As adults, we typically think about New Year’s resolutions as goals for ourselves with buying gym memberships, going vegan for a month or doing dry January… with it not always going to plan! Resolution setting can be a great opportunity to find out what our kids want from the next year of their life, their hopes and dreams and things they want to learn. 

As a parent, this activity can help you to support your child to achieve all the things they want to this year and develop and grow into even more amazing little people! Having everyone write out their resolution and keeping it in a place that is seen every day is a great idea. I love using the fridge or on our post-it board or my whiteboard and that is a great place to use dry erase markers and write our resolutions out and remind ourselves each day.

We can also use jars to keep track of how many times we do our resolutions, by putting a bead or stone in the jar, or put together a family competition of how many days in a row you can stay true to your resolution. We are all really competitive and that helps us without accountability and make it fun rather than it becoming a chore that we end up avoiding. When you miss a day, you have to start again and whoever has gone the longest each month, wins!

But the most important thing for us is we get to sit down and talk as a family. Our lives can get so busy and we can have all these wishes and wants for our kids but I always get surprised at their will to achieve and learn more about the world.  And a new year is a new start, and full of much fun and opportunity!

What are the components of resolutions?

Just like any other goals, we should make resolutions that are SMART. 

By making our resolutions that are SMART they are just more likely to be achieved but also when we do not only will we feel the positive reward of success but also, in turn, won’t avoid it because it’s realistic. 

In saying this remembering that kids don’t have the same barriers as adults and if they want to be a Unicorn or visit Nasa, we as parents might have to think outside the box to make that happen!