The Secrets of Happy Families: Improve Your Mornings, Rethink Family Dinner, Fight Smarter, Go Out and Play and Much More – book summary
Bruce Feiler
Piatkus (5 Sept. 2013)
About the author:
Bruce Feiler is one of America’s most popular voices on contemporary life. He writes the “This Life” column for the Sunday New York Times; is the author of six consecutive New York Times bestsellers; and is the presenter of two prime-time series on PBS. His two TED Talks have been viewed more than two million times.
About the book:
In this book, Bruce Feiler has drawn up a blueprint for modern families – a new approach to family dynamics, inspired by cutting-edge techniques gathered from experts in the disciplines of science, business, sports, and the military.
The result is a funny and thought-provoking playbook for contemporary families, with more than 200 useful strategies, which you can easily implement for your family. The book is packed with great ideas and is definitely worth reading.
Key Insights:
“I have tried to write the book I have most wanted to read as a spouse, parent, uncle, sibling, and adult child. I’ve broken down families into the things we all do – love, fight, eat, play; fool around, spend money, make pivotal life decisions – and tried to discover ways to do them better. I have sought out the most illuminating experiences, the smartest people, and the most effective families I could find as a way to assemble best practices of families today. My goal was to put together a playbook for happy families.”
We’ve got this book after watching Bruce Feiler’s TED talk on agile families (check it out). As we’ve used some agile technics in our family already (thanks to the project management experience), we thought that it actually links perfectly to developing “Autotelic family context” described by Csikszentmihalyi. But how glad we were to discover tons of ideas not only on parenting, but on other aspects of family life like fighting, holding difficult conversations, sex, finances, play, etc. In this fantastic book, Bruce shares the ideas from great minds and also supports them with relevant scientific evidence.
The book is packed with amazing ideas. In these notes we’ll share our favorite ones.
Implement Agile Tools Into Your Family Life
“The core idea of agile development is that life is constantly changing, and we have to organise ourselves in ways to allow us to react to changes in real time.”
Families are dynamic systems – they constantly undergoing change. Having a first child is a significant change for new parents. Then they may have a few more children. Once kids start sleeping through the night, they stop napping, once they finish nursery, they start school, once they start falling asleep by themselves, they start having homework and ask parents to help, interests are constantly changing – everything is a phase. So one of the most important characteristics of modern families is being “rapidly adaptable”. And here agile philosophy comes to help families, as it “accepts and embraces the everchanging nature of family life.”
To pick some agile parenting ideas, Feiler turned to the Starr family (in 2009 they wrote an influential white paper “Agile Practices for Families” – check it out) and Jeff Sutherland (who is credited with applying the word scrum to business). Here are three big ideas from them:
1) Introduce weekly family meetings:
“Agile development is a system of group dynamics in which workers are organized into small teams, each team huddles briefly every morning, and the team convenes for a longer gathering at week’s end to critique how it’s functioning. In the workplace, these gatherings are called “review and retrospective”; in the home, the Starrs called them “family meetings”.”
Family meetings are great for setting family goals, improving communication, discussing and resolving any issues, providing feedback to every family member. And that reminds of the “Autotelic family context” described by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (check out our notes on “Flow”) – family meetings are an amazing way to move from theory to practice.
Make a family meeting a special gathering, keep it under 20 minutes and let everyone speak (treats are optional). Discuss 3 questions as a family: 1) what things went well in our family this week?, 2) what things could we improve in our family? 3) what things will you commit to working on this week?
“Scientists at the University of California and elsewhere found that kids who plan their own time, set weekly goals, and evaluate their own work build up their prefrontal cortex and other parts of the brain that help them exert greater cognitive control over their lives. These so-called executive skills aid children with self-discipline, avoiding distractions, and weighing the pros and cons of their choices.”
– awesome stuff! Give your kids an opportunity to prepare for the future challenges, to practice their decision making skills and develop an autotelic personality!
2) Introduce “self-directed morning checklist” for kids
Checklists are super powerful (and there is research supporting the positive effects and benefits of checklists). That’s a great way to organise mornings, reduce stress and empower your kids. Create a morning checklist for each of your children (involve them in the process as well), and just watch the magic.
3) Let kids pick their own punishments and rewards
“By picking their own punishments, children become more internally driven to avoid them. By choosing their own rewards, children become more intrinsically motivated to achieve them.”
Of course, guide them on limits 🙂 and btw, intrinsic motivation is super important for our well-being and success.
Have Regular Meals as a Family
“A recent wave of research shows that children who eat dinner with their families are less likely to drink, smoke, do drugs, get pregnant, commit suicide, and develop eating disorders. Additional research found tat children who enjoy family meals have larger vocabularies, better manners, healthier diets, and higher self-esteem.”
Family meals have loads of scientifically proven benefits (including the fact that your “love hormone” oxytocin level rises as “Dr Love” Paul Zak found). If you can’t have dinner together, any shared meal would count (breakfast, snack, lunch). Can’t have a shared meal every day? No worries, “having joint meals as infrequently as once a week makes a difference.” Make it a tradition.
What you eat is kind of important (healthy meals always win), but what matters the most is what you talk about with your kids while having a meal.
Feiler shares a great “10-50-1 formula” for improving your family meals:
- Aim for ten minutes of quality talk per meal
- Let your kids speak at least half of the time
- Teach your kids one new word every meal
Check out the book for more inspiration on family meal traditions and quality talk ideas in the book – great stuff!
