How To Make and Keep New Year’s Family Resolutions
The end of the year is a great time for families to reflect on all of the things they accomplished during the year. It’s especially a great time for you to acknowledge all of your children’s achievements.
Along with the acknowledgement, it’s a great time to identify new goals for the coming year. A Rexburg preschool put together these tips for making New Year’s resolutions with your family.
Make it a Family Activity
Share your New Year’s resolutions – don’t keep them to yourself. Get the entire family involved.
Allow each family member to pick something they want to achieve during year – whether it’s learning a new sport, reading 150 books, losing 50 pounds, help each family member pick a goal they are willing to work towards.
This is a great time to decide if there’s anything that you want to work on as a family too – more family activities, less fighting, family dinners, etc.
In addition to these goals helping you to more closely bond as a family, it also creates an opportunity for every family member to hold everyone accountable to their goals. The kids should know the parents’ goals so they can remind them to work on it, and the parents should help their kids with their goals.
Post Your Goals
Make a poster with everyone’s New Year’s resolutions. Place it in a visible and well trafficked location in the house.
It will serve as a reminder for everyone to keep working toward their individual and family goals. You can even make a checklist for each individual’s goals.
Checking off items on a list helps people feel like they accomplished something. The visual and physical representation of achieving their goal will make it that much more exciting and desirable.
Be a Role Model
It’s difficult for anyone to break old habits or to start new ones, especially young children. So be the role model for your family when it comes to accomplishing your New Year’s resolutions.
Show your children you’re actively working towards your goals. This will remind them they have goals to be working towards too.
Acknowledge Success
When a member of your family achieves their goals or is seen actively working to attain their goals, you should congratulate them. Acknowledge the great work they’re doing.
When kids receive praise, they beam and seek out ways to get more of this good attention. They’ll continue doing the good work on their resolutions.
Likewise, when a child sees their sibling is receiving praise for reaching their goal, they will want to reach their goal to receive that same attention.
You can even create a reward system when you set your goals as a family. Maybe every month your family works towards their goals you go out for ice cream to celebrate.
Help your children to pick suitable resolutions for themselves and rewards that will make the end goal worthwhile. Continue to remind them of their goals and the rewards they will get for accomplishing them.
