Ep #31: Creating a Family Culture You Love with Joe and Mell Hashey

And Mell was a social worker turned stay at home mom who wanted to be more intentional in her parenting and they have come up with this amazing system. Joe saw a lot of parallels between how organizations run that could be applied to family life and so they’ve kind of brought that in and have created this amazing system for giving their children a voice and modeling communication for them, giving them buy-in to family rules and also setting up a really strong system of core values that you could use in either a home or a classroom to help children build a sense of identity.

And then help them to build off of that into building these other character traits, goals and coming back around to what those core values are. It was a fantastic conversation, I think you’ll love it. It’s coming up right after this.

Welcome to the Raising Healthy Kid Brains podcast where moms and teachers come to learn all about kids’ brains, how they work, how they learn, how they grow and simple tips and tricks for raising the most resilient, kind, smart, compassionate kids we can. All while having lots of grace and compassion for ourselves because you know what? We all really need and deserve that too. I am your host, Amy Nielson. Let’s get ready to start the show.

Amy: Joe and Mell, welcome to the show. I’m so happy to have you on today.

Mell: Yeah, we’re so happy to be here, thank you.

Joe: Yeah, happy to be here. Thank you for having us.

Amy: It’s going to be so much fun. I’m excited to have this conversation. Tell me a little bit about how you got here today, what do you do?

Joe: Yeah, it’s a great question. So we’ll give you the short version. So I was a high school teacher, Mell was a social worker. And we started a small company in our basement, got bigger and I had to choose one or the other. And so we started running the company, which is a fitness company, running personal training studios. And Mell came on to do HR and finance. And then everything changed for everyone in 2020 and things got closed down. And we had a good realization that we were spending more time on that organization than we were our family organization.

So we realigned our values, we bought a little cabin on the side of a mountain and flew across the country and now live in a town where we had no one when we moved here. We just wanted to recommit to running our family better and really poured ourselves all into it.

Mell: Right. And just a little bit more background about me. I mean after, I was a social worker for five years and then after we had our second son, so we have been married for 16 years. We have a 13, 11 and 5 year old. So after I had the 11 year old I made the decision to stay home and basically do whatever kind of support stuff I’d have to do to support Joe’s business. And then in 2020 I did home school for a year while we made this huge transition to moving and selling our home back in New York. And us being here today really was fostered by us just trying to be more intentional in our family.

And we started doing some routine things with our kids that people would notice and they’d say, “Hey, you guys do some interesting things, maybe you should start talking about that.” So, so was born the idea of doing a podcast and we kind of made our strategy more digestible I guess. So that’s why we’re here today.

Amy: I love it so much. So what are we going to be talking about on the show today and how is it going to be helping our parents and teachers with young children?

Mell: So we have discussed talking about core values and also how kids’ voices are very valuable in the family. And we have different ways that we include them in the different strategies that we have. And I think those were the main things we were going to discuss, and also communication and how that’s a really important piece of our family structure.

Amy: I am so excited to have this conversation. I think it’s so interesting. I was actually doing a recording earlier today with an international speaker and we were talking about her trademarked neuro nurturing model that she does which is so fascinating. But one of the pieces she brought up that was so interesting was that part of a child’s security is being able to have choice and a voice in what’s happening. And I thought that was so interesting as we were getting ready to have our conversation today and that that seems like a piece of what you do.

So I am excited to have this conversation and how we can help build routine and structure for families. And then also I feel like giving kids ownership in some of that. So let’s talk about it. You guys, it feels like kind of brought some of the business world into what you do with your family. Tell me a little bit about that and how your system works.

Joe: The core values piece really came out of the business world and try to get better business, we’d go to different conferences, seminars, read books, be part of different business groups and learn things. And it seemed like there is a big range of people who have mission statements and core values, they just existed on the wall and no one knew them in the company or companies that actually live by them. So it wasn’t core values themselves that were by themselves great or bad. It was just how you interacted with them and how much commitment you give to them.

