Before asking for new ideas, share a few things that have already been tried and failed, honestly and without defensiveness, then ask the group what else might work. What Didn’t Work turns a parent’s own past mistakes into the actual starting point for a better solution.
Why this helps
Starting a brainstorm with “what should we try?” often produces the same few obvious suggestions a group has already half-considered. Starting instead with an honest account of what’s already been tried and failed gives everyone a clearer, more specific sense of the actual problem, and tends to produce more creative, genuinely different suggestions than starting from a blank slate.
What you need
Nothing but an honest willingness to share a few past failed attempts.
How to play
Identify a real, ongoing problem the family is trying to solve. Before asking for new ideas, share a few ways you’ve already tried to address it that didn’t actually work, explained honestly and specifically, not defensively: “I tried setting a timer for screen time, but it kept getting ignored once everyone got absorbed in something.”
Once a few honest failures are on the table, open it up: given what we now know doesn’t work, what else might we try? Encourage the group to specifically avoid suggesting anything too close to what’s already failed, pushing toward genuinely new territory.
Why admitting failure first actually helps
It might seem like leading with failure would discourage a group, but the opposite tends to happen: specific, honest information about what doesn’t work narrows the problem down considerably, and removes the temptation to simply re-suggest an idea that’s already been quietly tried and abandoned. It also models something genuinely valuable for a child watching, that admitting something didn’t work isn’t embarrassing, it’s just useful information.
Why this works especially well for persistent family problems
Problems that keep coming back, chores, screen time, sibling squabbles over the same recurring issue, often do so because the family keeps circling the same handful of familiar solutions without ever being specific about why they failed. Laying out the actual, honest failures first forces a more precise, more creative conversation than another vague round of “let’s all try harder.”
A few honest admissions about what hasn’t worked, shared without defensiveness, turn out to be a surprisingly good starting point for finally finding something that does, considerably more useful than pretending the problem is being tackled completely fresh.
