Notes on Bruce Feiler Authors@Google Talk

I had the pleasure of meeting and hearing Bruce Feiler speak at Google about his book The Secrets of Happy Families. I expected to hear some of the traditional/cliché advice and have it be very prescriptive, but I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn't. Bruce dug up some interesting research and spent his time visiting with families all over the world to find out some commonalities of things that should be done and also avoided.

Below are some of my notes on the talk. I look forward to reading his book sometime soon.

• Biggest learning from positive psychology is that biggest source of happiness is relationships
  


• High functioning families adapt all the time
  
• Constantly forced to change and react
  
• Rarely able to be proactive
  
• Kid number one wish is for parents to be less stressed
  
• Weekly family agile meetings
  
• Public accountability
  
• Morning checklist with list of everyone's obligations
  
• Weekly Sunday meeting
  
• 3 questions
  
• What worked well
  
• What didn't work well
  
• What will we agree to work on in week ahead
  
• All give ideas
  
• Vote on 2 to work on
  
• Gives access to innermost child thoughts
  
• Let kids with adult supervision pick their own rewards and punishments
  
• Don't have to discuss all battles in the moment but can resolve on Sunday
  
• Be mindful of how function as a family
  


• Have to empower your kids
  
• Have kids set own work plans, evaluate selves
  
• Builds up their brains from fmri research
  


• Parents don't have all the answers
  
• Allow kids to criticize their parents and let off steam


• Second big idea: talk a lot
  
• High functioning teams have a lot of communication
  
• Talk about what it means to be part of your family
  
• Talked to Jim Collins
  
• Preserve the core and stimulate progress
  
• Define core identity
  
• Creating family mission statement
  
• Talk to kids about what they think our family values are
  


• Family dinner
  
• It is nice if can do it but the core part of the convo can be moved to family breakfast or meal out on weekend or whenever
  
• What matters is the family part
  


• Things to do in family convo
  
• 1. Word a day
  
• Teach one new word a day
  
• Bring newspapers and mags and catalogs with color names
  
• It's ok to google at dinner for new knowledge
  
• Have kids teach new words and slang to parents
  


• 2. Autobiography night
  
• Kids narrating story about self
  
• Parents who ask more elaborating questions like who/what/where/when/why have kids develop narration skills better
  


• 3. Talk about your family history
  
• Where grandparents were born
  
• Where parents went to high school
  
• Stories of overcoming disease or obstacle
  
• Kids who understand more of this are more confident and feel more control over lives
  
• Ascending family narrative: gain
  
• Descending family narrative: loss
  
• Oscillating family narrative: cycles
  
• Children who understand their oscillating family narrative have better ability to overcome obstacles


• Third big point: go out and play
  
• Spend less time worrying about what do wrong and focus on what enjoy
  
• Limit amount of conflict
  


• "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." (Anna Karenina by Leo Tolsoy)
  


• Happiness is not something you find but something you make
  


• Secret to happy family: try
  



• Game at dinner
  
• Bad/good
  
• What they did bad today, what they did good
  
• Or highs/lows
  


• Family meetings should be about how family doing not about individual highs and lows
  


• Play improv game at beginning and end of family meeting as marker
  
• Put allowance at end of family meeting
  


• Don't talk about difficult stuff midstream of week or late at night but at specified time


• Groups make better decisions
  
• Vote before discussion so loudest person doesn't overwhelm
  
• If have more than 1 woman in a group it will make a better decision
  
• Get ppl into family difficult convo even if don't know much
  


• Give warring siblings a task to do together
  
• Enlist kids into contact with grandparents
  
• Be open about difficulties with your kids
  
• Don't pretend to be supermom
  
• Game: pain points
  
• Everyone says what they are struggling with
  
• Have kids help you solve your dilemmas
  

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