The Importance of Family Values in Leading Your Busy Family

A few weeks ago we had to decide if our son would join the summer soccer team, for our other son it was deciding whether to find him another code club. Then last week, deciding if we could let him go with a friend to the local park without us for the first time. Often times it’s decisions about where we will go and what we will do on the weekend. 

You are making hundreds of decisions a week for your family. The question is, what basis are you making these decisions on? 

For some it’s based on gut feel, for some it’s based on the information you have researched, for some it’s based on examples from others, for others it’s what you’ve always known and therefore do. 

There are four critical issues busy families face each day: 

How do we maximise our efforts to fit in what we need to do?
How do we keep both children and parents happy and healthy?
How can we feel confident our actions today will take us where we want to be?
How do we ensure good habits are instilled in our children?

There is no right or wrong way to make these decisions.

One way that can help is, developing your family values.   

For busy families, family values can help set up parameters for the decisions you make on a daily basis and help minimise decision making time as well as a conflict of values between parents that can sometimes occur. 

Values are common place in organisations. 

What about in the home? How can they help there..? 

Values and behaviours drive the culture of the home  “this is how we do things around here”
The culture drives fulfilment of everyone living in the home “this is a place you belong”
Fulfilment drives the desire to make a difference to others “this is how we contribute”
Making a difference to others changes the planet “our family has a place in this world” 

On a day-to-day basis, values play a role informing your decisions for you and your family. It’s important to remember, similar to organisations, values are only as good as the extent to which they are thought through and lived. 

“It’s not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are” Roy E. Disney

In our family, we limit our primary children’s after-school activities to 1-2 times per week. The remaining ‘downtime’ develops their curiousity (one of our family values) and creativity. Another value is to be empowered, so when asked if he could go to the local park on his own (with a friend) for the first time, after breathing in the vulnerability of letting him go (and setting some ground rules), we said yes to our son to develop his independence.. 

If it’s time to create your family values, I invite you to explore the Parent as Leader program where we help you to figure out what’s important to your unique family so you too can make the best decisions moment to moment without friction!