Its resolution making time again and I know you have your major goals set on career, relationship, health and business. How about setting some household goals? When you put your effort into meaningful goals that will benefit your household, you can have a profound effect on family relationships, organization and teamwork in the year ahead.
To get you started, here are five resolutions that can help you make a huge difference in your child’s behavior and your family dynamics.
1. Commit to spend more time with each child
This is the most important resolution! Spending at least 10 minutes per day of uninterrupted, one-on-one time with each of your children builds emotional connections, reduces negative behaviors, and makes children more cooperative.
Be sure you’re fully present during that time – turn off your phones – OK not turn off but put them on silent and try to ignore the to-do list in your head so your kids know they’re your top priority. Bottomline, make it a resolution to be more involved with them. Remember that quality time is about connection, not teaching, so it’s mostly unstructured
2. Get everyone helping with house chores
Resolve that this year will be the year you stop doing all the heavy lifting with the housework alone! Each of your children should be required to shoulder some age-appropriate, meaningful responsibilities that contribute to the family’s daily life. You can start by holding a family meeting to make a list of all the jobs that must be done weekly and decide how to divide the workload – this should be fun!
3. Be a role model parent
You know how we say respect is reciprocal? Well same rules apply to our children. If you want to raise kids who are considerate and respectful, right through the teen years, take a deep breath, and speak to them respectfully. After all, kids learn from what we model. You need to learn to be a 21st century parent. If we can’t manage our own emotions, we can’t expect our kids to learn to manage theirs.Â
4. Know what your child is doing online
This does not mean spying or constant monitoring however, your teenagers self-worth is important. Make a resolution to be aware and act on concerns just as you would for any other matter. Especially if you have teenagers – who in any case are mostly driven by an ever increasing desire to feel among – to do whatever their mates are doing and, secondly, to be an independent individual (hence the desire to keep their lives increasingly private from you). Note that your child’s self-worth is important.Â
5. Avoid Information Overload
Today, it’s almost impossible to avoid feeling overwhelmed by information— whether it’s email or social media. Resolve to manage your time properly and respond to messages at their right time. It’s important, to set expectations – You can train people to expect you to respond immediately by doing just that. Likewise, you can train them to wait on your responses by making them wait … [until] it is convenient for you to check your mail. The quality of your family life will improve when you embrace time as a friend, not foe.Â
Have you made new year resolutions around the family? Have you set important family goals for 2017? Share with us so other mothers can learn. Please drop your message in the comment boxes below.
