Core family values should be at the heart of your parenting. It helps you to define the “WHY’ of your parenting and establishes a character foundation that every member of the family should be familiar with. Whether you have toddlers or teens, it’s never too late to define and establish your Core Family Values (CFV).
Where to begin
Brainstorming and creating a list– Begin by compiling a broad list of values you want to define for yourself and family. Keep a note pad, start a list on your phone, or text yourself a list of characteristic words or short phrases or sentences:
God loving
Trustworthy
Honesty
Be Respectful
Empathize with others
Reach your potential
Be grateful
Prayerful in praises
Repay kindness
Try new things
Remember, you don’t want to establish a family value that you are not willing to be accountable to yourself. Try compiling your list separately for a week and then share your list with your spouse during CouchTime or even a date night. The point is to come together, during a period of non-conflict, to combine and prioritize your family values. For us, we would define our core family values as the top ten on our list of 20 or 30 values we compiled and prioritized.
For single parents, clearly there are unique challenges. But that should not prevent you from establishing CFV in your home. Setting the standard and expectation for your child when they are in your home, can actually provide your child with security, trust, and confidence in your family leadership. Our advice would be to take your CFV list to the Lord, praying for insight, wisdom and strength to teach and live out your values with your kids. You are a capable parent who is growing up with your children just like any parent that needs God’s wisdom and grace for the journey of parenting!
Define with examples – Make sure you and your spouse are on the same page with what each value means and looks like in your family with actual examples. What may seem obvious and intuitive to you may not be what your spouse and children have in mind. For instance:
“Be Kind” – Means intentionally sharing with your siblings and your friends; it means speaking “words of life” to one another.
“Honesty” – Means we always tell the truth even if the truth might get us in trouble; it means we always seek to do what is right.
“Try new things” – Means trying different kinds of food; it means volunteering for something that may be out of our comfort zone.
Learn, memorize, and make them apart of your Family Identity – Once you’ve identified your Core Family Values and there is 100% clarity as to what they look like for your family, you to need explain them to your children and make sure they become a part of your family identity. Get creative and know that it takes hearing something about a dozen times before many things begin to resonate and become a standard.
As mentioned by Julie Young in the Life in the Middle Years series, you can print out your list of values and put them on your refrigerator or even frame it.
Make a game of knowing and understanding the CFV by heart. For little kids, try role-playing kindness, patience, self-control, or proper manners scenarios. With older kids, offer some kind of reward for not only knowing all the CFV and offering up examples where they exemplified or saw another family member demonstrate a CFV.
Summarize your CFV with a family mission statement or family Bible verse(s). For us, our family verse (Mark 12: 30-31) summed up who we are as Howards and incorporated all the CFV we hold dear: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.”
Avoid the pitfalls
Excuses – I’m too busy to make a list, I can’t come up with anything, my kids are too young or too old to do this…
Unmet intentions and procrastination – We’ll do it when we have more time, let’s talk about it on vacation with the kids, when I get back from…
These are among the many things we hear when it comes to connecting with your spouse or focusing on parenting or marriage and family related issues. The fact is, these pitfalls are real and do exist. Many times we were too busy or made plans and just never got around to implementing the practices and ideas we felt were important to the health of our family. However, we became characterized by overcoming these real challenges by setting aside time on our calendars to focus and implement various family initiatives. This way, by year’s end, we may not have accomplished everything we wanted, but we had at least 3-4 major things that made a huge difference in our family life.
The 21 Day Challenge
Identifying your Core Family Values is a critical part to your parenting and marriage. So, we want to challenge you to define your CFV and begin the process of implementing them with your children… just in time for Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas! We encourage you to try this 21 day challenge and let us know if you notice an immediate impact in the mindset of your family:
Week 1 – Brainstorm and compile your list of values. Write down everything that comes to mind for one week!
Week 2 – Edit, combine and prioritize your list with your spouse during a time of non-conflict.
Week 3 – Discuss and implement a plan to internalize CFV – Role Playing, games, dinner conversations, etc..
At the end of 21 days, everyone in the family should be well on their way to knowing and understanding your family’s CFV. With CFV established, you may see better behavior begin to manifest itself just in time for the holidays! Maybe, instead of an out of control Halloween experience, you see kiddos that are intentionally grateful when receiving a treat. Maybe when you have family or friends over for Thanksgiving, manners take on a new appreciation. And maybe, Christmas becomes even more precious when siblings want to share.
Please let us know how it goes!
Blessings to your family,
Shelly and Rich