And so we went through that exercise before we ended up moving to come up with our specific family’s core values. We used a business tactic called Kill, Keep, or Combine where we both sat down and brainstormed all the values that are good, generally good, that we wanted to teach our kids. And then we would either cross them off, kill them off the list if they wasn’t a great fit for our core values, combine them. If she had, if Mell had faithfulness and I had gratitude, those are close, let’s come up with a word to combine them. And then would keep the ones that really our family stands for.

And then we decided to, during our family meetings, present them to the kids, try them on for size. And the sweet spot and for most businesses, five to seven core values because what is memorable is portable. If you have a list of 15 it’s very tough to remember any of them. If you’ve got to hold too many things you’re going to drop everything. And so we narrowed ours down to five to seven and that’s what our kids practice every week at our family meetings.

Mell: And as soon as we came up with them, now, our kids were really little so we only had two at the time and they were maybe three and five. So we didn’t necessarily involve them in the creation of the core values. But if your kids are older, let’s say you have teenagers and you just want to start the core values now it’s a great time to include them and give them a voice in what they think should be included. But after we came up with ours and we presented them and I personally love visuals. So I think it’s really great to have charts and things that are laminated.

So I made little bookmarks for the kids and then we had one on the kitchen table. And basically it was just always there, we’d review them at dinner. And now I mean it’s been, I don’t know, maybe seven or eight years that we’ve had them, the kids have them memorized. They know exactly what they are. And it’s easier to kind of live by them. But the initial stages really were the creation of them, finding a way to make them part of our daily life by having them printed and talking about them. That was really, really important for us. And I still have it, it’s still hanging up near the kitchen table.

And we, every once in a while, well, every family meeting we refer to them and talk about them and talk about a way that we’ve embodied them during the past week. And I notice some of my kids will sometimes glance over and I will too just to kind of review them to see what pops into mind. But we actually came up with six and I don’t know if it will be useful for you to hear what ours are. But every family can obviously come up with their own unique core values.

Amy: I think this is so fascinating and a couple of things came to my mind while you were talking and one is that this could work at home or in a classroom. So we have a lot of teachers who are listening as well. And I love the idea of doing that in a classroom. My third grader just went through Harry Potter month or whatever and they each were separated into houses. And then they had their core values of their houses. And so each child got to look at their list and they did a whole vocabulary exercise.

And anyway, it was this really beautiful thing where they got to try to embody those characteristics from their house over the next month or whatever, which I thought was so interesting and very cool. But I also think that this is such a piece too where you’re doing it with a family of building your identities. You’re building character I think but you’re also learning goal setting and some other stuff like that. But building identity, which is so powerful in building confidence and other things in children I think.

Mell: Well, you really hit the nail on the head because we really want to create a family culture, we want our kids to have good character. And I feel like almost every day we somehow refer to the values. So earlier today my 11 and 5 year old were wrestling and the 5 year old got upset because it kind of went a little bit too far. And [crosstalk] wants to point their finger at the 11 year old. And I said, “However, you need to be accountable. Accountability is one of our six core values. You need to be accountable and tell me what was your part in this. Help me understand what you did.”

So I think just we use that language all the time. And I did it the other day with my 13 year old. He left a big mess downstairs and we were going to try to go use that room and we couldn’t because there was a mess. So it’s like, “Logan, you need to be accountable and clean up this mess.” So just having those core values picked out and in the classroom as well. You can immediately when a kid does something that kind of goes outside of that, you can gently remind them. “Hey, this is our values, this is who we are. This is the kind of character we’re trying to build in our individual selves and as a family.”

So it takes some of that sting away because you’re just referring back to, hey, this is who we are, this is what we’re about. And we have that kind of predetermined.

Amy: I love that. And then I’m also seeing this vision of pillars and this building of character building we’re doing. And there’s these core pillars. And then all the pieces that kind of relate back to that and build around it because then yeah, is this behavior in line with the core value or not? And they can kind of judge it against their core values which are their basic pillars that they know and have memorized. I love this. I think this is so fantastic and easy to refer back to and have conversation around, that’s fantastic.