Share Family History
“As Marshall Duke discovered about children who know their history, the more kids remember about their own families, the more self-esteem and confidence they exhibit.”
If you want resilient, confident kids with high self-esteem, invest time in telling them your family’s history (e.g. recall events when they were little, tell them about your childhood, about their grandparents, create a family tree together, etc.). Family meals could be a great time to tell kids your stories. ☺
“The ones who know a lot about their families tend to do better when they face challenges”
Personally, we’ve incorporated this practice into our bedtime routine – we tell boys some family stories after reading when the lights go off. They are still little, but very engaged and curious.
Write a Family Mission Statement – Communicate Family Values
“Good families – even great families – are off track 90 per cent of the time. What makes them good is they have a clear destination in mind, and they have a flight plan to get there. As a result, when they face the inevitable turbulence and human error, they keep coming back to their plan.”
S. Covey
Feiler turned to Stephen Covey (author of the best seller “7 habits of highly effective people”) and Jim Collins (an expert on the subject of business management and company sustainability and growth, author of “Built to last”) for secrets of highly effective and successful families. They both agree that great families have a clear vision and mission. They know where they are heading to and how. They know their strengths and core values:
“If you are trying to identify your family’s core values, the most important thing is to identify what your values actually are, not what you think they should be. If you come at this whole thing as ‘we should have value X’ and you don’t, the process will fail. Only if they are deeply authentic can you hold on to them when it’s inconvenient, and that’s when you know it’s core”
Jim Collins
So question for you – what are your family mission and core values? What words best describe your family? Brainstorm about it with your spouse and kids, write it down and hang in a visible place (e.g. kitchen). And most importantly, make sure you live according to these values moment to moment.
P.S.: Check out our article How to Write a Family Manifesto! There we break down the process, laying out each step and sharing our very own Family Mission Statement.
P.P.S.: We’ve also shared our notes on Steven Covey’s brilliant book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families – check it out!
Set allowances and talk about money with your kids
“Although parents aren’t talking directly to their kids about money, they are passing on their attitudes on the topic.”
In the chapter about money talk, Feiler shares his findings and experience on how to educate your kids about money. That is something that loads of parents (even very wealthy parents) fail to do.
Idea number one – give your kids allowances, provide them with the framework on what they can do with the money (e.g. spend, save, give away, share) and let them practice.
“Getting an allowance does give kids practice with money, something they don’t learn about in school.”
Feiler also shares Byron Trott’s advice (who is like a banker to America’s wealthiest families, including Warren Buffet):
- Show them the money – talk to your kids about your finances, about your investments and debts. Teach them about assets and liabilities (as Robert Kiyosaki says in “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”)
- Take off the training wheels – let your kids make their own decisions about their money. “It’s a really good idea to bike into the ditch with a $6 allowance instead of $60,000 salary or $6 million inheritance” – very wise!
- Accept their passions, any passions. “Great people are great because they find their passion”. Don’t force on them your idea of what they have to do in life.
- Put them to work. Studies showed that children involved in part-time jobs became better at time management and are more likely to become successful and satisfied adults. “The most successful adults I know were all involved in business at a young age. All of them. Warren believes it’s the secret of success”. Studying and working simultaneously is not easy (personally, we’ve been there and think it was one of the best life lessons we could get), but benefits are so worth it. Encourage your kids to work!
Incorporate PLAY in your family life
“Games make us happy because we work toward goals. By mastering obstacles, we feel a sense of accomplishment. With that success, our bodies release a wave of chemicals, from adrenaline to dopamine, that make us feel exhilarated and resilient. The effects are even more powerful when we play those games in groups. By achieving goals with others, our bodies generate additional chemicals, including oxytocin, the so-called cuddle drug, that deepen our connection to those we’re playing with.”
Feiler turned to Zynga (the fastest growing social gaming company in history) for ideas on how to incorporate more offline games and play in family life (especially while on holiday ☺). In the book, he shares quite a few awesome games ideas, which you can play with your kids (read the book for inspiration). What is key here, all good games have four things in common:
- A clear goal – all players know exactly what they are trying to achieve
- Rules – there are limitations that force creativity and strategic thinking
- Feedback – could be points, scores, etc. – something that shows the progress towards the goal and gives players the motivation to keep playing
- Voluntary participation – the game is fun only when players choose to play
So next time you plan your family holiday, make sure you incorporate some offline gaming ☺ That would turn your holiday into an adventure – kids would definitely remember it for a long time.
One of the coolest ideas here is to turn your holiday/day out with kids into “The Amazing Race”, a family game where the winner is the one who gets the most points: 1) design a list of tasks/challenges for the kids. Make sure you mix hard and easy tasks (e.g. counting the steps to smth, tell what is your favorite picture and give 3 reasons why, etc). 2) Set clear point system – outline how many points each player gets for a task, set “bonus tasks”. 3) Set a reward – make sure it is worth the challenge ☺
Play more on a day to day basis and enjoy your life.
Key Takeaways:
- Be agile – you can start with introducing family meetings into your life.
- Talk a lot – use every opportunity to engage into a conversation with every family member.
- Brand your family – outline family mission statement and core values.
Quotes From The Book:
