Guideline #16: Create a Family Development Plan

In this post, I recommend you create family development goals based on what you learned about your parenting challenges when you completed the Parent and Family Challenges Survey. Set behavior change goals that support creating the family environment you want. An effective goal has four components.

• Specific
• Measurable
• Realistic
• Under Your Control

This post is from my book Purposeful Parenting Handbook:  Guidelines for Raising Capable, Confident, and Accountable Children.

My name is Lane Lasater, a retired clinical psychologist. In gratitude for the life I have been given, I am sharing everything I learned during my career and personal life on my website http://www.LaneLasater.com and on my YouTube Channel Life Roadmaps from a Retired Psychologist  https://www.youtube.com/@lane205

Each post contains my written material, an AI generated graphic, a 15-17 minute audio summary, and a 5-7 minute video summarizing the material.

 

Purposeful Parenting Weekly Action Steps

Set positive parenting weekly action steps and study how your action steps worked out.  Action Steps are positive parenting goals you want to accomplish (GAINS) and parenting problems you want to avoid (AVOIDS). Each week write down one specific GAIN and one specific AVOID goal you have.

Positive Parenting Weekly Action Goal Example

1. A GAIN goal might be, “I want to be closer to my son Logan. We both enjoy bicycling, but haven’t ridden together for a long time.”
2. An AVOID goal might be “I don’t want to get into daily arguments with Logan about his not getting homework done. When I bring it up, he gets mad, and swears at me.”
3. Here are GAIN or AVOID action steps related to these GAIN and AVOID goals.
4. A GAIN action step: “I’ll ask Logan tonight to do something together this weekend. I’ll suggest biking. Otherwise, we can go bowling or take in a movie.”
5. An AVOID action step: “I won’t take responsibility for Logan getting his school work done. It makes him mad when I check up on him and he ends up less likely to do it. I’ll let Logan know I’ll offer help or reminders only if he wants me to. He knows he has to get passing grades if he wants to use the car.”

Complex Family Development Plan Example

Write down the biggest challenge under your control related to your parenting goals.

“I want to have positive communication with my daughter. I get mad and make things worse.”

Write down the reasons why you want to overcome this challenge.

“Sarah started hanging out with a different set of friends as a Junior in high school. She has shut her Mother and me out of her life over the last year. She is distant, hostile and challenges everything we say. We tried to reassert control by telling her she can’t use the family car but now she has her friends pick her up. She refuses to come home when we tell her she must be home and doesn’t let us know where she is. When we talk to her about this, she tells us to “butt out of her business.” I get mad and yell. We left her a note that she had to come with us to see a counselor—but she wouldn’t go. We feel like kicking her out of the house but don’t know if we can do that legally.”

Write down the steps that you will take to overcome this challenge.

“My wife and I have to get clear what we can do, and what we are willing to do. This is our home and we are both miserable, and feel taken advantage of by Sarah. We must live in a positive environment that feels sane. We don’t feel respected and feel we have lost control of our own house. We hoped this was a phase with Sarah that would pass, but that isn’t happening.”

Write down specific, observable, daily and weekly actions that you commit to take to overcome this challenge.

1. I’ll call Social Services to see what our rights are and what options we have with Sarah.
2. I’ll write down how I want our home to be and my wife has agreed to do the same.
3. We’ll tell Sarah we must have a meeting to work toward improving the atmosphere in our house.
4. I’ll ask her to write down how she wants things to be at home and what she wants to discuss.
5. We’ll set a meeting in the morning when she is not so hard to deal with.
6. We’ll let her know that we love her and support her but want our home to be a positive environment for all of us.
7. We’ll each read what we have written without comments or arguing, then see if we have common ground.
8. We’ll negotiate how to make the environment in our home respectful and pleasant.
9. If we can’t successfully have this discussion, we’ll offer Sarah the option of meeting with a counselor or going to Social Services to discuss what other options are.

Develop Positive Parenting Weekly Action Steps

1. Write the biggest challenge under your control related to your parenting goals.
2. Write down the reasons why you want to overcome this challenge.
3. Write down the steps that you will take to overcome this challenge.
4. Write down specific, observable, daily and weekly actions that you commit to take to overcome this challenge.