With each year that goes by, it’s easy to feel like things are going way too quickly, and way too much has happened in the world. There are unexpected changes both good and bad on individual, family, community, and even national levels. Many of these require us to adjust quickly, find ways to cope, or adapt our strategies for achieving our goals. When the year starts coming to a close, it’s a great time for reflection and for seeing just how much was accomplished (or in some cases, why goals were not reached). Then, following reflection is a great time for looking forward; to move our enthusiasm and optimism to the coming year and to give hope to our kids for the things that follow in the new year.
To do this, we have to remind children to look favorably to the future, and making New Year’s resolutions for kids is a great way to achieve this. For kids, resolutions are more than just goals, although this really depends on their age. Commonly, New Year’s resolutions for kids are a way for children to create healthy habits and achieve milestones in their development.
As a parent, you can help your child to reflect on the year that passed and create meaningful resolutions that are going to keep them motivated to work hard in the year that’s to come. In this article, we’ll show you how creating resolutions can have a positive impact on your kid, how to do it, and share some of the most common and useful New Year’s resolutions for kids.
The Benefits of Setting New Year’s Resolutions for Kids
First things first. How important is it for kids to make New Year’s resolutions? Well, it can go both ways. Easily, New Year’s resolutions can be just some words on yet another piece of paper we’re going to forget about as soon as we put it away. However, New Year’s resolutions can also be powerful tools for modeling behavior and acquiring new skills, especially for younger kids.
It really depends on how much effort you’re going to put into this process and how much you’ll hold your children accountable. If you take it seriously while working toward a New Year’s goals, kids will also acquire:
- Self-reflection: “This is why I want to improve.”
- Self-awareness: “I’m here but I want to be there. This is what I need to get there.”
- Self-discipline: “I must be persistent, patient, stay on track, and work hard if I want to achieve something.”
- Self-esteem: “I’m capable of achieving my goals.”
Beyond this, kids will also improve their problem-solving skills, develop a positive mindset toward their abilities, and have more control over things.
The Process: Creating a New Year’s Resolutions for Kids
So, how does one go on to create New Year’s resolutions for kids? Off the top of our head, we’re sure that each of us can think of at least five different New Year’s resolutions that are beneficial for all kids. However, just because a resolution is good or appeals to us, it doesn’t mean it’s the right one for our child.
Resolutions only work if they have an internal value, meaning they’re specific and valuable to that person’s development or happiness. An excellent example of this would be the common New Year’s resolution: “I want to read more books.” This is a great goal for many, but if your child already reads a lot of books, this resolution can put too much pressure, which will negatively impact their motivation and even cause the opposite effect – reading fewer books than before.
Here’s how to create good resolutions for your kid.
Reflect on the Year That Passed
Start the process with an open conversation with your child. Sit down and ask them what they think about the year that passed. What was good and what can be improved?
Questions to promote reflection in kids:
- What do you want to happen in the next year?
- What was missing in this year?
- How can we make things better?
- What do you want to change?
- What do you want to improve or learn in the next year?
- What do you need to achieve that and how can I help you?
The questions above will help you direct the conversation and identify the most essential things that your child can work on in the next year. Best of all, this is how your kids will start to develop self-awareness about their own wishes and needs.
Identify Potential Resolutions
The next phase in the process is to identify potential resolutions from the conversation you had with your child. This is actually the second part of the conversation. Do it together with your child by letting them discover their own resolutions. Your job is to identify potential resolutions, paraphrase the conversation into concise questions, and ask your child whether that’s what they had in mind.
For instance, let’s imagine that your child said they were really embarrassed when they had to present their homework through the online application. They didn’t know how to format the presentation slides as the other classmates did and they had trouble using the platform.
From this, you can ask: “So, what you’re saying is that you want to learn how to make better presentations?”
This is something that could potentially be a good academic New Year’s resolution for kids. However, whether it’s going to be a good resolution depends on the next step.
Define the Resolutions
Did you know that studies show that only 8% of Americans who make New Year’s resolutions actually stick to them? There are many reasons for this disappointing percent, but a major factor is that most resolutions are not defined right.
Just like any other goal, New Year’s resolutions for kids need to be well-defined. For this task, you and your child can use the SMART criteria for defining goals.
