone else is laughing at something that is not supposed to be funny and I am sitting there wondering if any of this is working.

But I keep showing up. I keep sitting on the floor if that is where the family is. I keep asking the questions and letting the answers surprise me. And I remember that the council is about the people sitting around it, or not around it, or sprawled across it, or crawling under it.

I am thinking about all of this while the popcorn crumbs are still on the floor and I reach for the broom.

with love, Melissa