Is it time to reframe your New Year’s resolutions?
We are somehow already a month into the new year. If you and your family came up with New Year’s resolutions, have you been able to stick to them?
It’s never too late to set resolutions for the year and come up with a plan to achieve them. Creating and committing to resolutions can be difficult, especially for children and teens, but they are a great way to teach goal setting.
Children generally enjoy having a structured task or goal to work towards, and resolutions can be a fun way to incorporate healthy habits into their daily routines. The most important thing about setting resolutions for children is to make them age appropriate and realistic.
- For preschool-age children, something as simple as helping to put toys away at the end of the day can be a great goal. For those picky eaters, maybe they could try one new food each week.
- For school-age children, consider setting the goal of limiting sugary drinks such as pop, juice and sports drinks to no more than four ounces daily and drinking mostly water.
- For teens, try increasing physical activity to 4-5 times each week for at least 30 minutes and making sure to get their heart rate up. They can also do weekly social media “vacations” and replace that time with scheduled mental health check-ins with parents.
It can also be fun to share resolutions with the whole family. For example, you can resolve to limit household takeout or fast-food consumption to no more than once weekly. You can also choose to do physical activities as a family more often, such as a weekly family walk, bike ride or hike.
Children respond well to positive reinforcement, so consider incorporating a fun reward system with resolutions. Sticker charts are always a favorite method to reinforce positive behaviors. A child who meets their goals each week can also be rewarded with a fun activity, such as picking the family physical activity that week.
Learning how to cope with difficult situations, such as when we don’t achieve our goals or things don’t go our way, is an important skill for children to develop. For children who are hard on themselves, reassure them that these resolutions are simply a way to help build healthy habits, and habit building takes time. There will be bumps in the road, and that’s all part of the process.
Depending on the age of your child, the timeframe of a full calendar year can be a difficult concept to grasp. It may be helpful to instead think of New Year’s Resolutions as goals or healthy habits instead. Most importantly, be sure to make them fun. Here’s to a wonderful rest of the year.
Dr. Kevin Carey is a pediatrician at Advocate Children’s Hospital.
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