SMART is a mnemonic acronym that stands for:
- Specific – First and foremost, goals must be specific. “I want to read more books” is not a specific goal. Instead, transform that wish into a resolution by saying: “By the end of the year, I want to read 20 books outside my school assignments.” This way the goal is time-sensitive and measurable, which takes us to the next criteria.
- Measurable – Goals are specific if they can be measured. “I want good grades” is difficult to measure, as we don’t know what we mean by “good” grades and in which subjects. For some, having Bs and one or two Cs is considered “good” grades, while for others even two or three Bs among all As will be disappointing. Make the resolution measurable, so your child can keep track of their progress.
- Attainable – Another important criterion is how realistic the goal is. Resolutions should be ambitious but attainable, otherwise, children will quickly lose motivation and confidence in their abilities. “I’ll get all As on all the tests this year” is a specific and measurable goal, but incredibly ambitious and might put too much pressure on kids. They can get a B on a test and still get an A as a final grade, which is more important than acing all the tests.
- Relevant – This is something that we briefly discussed in the previous paragraph. Resolutions must be valuable and of interest to the kid. They have to want to achieve that goal. You should never dictate resolutions such as “I will clean my room more often” if your child isn’t interested. Cleaning their room is important, but it won’t work as a New Year’s resolution unless your child wants that for themselves.
- Time-bound – Another aspect of making a resolution specific is to make it time-sensitive. If your child has their whole life to achieve something, chances are they won’t be motivated to start working on it anytime soon. This is like opening the door to procrastination. There is always something more important as delaying the resolution won’t mean failing.
The End Result: What a Good Resolution List Looks Like?
The final result should be a list of well-defined New Year’s resolutions that both you and your child came up with together. But, what is the magic number? Should kids focus on one resolution or come up with a couple of resolutions?
This is highly individual, although you should be careful not to go overboard and overwhelm your kid. This will only lean in frustration because the completion of the whole list will be unattainable, even if each resolution on itself is realistic. A good way to avoid the trap of setting too much resolution is to think of them in different life-categories.
School, personal life, and social relationships are the three most basic aspects that are part of all of us. This way, you can have an academic resolution, a family resolution, and a personal development resolution.
Try to come up with one to two resolutions in each category. You can have less, but the rule of thumb is that more than that is too much.
10 New Year’s Resolutions for Kids
Each year millions of people make New Year’s resolutions, which means that whatever you can think of, someone out there has already tried it. If you need inspiration for coming up with New Year’s resolutions for your child, here are some of the most common New Year’s resolutions for kids:
- “I will have a veggie salad with every lunch this year.”
- “I won’t eat more than three/four snacks weekly.”
- “I’ll buy a special notebook and start taking notes in class.”
- “I won’t go to bed later than 11 pm.”
- “I’ll take up swimming lessons (any sport) in January.”
- “I’ll do my homework right after classes each day.”
- “I’m going to learn to ride a bike before the summer.”
- “I’m going to visit my grandparents every month.”
- “I’m going to improve my three lowest grades.”
- “I’m going to improve my drawing skills by practicing at least four days a week.”
How To Motivate Your Child to Stick With the Resolutions?
Before we finish, let’s briefly discuss another major concern of most parents, which is how to make the kids stick to the New Year’s resolution through the whole year.
This is yet another thing that’s highly individual and depends on your kid’s character. However, there are a few things that can definitely help.
First, make sure your child’s New Year’s resolutions are well defined as we discussed using the SMART criteria. Second, help your kid to develop discipline by holding them accountable. Remind them of their resolutions, especially in the beginning before they turn it into a habit. Third, consider working together. This is going to be an amazing support and will motivate your kid to work harder. Finally, reflect each month of the progress and the feelings that arise while working on the resolutions.
Before You Leave
Hopefully, our article was a useful guide that’s going to help you and your kids identify meaningful resolutions that are going to aid your child’s development. We’re all excited when talking about the new year’s opportunities but don’t let that be just an empty talk. Use our tips to hold your child accountable and make the new year a success story.
If you want to make the process easier and more fun, download our New Year’s worksheet bundle where you’ll find a worksheet about New Year’s Resolutions. As a bonus, your child will also learn a lot of new stuff about this worldwide celebration.
Also, don’t forget to keep up with our blog, where we regularly share interesting articles like this one. We have so many educational topics coming up in the new year!
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