Joe: I like how you brought it back to the classroom. I used to be fortunate enough to speak on classroom management techniques, was kind of my niche as a teacher. And one of the best ways to get their buy-in and the second best way is to be extremely clear on what the standards are. And so the core values really bring that home because kids will have values regardless of you defining them or not, they learn from peers or from coaches or from different teachers, some good, some negative, some good in some situations, some negative in other situations.

And so clearly defining that for the kids, like you said, we’re giving them an identity of who they are and how we operate in this environment that really makes things run a lot smoother so you can focus on in the family life on our goal setting. And our kids learning in the classroom and the curriculum and things like that by kind of smoothing this stuff out early on.

Mell: And it really extends beyond our home walls. This year our 13 year old entered middle school. And we are really big on who you’re going to spend time with, who you’re going to become friends with. Because you are who you spend time with. And one day our son came home and he’s like, “Well, I made this one friend.” I’m like, “Well, what do you like about him?” He’s like, “Well, he raises chickens.” And he mentioned a few other things, and he says, “Well, he really aligns with our values.” And I’m not just making that up. He actually said that.

And it’s one of those moments where you realize what we’re doing is making an impact. If he’s able to take it outside of our home and apply it, it’s really doing what it’s supposed to be doing.

Amy: That’s so good. I love that. Okay, so tell me, okay, I’m loving core values. Everyone go make core values, five to seven, yes, I love it. This is so good. And then let’s talk about the next piece which is structure and routine. This is so important for kids’ brains because it gives them the safety spot where they can then develop without always trying to wonder where the walls are. So talk to me about what that looks like for you.

Mell: So there’s several aspects. So we have something we call the strong family path and it’s these seven elements that we do, one of them being the core values. And basically all of them stem from the core values, but to talk about structure. So one of them is the morning routine. And I think everybody has an idea that that’s probably an important thing to do, but our kids really know exactly what to expect. So our first, I think our first core thing when we think about structure is let’s set up what is success, what are the expectations so that kids aren’t just left flailing and trying to figure it out for themselves.

And they could certainly be involved in the creation of these routines. So at our home, the boys get up in the morning. They do a quick little five minute workout, it’s not like they’re not supposed to go down there and start sweating and going crazy. We’re trying to create that expectation and routine for the morning. We don’t want them to just roll out of bed and be lazy but they get up and know exactly what to do. So they do their little routine downstairs at the gym, well, we have a home gym. They brush their teeth, they come up and they each have their contribution in the kitchen.

So I think we discussed this before how we don’t call it a chore. We call it a contribution because every member of the family, even the 5 year old who opens the freezer door for the ice trays. Everybody can contribute to the process of the morning system. Once they finish their contribution in the kitchen, they go do a journal which is a couple goals for the day, three goals, something they’re thankful for from the previous day and something that they’re proud of. So they have to write that. And only when they finish all of those things can they use a tech time.

And this happens every morning. It’s almost like a bit of controlled chaos in the kitchen. Everyone knows exactly what they need to do, what their task is and it just gets done. And I think they feel really good about starting their day already accomplishing something and contributing to their family system because we taught them, if they don’t do these things, someone has to do them. And is it fair that it all falls on mom or dad or whatever? So that’s one of the really important pieces of structure in our family is starting the day off right.

Amy: I love that it, I think decreases friction because I feel like sometimes we’re asking kids to do stuff and there’s friction right there because they don’t want to do all the things we’re asking them to do. But if it’s regular and routine and they just know it’s happening, it’s not a battle every morning to get them to do it. It’s just part of what they have to do and it’s on a schedule and you’re not trying to convince your 10 year old to go shower for 30 minutes every night. So I love that piece of it.

But I also love the way that you use and reframe it as contribution as opposed to you’ve got to go do your jobs, you’ve got to do your chores or things like that. Because it’s so much more fun to contribute than to just go do a job. And it’s what it is, it is a way of contributing. I love that reframing.

Mell: Yeah, they automatically feel like they’re bringing value. Think kids are going to be adults some day and I keep telling them, “You’re not going to just wake up one day and know how to do these things. Our big thing for the summer is I’m going to teach them how to do their laundry. And when I was explaining it to them, because it’s so easy for me, I’ve done it for so many years. In my mind I thought, shouldn’t they just know? Shouldn’t they know what hot cold is versus warm and cold? But they had no idea. It was a whole different thing. Why would I choose hot over warm?

