Our Family Mission Statement

I shared my experience of writing a mission statement with my 6 year old son. To give him an idea of what it's all about, I suggest we write one for our family. We came up with a few ideas, of course I had to cross out most of his suggestions (one of which was "To be allowed to play PS2 all day") and in the end, we came up with this:

• To learn, love & laugh together EVERYDAY


• To use MAGIC words (Please, Thank you & I'm Sorry) generously


• To fill a NEED, when there's a need

My son said it's a piece of cake for the first 2 missions, but having trouble with mission 3. I borrowed that phrase from "The Robots" movie where Mr.Bigweld uses it to encourage fellow robots to be inventive (find a problem and create a solution for it). So I guess my son was afraid that he might need to invent a new thing to help others. I told him he need not be afraid to fill in a big need. Showed him some examples of how he can in fact fill a need without an invention. For example, offer to help carry things for others, or help by playing with his little sis to keep her occupied while mummy is cooking, or help close the window when it gets too chilly. He was less apprehansive once I shared all these kind of small things he can do, to fill a need. No fancy invention is needed. Immediately he agreed, and put his signature & tumbprint of the printout of our Family Mission Statement.

Another wonderful thing is that, everynight before the children go to bed, they make a check on all three missions, whether or not each of us have fullfill them. Once everybody have shared how they fullfilled each mission for the day, we all feel very proud of ourselves and declared it a day. That's when the kids will pull over their blanket and sleep. Isn't that wonderful? And yes, we had to use the Talking Stick to give each other the chance to share their stories....Thank God I have only 2 children so far!