The Parents’ Guide to Introducing New Year’s Resolutions to Kids
The start of a new year is an inspiring time and a great opportunity to introduce your kids to new ideas like intention setting. That’s right, New Year's resolutions aren't just for adults!
The end of December and the beginning of January is such a fruitful period to share concepts like self-reflection, setting goals, and forming new habits with children. Teaching them to pursue different goals year on year and consciously build and maintain new good habits will help them develop into flexible, ever-evolving humans who embrace change and growth.
This year, we invite you to reimagine New Year’s resolutions as:
Behaviors that you want to become habits
New opportunities for teamwork as a family
A fun opportunity to see what your child wants to do.
This may turn into a fun, encouraging, and invigorating new tradition! As a starter, here are just a few fascinating ideas for discussing New Year’s resolutions for kids and families:
Committing to doing one act of kindness daily.
Choosing a volunteering mission together as a family.
Practicing reframing negative thoughts.
Starting to live in a more eco-friendly way.
So jump on board with us on this empowering journey, and welcome your children to join you in making New Year’s resolutions — both personal ones and those for the whole family.
The Concept of Habits
A habit is a behavior that is performed regularly. According to the American philosopher Will Durant who once shared this powerful and uplifting idea: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” Meaning, if we want to change, to achieve something different and new, we need to change our behaviors, stick to them, and perform them consistently. How? The secret to achieving big changes is to break down every habit into small, easy-to-follow, daily steps.
Self-Efficacy Theory
That leads us to a very impactful and mind-opening theory in psychology: the self-efficacy concept, which teaches that we are all active shapers of our environment. When equipped with this belief, there are few limits to what one can accomplish.
Teach your kids to be active participants in their environment, and that they can change it by changing themselves and by believing in their abilities. By empowering children with practical ways to change habits, pursue new goals, and follow daily intentions, we can help them start believing in their skills, potentials, and abilities.
Forming New Habits and Planning Successful Changes
If you tie together Will Durant’s wisdom and the powerful message of the self-efficacy theory, you’ll see that by repeatedly engaging in daily behaviors, humans can create meaningful change in the long-term. The first big step is to realize you want to do it and to shape it into a plan with goals, actions, and timing. That’s what setting New Year’s resolutions will teach children.
Brainstorming Resolutions
After explaining the idea of habits, behaviors, and goals, it’s time to sit down to set resolutions with your children and together as a family. In addition to being fun and exciting, it’s a great way to share desire for growth and development, sets a good example for personal accountability, and is an opportunity for family bonding. Of course, just like everything else, parents should walk the walk and talk the talk to be most effective.
Gather together and start sharing everyone’s personal dreams and goals for the next 365 days ahead. First, brainstorm and write down all ideas, and then start to narrow them down. To be most effective and prevent getting overwhelmed, focus on 3-4 goals.
From our own experience, coming up with three or four broad categories works pretty well. We like to focus on health (eating habits, sports, hygiene), environment (eco-friendly practices that protect nature), relationships (family, friends, school, community), and learning (life-long curiosity towards learning, reading, and self-development). Those four topics, we believe, provide a solid foundation for creating healthy, conscious, and resilient grown-ups.
Encourage your child to start analyzing their own behaviors by thinking about:
How do I want to improve this year? (self-reflection)
What do I need to do to reach my goal? (self-advocacy)
Am I moving toward my goal? Are my actions leading to progress? (self-awareness)
What can I do to be on track? (problem-solving and self-control)
How will achieving my goal make me feel? (self-esteem)
Asking the right questions will hold space for self-reflection, daydreaming, and will awaken curiosity and the willingness for future achievements and success. Here is a helpful list of some more prompts we find useful:
Think about some of the things you want to be doing this year.
What will make you better at school? At sports? At home? As a friend/sibling?
What do you want to improve in yourself?
What new skills do you want to learn?
Is there a hobby that you can grow into something bigger, if you spend more time and effort on it?
Are there some things that you could do better or differently?
Are there situations where you can act nicer?
How can we be kinder to nature?
How can we be better to our community?
Selecting our resolutions and setting smart goals
We can’t highlight enough how important it is to suggest resolutions that focus on your child’s personal passions and interests. While doing that, give ideas and alternatives, but stay away from navigating the process for them; otherwise the intentions won’t be personal. We all follow the intentions that we set deeply in our hearts, that are important to us, resonate with us, and energize us. We don’t follow as devotedly the ones that are simply handed to us.
What’s more, when shortlisting resolutions, help your children make them concrete, specific, and manageable. Or just follow the SMART formula – specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely. Nice-sounding but vague resolutions won’t set us up for change and success. Try to replace statements like “I will eat healthy” with something more detailed and specific like: “I will eat vegetables twice daily and fish at least 3 times weekly”. Here is how you can do it thanks to the SMART formula:
Specific: Word the resolution like a goal that includes the skill your child is working on, and how they will achieve it.
Measurable: Encourage your child to be accountable and come up with a system to track progress.
Attainable: Aim at realistic ambitions— working towards expanding your child’s skill set without overwhelming and exhausting them.
Results-focused: Include an explanation on how your child will know if the goal has been reached.
Timeline: Specific reasonable time frame with mini-goals along the way will keep your child going.
Some realistic resolutions for kids might be: I’m going to keep my room cleaner; I’m going to be an eco-activist; I am going to read more; I am going to learn more about the oceans; I am going to get better at tennis; I am going to be a volunteer. But even these amazing intentions are broad and need your help as a parent to guide your child into breaking them into doable, step-by-step actions that happen on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.
For example, if your child's resolution is "I'm going to be an environmentalist” they should write down several small, easy steps and practice one each week. Breaking down broad resolutions into specific, easy-to-do steps, is setting for success. Also, when working towards new habits, it’s advisable to hold ourselves accountable by checking in from time to time, so plan that in advance. This will allow you to easily spot if there are barriers and obstacles that are preventing the kids from keeping their goals.
Also, keep the conversation positive—even if you’re trying to get rid of a bad habit, it can be most helpful to frame the habit around what you intend to do in its place or to prevent it.
Visualization and daily reminders
Once the resolutions are decided, encourage your children to create their personal lists with resolutions and put them in a visible spot in the house. This way, they can be reminded on a daily basis of what's important. By putting beads or stones in jars or cans, they can keep track of how many times they uphold their new habits. Or start a family competition of how many days in a row you can all stay dedicated to your personal resolutions.
Daily baby steps
Psychologists agree that it takes about six weeks to create a new habit. Yes, turning a good intention into a habit is a slow process that will require a lot of patience, persistence, and responsibility, but it is a valuable and practical skill that will be always helpful in the long-term.
Keep going!
Persistence is the most important factor that keeps us pursuing resolutions and goals. Even when we get off track or return to our old ways, which is absolutely normal, our persistence will get us back in the game. So keep an eye on how your child is doing and if needed, help them refocus on their goals.
So what are the resolutions that your family and kids are committing to in 2022? Share them with us on Instagram by tagging us at @KvaroyKids!