Establish Values-Based Expectations
Every fall as schools reconvene, classrooms around America meet to talk about classroom expectations.
What kinds of practices, attitudes, and behaviors is the class going to uphold as a group this year?
What kinds of things won’t be tolerated?
What are the consequences for failure to uphold these accepted expectations?
Students may suggest things like showing respect to others or keeping hands and feet to themselves. Teachers might suggest quiet periods of work or raising hands to ask questions.
Families can use this change of season to talk about family or home expectations.
Just as in the classroom, there are two ways to have these discussions.
The first is the “from on high” approach: “Well, family, these are the family rules, and we uphold them because I say so.” Needless to say, this approach doesn’t generally garner the best results. (Do you, as an adult, respond well when your boss or others order you around?)
The other approach to establishing expectations is to build from the ground up—to set expectations collaboratively. The best place to start with this approach is your family’s shared values. So instead of “We do this because I am the parent, and I say so,” the collaborative approach to expectations would sound more like, “We behave in a kind and caring manner, because in this family, we value love.”
So how do you go about a discussion of expectations that actually works? How, as a family, can you build a set of positive behaviors and attitudes that the whole family refers to, instead of arbitrarily handing out punishments for perceived transgressions? Below are some tips to get you started.
Identify Your Family Values
If you haven’t done so already, decide on your family’s top values! Visit the FamilyWorks app to select your personal top values. Then, invite your family members to join and select their top values. When everyone is done, hold a family meeting to hash out the differences and rank family values. In the end, you’ll wind up with four top values, and a pretty nifty family crest.
Commit to Your Shared Family Values
Hold a family meeting to revisit your family’s values and describe what each means to you, and what behaviors might be associated with that value in different settings.
“Belonging,” for example, might look one way at home and another at school or at work. Maybe at home, you make sure all family members have a shared voice in deciding on a weekend activity. At school, your kids might show belonging by being particularly mindful to include others at the lunch table or on the playground.
Or maybe your family values a sense of adventure. At home, adventure might mean being open to new experiences. At work, maybe you can show your adventurous side by voicing innovative ideas. Have each member give a concrete example of how to demonstrate each value in different settings.
Connect Values and Expectations
After you’ve revisited your values and shared some ideas about how to express them, launch another discussion about what kinds of family expectations grow out of those values.
-If your family values teamwork, one expectation associated with that value might be that you accomplish household tasks as a team. Divvy up those chores!
-If your family values financial independence, a reasonable expectation is to maintain a regular family budget, stress saving or paying off debt, and teaching kids the value of money with an allowance or another system.
-If you value respect, one expectation might be to speak respectfully to each other even when upset, or to establish a family “cool-down” time when things get heated.
Hold Yourself Accountable
Decide on how you can react, both individually and as a family, to failure to meet the family’s expectations. These consequences should ideally not be punishments, but rather be logical outpourings of failing to uphold the expectation.
-Perhaps a family that values respect can establish a “cool-down” period that anyone can request at any time, if they feel the need to walk away from a conversation instead of becoming angry.
-Or if one family member fails to be a part of the family team in getting chores done, perhaps the consequence is for that person to pick up both his own and another family member’s chores for the following week.
Celebrate Success
Print out the expectations, post them somewhere visible in your home, and celebrate the successes! One way to do this is simply to point out when your family members uphold your family’s values and expectations throughout the week. “Thanks, honey, for helping out more with the dishes this week. It really makes us feel like more of a team.”
Another way to celebrate is to go around the table at your weekly family meeting and have each family member describe a time that week when he saw another family member upholding an expectation. “This week, Janie really went above and beyond in showing belonging by playing with her little brother and sister a lot.”
Rather than talking about “household rules,” upholding “family expectations” that you’ve all agreed upon—and that grow organically out of values you all worked together to select—just feels a lot more positive, inclusive, and collaborative.
And lest you, as a parent, think that including your kids in establishing family expectations gives away too much power, think about the times you’ve been forced to comply with rules you had no hand in making, and with which you silently disagreed. Did you cheerfully uphold them? Or feel radically disconnected and silently sulk? This is how your kids feel, too.
Setting family expectations together, on the other hand, not only gets greater buy-in, but also helps everyone to learn greater self-regulation, as you work together to think about how values you uphold relate to specific behavior and attitudes.