Five-facet reviews of your children

For all who believe that our children came from a premortal existence and have already-formed personalities and characters, the challenge is to "find out who they really are" — to discover their truest and deepest and most unique spiritual selves.

The best method we have ever found for trying to really know each child as an individual is a practice — a monthly habit — that we call the "Five Facet Review."

On the first Friday of every month, we have a standing date to work on this review. It meant going out to a restaurant and spending some time talking only about our children — as individuals. We talk about each of the five facets of their lives and how we thought they were doing in each: physically, mentally, emotionally, socially and spiritually.

Now you might think that with nine children and five facets for each one to talk about we'd have to go to a Chinese restaurant with 45 courses. NOT! We found that most of the kids were doing fine in most categories, but every once in a while we would hit a bump. One needed reading help; we later learned that he had some pretty interesting learning disabilities which we may not have noticed had we not zeroed in on how he was doing mentally. Another was socially awkward and we decided to have her invite friends to our house with the specific purpose of watching what happened while she was interacting to see if we could find ways to help.

You get the picture. All in all, although we're sure we missed some months, we really believe that we caught some little problems before they became big and had a handle on what each of our children was really about. It was fun and a great way to make our marriage feel like a partnership. We felt that the two of us — the top management of our family if you will — were able to brainstorm about our stewardships and that we received inspiration as we talked about what each of them needed. It was better than some general set of parenting ideas because it was just us, the parents, thinking about each of our unique kids, and really applying ourselves to thinking hard about who they are and what gifts they have and what they need most in all five facets of their lives.

Now our married children are doing similar reviews about their own children. Our daughter Shawni, who has five children ranging in age from four to 14, has a terrific blog post on the idea. She and her husband have a little different way of doing this, but it works for them. Here are some excerpts from Shawni:

"With five kids running around sometimes the unique, individual needs of each one of them get lost in the shuffle.

"That's where our 'Five-Facet Reviews' come in.