All efficient and lasting institutions have top management, and all of those management teams have regular meetings where policy is set and goals are pursued.
Who is the top management of your family? For most of the two parent families we know, Mom is the CEO and Dad might be the vice president or the CFO. But however it stacks up, the parents should be the managing partners, and to play that role effectively, just like every effective organization, they need a regular top management meeting. We have found that it needs to happen weekly, and the best time to have this meeting–a private planning and prioritizing session with just two attendees–is on Sunday. We call it an “Executive Session” or a “Sunday Session.”
It is a time to synchronize schedules, to discuss needs and priorities, and to talk about your relationship with each other; and even to clear the air in terms of any disagreements or bad feelings that were not resolved during the week.
Also, if you have both older and younger kids (say those over 8 and under 8) you might consider having a brief second meeting each Sunday called a “Middle Management Meeting, with the older ones–promote them to being part of the solution rather than part of the problem, and give them some responsibilities for tutoring and watching out for the younger ones.
For specifics on how to set up these two critical family meetings: