Happy Holidays! I imagine a lot of you will be making New Year's Resolutions tonight. I was thinking how ambitious and yet ambiguous "have a better family life" is as an actual goal to set. How would you know if you did "better" in 2010 as a family? That's when I remembered some interesting research on healthy families by Curran and Dolores. They discovered that healthy families have 15 similar attributes. Here they are:
15 Traits Shared by Healthy Families
- Communicates and listens
- Validates and supports each other
- Teaches respect for others
- Develops trust
- Has a healthy sense of humour and has fun
- Shares responsibilities
- Teaches a sense of right and wrong
- Has a strong sens of family with rituals and traditions
- Balances the interactions among members
- Has a shared religious core (I'll have to write more on my thoughts about this later)
- Respects the privacy of each other
- Values service to others
- Promotes family meal time with conversation
- Shares leisure time
- Admits to and seeks help with problems
If these traits were subjects on a report card, how did you do for each in 2009? If you wanted to improve your grade in each subject area for 2010 what would you need to do? Can you turn those thoughts into concrete, measurable, action steps? What will it look like when you reach your goal?
Hopefully with some imagination and using these 15 traits as starting place, you'll be able to set some really concrete and attainable goals for your family life in the year ahead.
Happy New Year and may you have a joyous year ahead!
Comments