So just the realization that we need to teach them how to contribute. And then teach them that they are capable of doing it. So sometime later this week I’m going to test them. They’re going to have to go see which buttons to press and see how they do. But again we’re just trying to build their skill set so that they can feel confident in what they’re doing.

Amy: Do you feel like that carries over into other things? As they go and learn how to contribute in one way and as you teach them that process, they master that skill and then you move on to maybe another way of contributing. I like to start my youngest ones unloading the silverware, this is their first, I’m going to use your word, contribution. And I love it because it’s like all kinds of good stuff. First of all they love it and think it’s really fun. But we’re doing sorting skills. We’re doing measurement because they’re comparing different fork sizes and spoon sizes and sorting. I mean it’s so much fun.

And then I’m going to be honest, we got out our magnet sticks this year and we’re using the magnets to take the silver out of the dishwasher and go put it in which was not efficient at all but it was way more fun than the regular way. So I mean there’s just, this is how I kind of start my little ones.

But I’m wondering if you feel like starting with that and going through that process, learning the process, learning how to do it correctly and getting to do that over and over again. Does that help them then have more confidence when you hand them their next task, maybe learning how to do their own laundry, that they have the ability to do that and know what that learning process looks like?

Mell: Yes. I think if you make it more fun when you’re teaching them the skill, they’re going to want to learn other skills. So when I presented this laundry thing, I mean of course, at first they’re like, “Ah.” And then as soon as we’re in there they got interested because there’s buttons to press. There’s different things you could do that can be more exciting. So I love your idea of even though it was inefficient, it got the kids excited about the silverware. That’s been a struggle for me and I’m sure it is for some other moms where we feel like we could just do it so much better and so much faster by ourselves.

And that’s been a struggle for me. And an example that comes to mind, our 13 year old really likes to cook but he also likes to make a mess. So initially when he said to me, “Mom, I want to bake these healthy snacks, I want to do it completely by myself.” I had to hold it together and just not be in the kitchen while he was doing it because I want him to have confidence that he can create something in the kitchen and not need me. And secondly, that the fact that he wanted to do it, that came from him. I wasn’t like, “Hey, Logan, go find a recipe to make.”

That was his own initiative. And I think that initiative comes because he sees that he can contribute and do things of value in the home. So I do think that it starts to roll over into other skills for sure. And whenever your kid initiates a skill it’s really important I think to go after it and let them explore that.

Joe: And I think there is a big piece of how they learn that is repeatable regardless of the skill. And it’s essentially the same thing we do for companies, the same thing we do with the kids is they watch us do, we watch them do, they do independently. And they start to learn those steps and can apply like, hey, can you show me how to do this and they watch. And okay, can you watch me do this to see if I’m doing it right? Okay, now, I can do it independently and that brings down a lot of the frustration that happens when they think they should just know how to do something like Mell said and they can’t do initially.

Well you’ve never seen it done, therefore it’s reasonable that you wouldn’t be able to knock it out of the park on the first time. So you watch us do, we’ll watch you do, give some feedback and then you can do independently, just a step by step process regardless of what we’re trying to teach.

Amy: I love it, yes. I feel like you’re doing both sides. So we’re giving them background knowledge. We’re teaching them actual skills and actual things which is super important. But then we’re also teaching them the process of learning, which I think is so valuable that they can take on to anything else. So when I have kids they get obsessed with dinosaurs or paper airplanes or origami or whatever their latest is because that happens, balloon animals. I have a lot of balloons at my house. But they learn that process. And so they go and they read the books about it.

And then they run out of books and then they go to YouTube and whatever. And we maybe learn from people at the fair or whatever, but you just keep expanding where you’re learning from. And I think you take that process to your next thing or like you were talking about. I love the process you were talking about. So they watch you and then you watch them and then that’s such a cool process for them to learn.

