t’s Not Too Late! New Year’s Resolutions for Parents and Kids They Can Stick to That Will Make Life Better
- Updated on 02 Mar 2021
- Parents Corner
Introduction
The intention to resolve to do something isn’t reserved only for adults. Children have the grit and perseverance, and more importantly, a necessity, to make promises to themselves. Whether they achieve the said new year’s resolutions depends upon their environment and the hardships that they need to endure. We all fail. Remember the time we regretted paying for a one-year subscription in gyms? Or curtailing/eradicating some bad habits we suffer, like unhealthy eating or having an erratic sleep pattern. Again, we all fail.
But if the path to success is paved with smooth roads, there is no meaning in having any resolution. I would even go as far as saying that your victory on a particular resolution is not as crucial as your struggle to stay true to it. Why? The lessons you picked up when fulfilling the resolutions are the actual gain. The discipline, the hard work, the patience, all of these crucial skills to win in life shall be learned through falters, failures, and disappointments.
And no time is more perfect than a new year to teach your kids to have a resolution. But the key is to create resolutions that do not require the kid to struggle too much, but it should not be a cakewalk too. Too arduous, your child would put the efforts to fulfill the resolutions on a back burner. Too undemanding, the child will get bored and not bother with the resolution at all. Moderation is the keyword.
To help you out, we have compiled a list of new year’s resolutions you can lead your kids to take.
Optimal new year’s resolutions for kids
- Internet
Most adult resolutions focus on what not to do rather than what to do. We know that some of our hobbies or a particular lifestyle is unhealthy, in a few cases, detrimental. So we want to cut back on them. And the primary drawback of kids of this era is overindulgence on the internet. Let it be Facebook or Instagram; every social media platform has a potential risk of feeding our children with negative news. Doomscrolling has severe effects on our kids’ sprouting psyche.
To help them come out of it unscathed, a parent should make their kids take a new year’s resolution of not spending a lot of time in cyberspace.
- Eating healthy
Child obesity poses a serious threat to posterity. Access to fast food has never been so easy, what with the advent of numerous food delivery apps. The consumption of fast food is at an all-time high, leading the next generation to face the problem of obesity. Overweight will lead to other serious health complications like diabetes or heart-related issues.
So if you make your child resolve to eat healthily, you have successfully prevented him/her from suffering this problem. It is not easy to give up on them, so first, ask them to cut it back to just once a week. In time, your kid will lose interest in that and forsake the habit of eating junk food altogether, except maybe an occasional nibble once in a long while.
- Bedtime
A ruined circadian rhythm is mostly the manifestation of the two aforementioned problems: the internet or obesity. Excessive weight is known to cause sleep apnea, which spoils the quality of their lives. Similarly, staying awake late at night and consuming the internet will also disrupt their natural sleep-wake cycle.
One of the new year’s resolutions should be to go to bed every night before some fixed timing can help your child overcome these issues.
- Physical activities
Kids have seemingly illimitable energy for running around. Instead of wasting all this childhood power, make them direct it towards something beneficial. A resolution targeting to involve them in a sport will be advantageous. Your kids might even find that they love a sport so much they would even contemplate building a career in it.
- Infrastructure
Stellar performance in schools is something every parent would wish for their kids. After all, a good chunk of the money we so strenuously earn goes into their education. But good performance doesn’t come naturally to most of the kids. Because come on…they are kids. They would much rather stare at a wall than studying trigonometry.
So teaching them to have studies-oriented infrastructure will help them in the long run. Schools, and eventually colleges, take a good part of kids’ lives. When you make your kid resolve to have some infrastructure, their performance in schools increases. Something as simple as studying for just one hour every morning will do the trick. Following stringent discipline and commitment will lead to increased performance and a sense of betterhood in their lives.
Promises to yourselves
You have to have resolutions as well. I am not talking about eating less fast food or limiting your time on Netflix. No. You need to have some new year’s resolutions that will help you help your kids.
- Quality time
Take a resolution to spend a lot of time with your kids; at least one hour every second day would do. Nothing benefits kids in the long run except your constant reminder to them that you are both willing and loving to spend time with them. It will create friendship between the parent and the child. From facing bullies at schools to making some significant career decisions, they would seek your counsel.
- Helping with schoolwork
We get it. After a long day at work or doing the household chores, you just want to rest. It feels good to leave the responsibilities of our kids’ education to teachers. But your child might not be confident while doing math homework, or he just couldn’t understand chemistry, and they could be shy to clear their doubts in the classroom. If you have resolved to help your children with their schoolwork, it will positively benefit the child to do well in school. Also, there is an added advantage of bonding with your kid.
- Teaching life skills
If your kid is crossing adolescence and stepping into teenage, you have the responsibility to teach them important things like cooking, doing laundry, paying taxes, and driving. Every year after your kid becomes an adolescent, take a resolution to teach them one or two life skills in that year, so by the time they reach adulthood, they are equipped to tackle life easily.
- Inducing empathy
Resolving to impart the skill of understanding perspectives in your child is another ability that would help them throughout their lives. Showing them an act of kindness here and there, like feeding a stray animal or donating clothes to the homeless, will make them treat the world with the same compassion. And it is in a pathetic deficit of such benevolent people.
Conclusion
It is clear that making your kids take up a well-intentioned resolution is inadequate in them having a successful life. You also have responsibilities to fulfill that will help in their transition from little wide-eyed children to responsible humans. If you keep true to your resolutions pertaining to your kids, it will set up a good example so that when you become grandparents, your kids will do the same job of bringing up their own kids with the same utmost devotion you’ve given them.
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