A Teachable Moment: Resolutions: Keep Them Real
By Dr. Susan Bartell
I overheard three young friends pondering their New Year’s resolutions as they waited for the school bus.
“Mine is to never argue with my brother”, announced 10-year-old Morgan.
“I’m only eating health food and getting really skinny” nodded 11-year-old Lynn.
Lynn’s 8-year-old brother Steven joined in. “I’ll practice soccer every day for three hours until I make the ‘A’ team!”
Many kids—often imitating their parents—use the New Year as an opportunity to declare a fantastic resolution.
Declaring a New Year’s resolution may be easy for a child, but keeping it is usually very difficult because most kids make their resolutions based on a result for which they wish, rather than one they are able to achieve. Morgan would like to have family peace—no bickering would mean no yelling by her parents. Lynn’s (unhealthy!) fantasy to have total control over her eating may be triggered by a desire to be as skinny as the starlets she idolizes. Steven dreams about acceptance by the athletic kids deemed the "in group" by other children.
These types of resolutions are doomed to fail because they are too extreme and too difficult to sustain. What’s more, the resolutions will likely never achieve the desired result—Morgan’s parents will still get angry about other things, Lynn won’t be a superstar because she stops eating junk food, and Steven may not become popular even if his skill improves.
Keep it real
However, kids can and should learn how to make and keep realistic New Year’s resolutions! Encouraging your child to declare a really gratifying resolution—that won’t result in a feeling of failure—offers a wonderful moment to teach skills of self-reflection, realistic goal setting (short- and long-term), and the important lesson of follow-through!
Begin by encouraging your child to generate concrete, practical ideas. Then help her to pick only one that is truly achievable (not a fantasy, impossible or too vague), and that will have measurable results. Resolutions will vary depending upon your child’s age.
Ideas include:
- Make more friends
- eat more healthily
- stop biting nails
- improve at shooting hoops
- read more
- learn multiplication tables
- take the dog for walks
- stop being afraid of the dark
- call grandma more often.
Now, help your child come up with two or three short- and long-term goals for achieving the resolution. As a rule, short-term goals should see results within a few weeks; long-term goals may take months or longer to achieve. Encourage patience in achieving one goal at a time.
Using "make more friends" as an example, short-term goals could be:
- make a list of three possible friends
- start saying hello to them at school
- ask if I can sit with them at lunch/snack time.
Long-term goals may include:
- ask someone over to play/hang out
- go to a new friend’s home
- invite friend for a sleepover.
As your child is mastering this skill, you might want to try it yourself—you may find that you are able to stick to your resolutions too!
Dr. Susan Bartell is a child, teen, and parenting psychologist and author. Her latest book is Healthy Kids The Easy Way. You can learn more about Dr. Bartell at drsusanbartell.com.
January 2010