Mell: And another thing that just came to mind is you mentioned origami which got my mind going because my oldest loves origami. So if your kids have a skill that they can then teach you, it makes them feel valuable as well. So we do something called weekly commitments. So we have these annual goals and then every week we set a little piece of the goal we can accomplish every day that week. So for my son, Logan, he wants to teach mom, origami, something simple every day this week. And at first it might be like, okay, am I going to have time to do this?

But he actually, I felt valuable that he wanted to teach it to me. And also it’s the skill of him being able to not just say, “Hey, mom, look at this paper and do this.” But he has to actually show me and walk me through the process. So it’s the reverse where they watch us do things but then we also, did I say that right? When we are teaching them a skill, they’re watching us initially. But now I’m watching him and then he’s teaching me how to do it, which also creates amazing value.

My son, Henry, loves to play soccer so we go outside, he teaches me moves. I don’t know anything. I’ll kick it with my toe and hope it goes somewhere. But now that he has some technique, he can teach me what to do and then he feels valuable because he’s given mom a skill as well.

Amy: I love that and I see that at home and in the classroom as well. So at my house, my son has been teaching me to make paper airplanes. He is an expert at paper airplanes. And I am a total not expert, whatever the opposite of expert is, that is me. And then he wants to of course raise them and he wins every time but it’s fun, we have a good time. But what’s interesting, his teacher this year and I drive carpool so I get to hear all the kids talking and my son’s classmate’s in our carpool too. And their teacher does a teach the teacher thing every week where they get to come and teach their teacher something.

And I love this concept because teaching something is different than just knowing it yourself. And so they’re learning how to communicate clearly and how to demonstrate things. And also I think building the confidence of being able to stand up and show someone else, especially your teacher, how to do something. So I love that idea for the classroom or for the home. I think that’s fantastic.

Joe: I agree, I think that’s an awesome concept. You really have to know something in order to teach it.

Mell: Exactly and we as parents can’t possibly think we know everything. So when your kid is offering to teach you something, even if it’s something that you might find silly or very minimal. The fact that they’re willing to take the time and teach it to you is a wonderful way for them to feel a valued piece of the family.

Joe: We were doing our morning exercise today and our youngest came up with his own routine. He carried the dumbbell five feet, switched hands, carried it back, stand on the ball and bounce for 10 seconds. He needed to make sure he taught everyone else in the room, “After you’ve done with that, come do my exercise.” He went through it so many times, he’s so invested in what he created more so than if we told him what to do and it was pretty cool to see.

Mell: It was and he was even counting to 10 for us, he’s like 10 seconds. And he wouldn’t trust us to do it. He wanted to count it for us but he was so serious about it and intent about it. And you could just see that he was feeling so valuable in those moments. He has some control in the matter, he can actually contribute and his brothers and his parents will do what he’s saying and it means something. So that’s a great example, that was special.

Amy: That’s fantastic. I love it. We’re hitting so many points and it’s so fun over this podcast that we do every week in getting to talk to neuroscientists and psychologists and everything. And have them talk about different pieces and then hear some of the things that you’re doing in your home. And it’s covering so many of these little different things that I’ve covered on different episodes. And so I love how you’re bringing so many different things together into what you do.

One of the other things that we talked about is communication and how important that is. And talk to me a little bit about how you focus on that in your strategy, your home?

Joe: I think the first piece of it is to make sure that we’re in the right environment to communicate and Mell can go into the questions a lot. But we use the phrase, lowest heart rate in the room. We intentionally have to pay attention to our heart rate if we’re getting red in the face and our heart rate’s elevated, communication usually crumbles a little bit. And sometimes it’s like, “Hey, let’s readdress this a little later on because we’re not at a place where we communicate clearly on this.”

But it’s trying to bring down that, there’s a lot of different approaches and I certainly grew up different in this. But I don’t think that yelling and using a dominant voice to exude control is true communication over children. You might get them to do what you want in the short term but in the long term, it’s not an effective communication strategy for them to go out into the world with. So then we try to create the right environment to communicate before we work on the nuts and bolts of the communication.

