New Year’s Resolutions that Promote Family Closeness
With 2016 less than two weeks away, you have probably been giving some thought to your New Year’s resolutions. This year you’re finally going to tackle your finances and make a budget for your spending. Perhaps 2016 is the year you are finally going to get your entire house organized. These are all fantastic goals; however, they share a common theme with most resolutions: they are all inherently self-serving.
Taking care of you is important for moms but most of us kind of suck at it. This means that all of those New Year’s resolutions to better yourself are less likely to be successful. Instead, get momentum to accomplish those goals by starting the year with a win. Make your resolution for the New Year be one that promotes family closeness. In doing so you are increasing your chances of success and intentionally growing closer as a family. If you need help coming up with ideas for New Year’s resolutions that promote family closeness, here are a few to get you started:
1. Daily Dead Hour
In this day and age, busy parents are just a guilty of spending too much time with technology as kids are. Set a daily time that all electronics will be turned off for an hour. Choose the time of day that fits best with your family. If you’re early risers, keep technology off until after breakfast or until the bus comes. If you find yourselves browsing Facebook or playing Candy Crush until bed, have your dead hour in the hour before the kids’ bedtime. During that technology-free hour spend time talking or playing a board game together. Be intentional about connecting with each other during this time.
2. Take a Nightly Walk
This is a great resolution that does double-duty. Not only are you getting time together as a family but you are also starting a routine to keep active. This can also be customized to your schedules. If there are nights that football practice runs late for the kids or you have an early meeting to prep for, choose to only do a block or two in your neighborhood that night. When your family has an unobstructed evening, go farther in the neighborhood or check out a local trail together.
3. Get Organized (As a Family)
Set a goal for each family member to purge one item a day or one item a week for the entire year. The immediate results will be that your home is less cluttered which makes it easier to get organized. The longer-lasting results will be in learning and teaching what is truly important in life. Even young children can benefit from purging items; though they will require some assistance from you (otherwise you could wind up with a ton of Hot Wheels and no pants). In addition, you will learn a lot about you and about each other in what you choose to get rid of and the items that you deem important enough to keep.
4. Save For a Common Goal
Help teach your kids the importance of saving money and build stronger bonds by saving together for a common goal. This can be a family vacation (like this Disney Vacation Fund) or putting in a pool next summer. Whatever the savings goal is, make sure that it benefits everyone and that it is decided on as a family.
Now that you have some ideas, how do you plan on starting your New Year’s resolutions off with a bang? You can keep your existing resolutions and tweak them to include the whole family (which will help with accountability and overall success). You can also use one of the ideas above. However you choose to do it, make 2016 the best year for your family yet!
Written by Marie – Blogger at DIYAdulation.com
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