A New Year’s Resolution is a promise you make to yourself.
What better time to help your child focus on forming a good habit!
If you haven’t started this family tradition in your house hold, now is the time. Creating New Year’s resolutions with your kids is a great way to teach goal setting and responsibility at a young age. There are 3 aspects to a successful New Year’s promise.
Make it personal! They have to be invested in the promise. If they are too young to invest, make it fun and the will want to do it.
Make it simple! This is the stage of promise making that requires you to sit back and think, will my child actually keep this promise? If it’s complex like, ‘I will keep my room clean’, then the answer is probably not. But if you simplify the promise it might actually be more achievable. For example: ‘I will clean up all my toys everyday before I go to bed.
Make it achievable! Depending on the age of the child will depend on the amount of involvement you will have in the success of the promise. Make sure it is simple for them to complete and easy for you to help them achieve it. A visual or list for this goal would just be the icing on a perfect New Year promise.
Here are some examples:
Resolution (Promise) | Make it personal and simple | Make it achievable |
I will clean up after myself | I will put away my toys before I go to bed | I will put a sticker on my calendar every day I keep my promise |
I will watch less TV | I will only watch 1 hour of TV every day | I will make a list of things I can do instead of watching TV |
I will brush my teeth | I will brush my teeth when I wake up in the morning and before I go to bed | I will have a dance party while brushing my teeth |