Scott--give your family members a 35 or 28 or 24 and teach them how to zone focus.
Stop the lens down a bit (f4 will do) and show them how the focus on those lenses can be adjusted by looking at the lens, not just through the RF.
For reference, a 35mm lens on the M8 at f4 and focusing at 8 feet has 3 feet of forgiveness, a 28 has 5 feet and a 24 has over 7 feet (2 in front and 5 behind)!
They don't need to be totally accurate with the RF on moving subjects, in other words, but if you show them how this works it will free them up without the distraction of a ground-glass or LCD
FWIW, in my experience, non-pros regularly miss stuff with AF anyway in my experience because they honestly don't know when AF will work or when it won't. They just put it down to user error and accept a bad shot.
Zone focus, on the other hand, can be a revelation to someone who's never done it before.
I would hate to see AF on an M body personally.