Family meetings

This morning at breakfast I suggested that we have weekly family meetings in which everyone gets a chance to talk about their feelings from the week. My husband was skeptical because our 2 kids are so young (3yrs and 16mo) and kinda laughed so I said, “fine, let’s have a practice one right now.”Of course he suggested that the baby goes first because he loves being difficult, so I started by talking about teething issues and some behavior things we are working on and lo and behold, the baby took over and started babbling conversationally (it was so cute). My three year old went next and basically said that this week he wants more cookies and not to have to stop playing ever, then we talked about all the great things he is up to. He still has to stop playing to eat and sleep, but I don’t mind baking some cookies tonight. Each of us took a turn, basically my husband wants to buy the kids more pants so he doesn’t have to do laundry as much. For some reason we have a disproportionate number of shirts. Easy. I apologized for having a giant meltdown on Monday and said my goal for this week is to get into a better routine so I’m not so overwhelmed.So all in all, I think it was good and should help all of us communicate better, but I would love to hear from other parents who have family meetings. How do you structure them? Or is it more casual? Is it hard to keep it going, or do you fall into a schedule? I don’t want this to turn into a performance review or be stressful, but I would like everyone to have a chance to feel heard and practice expressing themselves even if they are still tiny. Would definitely love to hear from some veteran parents on tips and tricks or even general family communication advice. TIA!TL; DR Weekly family meetings, yay or nay? via /r/Parenting http://bit.ly/2Rdr3Gz