Mell: Right. And there’s a strategy that Joe and I learned, before we got married we took this class and it’s called a pre-kinder class. And they taught us something that always stuck with me and I think this is valuable for everybody of every age. And it was called, you have the floor. So let’s say there’s a situation going on between our older two kids, they’re having a disagreement and it’s clearly not going anywhere good. I sit them down and I say, “We need to use this strategy.” So what it means is person A can explain themselves.

They get the floor, you can literally hold a piece of flooring, I have the floor because visuals are great. They get to explain what they’re saying and oftentimes a mishap with communication is when someone is talking, all the other person is doing is trying to think of what they want to say back, whatever their rebuttal is. They’re not truly listening to what the first person is saying, so step one is person A speaks their piece then person B gets to say it back to them. They say, “I heard you say”, and then whatever it was. And then person A get to make any kind of clarifications. Well, that’s not really what I meant, let me re-explain.

So when person A feels heard then you do the next person. They get to say what they thought, what they thought happened. And then you can maybe come to some kind of compromise. But I think the most important part of that is the listening part. I was actually at, we went to a little party with some of Joe’s coworkers. And this lady was telling me all about hiking in Boulder. And all I was thinking about was how I wanted to tell her that I also hiked there. And then I was like, “Wait a minute. I need to listen to what she’s saying so that I can respond to her and actually show her that I listened.”

And wasn’t just busy waiting for my turn to be like, “I did it too.” So we try to teach our kids that piece of communication, make sure you’re listening. And being accountable for your piece in it. So that’s been a really important strategy. And that can apply for, okay, they’ve just had a spat, we’re talking. But it also works really great at our family meetings. So we talked about making the kids feel valuable and also about communication, which comes together beautifully in the family meeting. So I’m going to go through how we run ours if that’s alright.

Amy: Yeah, I would love to hear about it.

Mell: Okay. So the first piece actually goes back to the core values. We each go around and we do this once a week. So the kids expect it, they know it’s coming. On Thursday they’ll be like, “Are we doing our family meeting this weekend?” Because they might have something they want to discuss. And we do it very consistently every Saturday at dinnertime. And the first piece where everybody goes around the table and shares how they’ve embodied a core value from that week. So my son could say something like, “Well, I hiked the mountain behind the house, I was being adventurous.” That’s one of our core values.

So everyone does that and also sometimes to change it up we’ll have each family member point out what another family member did to embody a core value. After that we open it up to discussion topics. And this is the piece where communication is super important. Anybody in the family can bring up a topic and we all problem solve together. A huge topic I’m sure that comes up in many families is tech time, screen time, however you want to say it. And we oftentimes will put it back to the kids. We’ll say, “How do you think we can solve this problem? What’s going to work?”

And I think almost every single time, they have come up with the solution. So again, it makes them feel valuable, they have buy-in because they came up with the solution. And then we’re like, “Okay, let’s try it for a week and see if it’s going to work. We’ll come back together at the next meeting.” So it’s not us yelling at them or get off your tablet or whatever. But we discuss and we create a scenario. And of course I then go to my computer and print a chart because I think it’s really valuable for them to be able to mark off their times or whatever.

But the point is, they have to be able to communicate whatever issue is that they’re having. They have to be able to communicate and brainstorm solutions. And we usually pick their solution if it’s reasonable. And they feel valuable in that. And then after that, we do tough truths. So we’ve created this family culture where anybody in the family can criticize someone else in the family but from a positive loving perspective.

So one example that’s kind of silly, my son Henry said that he did not like one of the dinners I made. He did not think it was good. And we have to be able to take criticism without taking it personally. So I was like, “Okay, Henry, that’s too bad but give me some other suggestions of what you would rather I have cooked”, or whatever. And I think, speaking of communication directly, Joe pointed one out to my son. They had just got braces this year. And he kind of was being sheepish about it and you couldn’t really understand him very well. He had his head down.

So the tough truth was, I know that it’s hard to get braces but we want to make sure you can still be heard. So we really want you to work on your chin being up and speaking as clearly as you can. So just things like that where you can point things out to your family members without worrying about getting yelled at. Or what’s the example, they pointed out that one time Joe pulled his phone out at the table and was checking some work email. And my son actually came to me separately and he’s like, “I really didn’t like when daddy did that.” I said, “This is the definition of a tough truth. You need to go communicate with him that that bothered you.”

