Why Family Mediation?
Family mediation allows for the recognition and co-mingling of individual thoughts, feelings, and desires without judgment and criticism. It is in the sanctity of the family where we want and deserve to be listened to, understood and appreciated.
Even though the family unit is connected biologically and/or environmentally, this does not automatically ensure peace and tranquility in the home! It is here where we can learn and practice the skills to get along and unconditionally love one another.
How the Family Can Unite:
Here we will identify the uniqueness of each member and find shared needs and desires. From there we can establish shared ideas for creating solutions to family issues that everyone can live with. In some cases, non-negotiable rules must be established for the safety and welfare of all concerned.
Mediation Mentor Advantages:
- An emotionally detached mediator can monitor and reframe communications in a way that may not have been heard or understood before.
- Issues can be presented in a less confrontational way.
- Even non-negotiable issues can benefit from full discussion and dissipate anger and hurt feelings.
- Options and alternative solutions can be more easily explored.
Benefits of Family Mediation
- You will gain a toolbox of knowledge and skills for negotiating family conflicts.
- The established family agreement format will ease the time and emotional demands on all family members in the future.
- Relationships will improve, boundaries will be understood and most experience a more calming, harmonious home environment.
Client Examples
Real life situations: mediated with human values
- Everything has been going great until now with my teenager. I thought we had an agreement on curfew time. He’s late and I am angry and I’m going to let him have a piece of my mind!
Action: You should go to the human values checklist and balance any anger and get in touch with the reasoning behind your position before entering into a conversation with him. Calm communication with your well thought out concerns and feelings will impress on him how important this curfew thing is to both of you. Acting when angry emotions are present and from an imbalanced position for all concerned only creates more anger and separation.
- My children play their mother and me against each other. She seems to consistently take the opposit side. This is causing total chaos in our home. How can I get my wife to understand the importance of creating a united front?
Action: We will go to the human values checklist and use it to make a plan to present to her where she can feel empowered and show her you can work together as a team to get consistency and order in the home. Her need to one-up-you maybe because she is feeling unnoticed and not respected. It should improve your relationship with her as well as with the children. When the parents work together as a team, children tend to give in after a few tries and calm down.
- Its vacation time and everyone wants to do something different. How do we decide what to do?
Action: We will suggest that everyone consult the human values checklist to see how what “they” want to do can fit into a “we” mode by comparing it to the list. Then we can identify everyone’s personal interests and move forward into finding similarities. From there we will create a solution and a plan that will make everyone happy.
If you’d like to find out more about Family Mediation, contact The Mediation Mentor »