Resolutions for the New Year

Barbara H Scott, Executive Director, Parents League of New York

Every year the holiday season brings something a little different. Most years our holiday wreaths are placed on our front door for Thanksgiving weekend.  But, beyond that, our holiday traditions can include a wrinkle here or there, and no year has been exactly the same. Whether we walk down Fifth Avenue to play tourists spying the holiday windows of midtown or head out in flannel shirts and sturdy boots to visit the local tree farm, the pace of the season brings time with family and friends in a unique way. I mean, what beats thinking you can negotiate the price of your holiday decorations with children in tow on a frigid December afternoon?

This year the wreaths are up but we will bring our holiday abroad. Visiting our daughter who is away for the academic year will be this year’s holiday wrinkle among the tradition. In fact, the trip will include the first Christmas day in thirty years I have spent outside of New York City. It has made me reflective and even a little nostalgic. I find myself pulling out old holiday cards and checking the holiday china cabinet, habits from holidays past. So with more time on my hands than usual this holiday (since I won’t be cooking and entertaining), I am thinking about the New Year and the making of resolutions. As I think about the past year and look ahead to the next, I am happy to share a list of my resolutions for family life in 2023:

1. Rethink how you spend time with your children

2. Listen to your kids more, talk less

3. Model the behaviors you want to see in your children

4. Unplug more

5. Eat dinner together

6. Get outside together regularly

7. Establish a family game night

8. Put a cap on your work day

9. Make sure your kids (and you) get enough sleep

10. Give your child a family job

Though I have sons who are “adulting” and a teenager in the household, these ideas serve as a reminder that the work of parenting is almost never done. New Year’s resolutions for the family are a good way to recommit to being the parent you wish to be. You might ask, “well, don’t those twenty-somethings have real jobs?” Yes, they do. But engaging in family interaction, whether your child is five or twenty-five is good practice for the adult lives my children are building for themselves. The recommendations are about framing and elevating family time in a very busy and noisy world. For example, two years ago I learned my eldest child is really good at travel planning. This wasn’t exactly on the “skills to teach” parenting list, but when he suggested and planned a mother son excursion for just the two of us I understood more deeply how simple lessons in childhood translate into meaningful skills later on. I can’t imagine an aspiration more realized.

So, get creative and ring in the New Year and set some intentions for your family in 2023. We will be thinking of you here at Parents League and can’t wait to hear how your year unfolds.