And then Joe didn’t take it personal. He’s like, “You know what, I really shouldn’t do that.” So it’s been a rule now where we don’t bring any phones to the table, it’s 100% attention on the family. But that might have not changed had my son not felt confident enough to communicate that to us.

Amy: I love so much that you’re modeling that for them starting too when they’re young because what happens is I think as they grow into teenagers, often it becomes more difficult for some of them to communicate it seems like. But if you’ve kind of built the structure and modeled that from such an early age I think what I’m noticing is that as I started doing that with my young children is that now as teenagers they will come and talk to me. And they will tell me those hard truths. And then we have a conversation around it.

Or I love including them in the problem solving and so they have the buy-in to okay, this is a concern, let’s discuss it. And they have brilliant ideas of how to solve the problem. They know the solution’s inside of them so often. And then letting them try it and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t but then you can come back and do that reevaluation. So I love your idea of doing that with a weekly meeting. That’s fantastic.

Joe: Our role in the meeting for communications, we define what success looks like and then we let them figure out how to get there. And so we had one come up with our son wanted to have Bluetooth earbuds in. Well, success looks like to us that if other people in the room, they have your attention, you don’t have these ear things in, it makes them feel unheard. So how are we going to get there? And then he came up with, “Well, I’ll go on the swing in the front porch. I’ll listen to it then but if there are other people in the room, I’ll make sure I take them out.” We just had to define what we want.

Get those out of your years, they don’t fully understand why. And so we just make the definition and then they get to come up with the strategies.

Mell: That’s right. And then if they don’t follow through you can refer back. “Remember we discussed this at the family meeting and you came up with this solution. What’s going on?” So it doesn’t really raise, people ask us, “What do you do with disciplinary stuff?” And I’m like, “Well, because we nip so many things in the bud and because we know what our values are, because the kids contribute to the solutions.” Oftentimes it doesn’t get to that point because we just simply refer back like, “Hey, we talked about this at the meeting, why isn’t it happening?” Maybe we need to bring it back on the table at the next meeting.

It keeps a low heart rate almost automatically because we already address it in other ways and they know when we’re going to talk about it and we can refer back. We do finish up the family meeting by giving each other compliments. So everyone has to give everyone a compliment. And then we do firm handshakes or hugs from me. And that’s the gesture at the end to show that the meeting is adjourned.

Amy: I love that and you’re getting in the physical touch which is such an important part of nurturing as well. I love it. This is so good. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing this with us today. And if people want to come and learn about your strong family path, what is the best way to find you and be able to kind of learn more about your system?

Joe: We appreciate that, Amy. We have it all up on strongfamilyproject.com. The seven steps of the path is our free download like a lot of websites have. And then we have our podcast based on just teaching the strong family path and helping families out, much like you do.

Amy: It’s fantastic. And we will include the links to those in the show notes for everyone so that they can find that really easily. We love links. Links are fantastic. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing with us today. And good luck with everything that you’re doing, I love hearing about it and thanks for sharing it with us.

Joe: A pleasure, thank you, Amy.

Mell: Yeah, appreciate it very much. Thank you. Don’t you just love all the fun things we’re learning on the show together? Well, we wanted to give you a chance to practice a little bit of it at home. And so we made you a special freebie just for being a listener here. And you can grab it at planningplaytime.com\special-freebie. That is planningplaytime.com\special-freebie.

So what this freebie is I’ll tell you, is an amazing alphabet activity that you can start using with your kiddos. And it is based in play and is so fun. You can use dot markets with it. You can use Q-Tip painting. You could use circle cereals. There’s all kinds of options, but you can print it out today and get started. Just head over to planningplaytime.com\special-freebie and we’ll send that to you right away. Thank you for hanging out with me today for this fun chat on Raising Healthy Kid Brains. If you want to see more of what we’re doing to support kiddos and their amazing brains, come visit us on our website, planningplaytime.com. See you next week.