These New Years resolutions for kids to make include being kind to others, healthy physical habits, safety goals, and more. Great for accountability in kids.
New Year’s resolutions are not for adults only. This is a great opportunity to discuss goal-setting and achievement with kids. Even young children can be taught to make some positive changes. They can make resolutions concerning their health, behavior and safety, or about what they contribute to the world. Here are some New Year’s resolutions kids can make and learn to maintain.
New Years Resolutions for Kids to Make
From daily routines, to eating habits, to how they treat others, these resolutions might be good fits for your family or your children. When practicing goal-setting with children, it is sometimes helpful to work from the top down.
Have your children identify a big goal, then break that down into smaller goals that work toward the big goal. Break that down even further by brainstorming how to achieve the small goals. One of those tasks or the small goal might be a good resolution for your child.
Last New Years, my son wanted to focus on health and living a healthy lifestyle with a goal of becoming an athlete as he gets older. His small goals were to eat less sugar, go for more walks or bike rides outside, and drink more water. These were attainable goals and resolutions that he was able to keep in the back of his mind and reference throughout the year.
Simple Daily Routines for Children
Young children, including toddlers and preschoolers, can learn simple organizing skills such as clearing and packing up toys, crayons and books after using them, putting shoes on the shoe rack and hanging up their backpacks.
For older school-going children from, they can also learn to brush their teeth twice a day, shower, change and put dirty clothes in the laundry basket.
Healthy Eating Habits
Healthy eating habits can start young and are largely dependent on what is accessible to children. In my own house, we don’t like to over-focus on good vs. bad food, or even the word ‘un-healthy’, but we do discuss choice making with food and treats, and how we treat our bodies like machines or cars that need all the right fuel to work. We also discuss how certain foods might negatively affect our functioning and discuss moderation and portion control.
Some ideas kids might want to consider:
Drink milk and eat dairy products such as cheese and yoghurt to have strong bones and teeth.
Drink lots of water especially after play or sports at school.
Eat three to five servings of fruits and vegetables daily.
Eat junk food, candy and ice cream only once in a while and on special occasions.
Physical Activity
Healthy choices aside, children should also be encouraged to be physically more active. Some kids are interested in sports and some enjoy just playing and running around outdoors. If children are provided the opportunity to be outdoors, they are more likely to spend time outside the house than spending hours sitting indoors even when provided with electronics use.
Some resolutions might include more walks outside, playing with a pet, learning to ride a bike or swim, etc.
Kindness and Helping Resolutions
Encourage children to be kind, caring and helpful to others, especially younger and smaller children.While this might be a part of your child’s daily life and attitude, making a resolution that demonstrates how they can be more kind or helpful is valuable.
A resolution might include holding the door open more often, volunteering somewhere, or collecting trash in the neighborhood monthly. Look at some acts of kindness or ways to show gratitude for more ideas on kindness resolutions to make.
Safety Measures Kids Can Learn
Reading the news as a parent can be downright scary. Teaching children about safety and discussing with them some ways in which they can stay safe can be worked into a resolution to really help solidify these lessons.
Kids can learn about safety measure such as not talking to or getting into cars of strangers, sitting in a car seat or seatbelt appropriately whenever inside a car, wearing helmets and other safety gear while bicycling, not eating food offered by strangers and asking before petting dogs, are good places to start!
Keeping New Years Resolutions as a Family
If goal-setting and making resolutions are something you choose to do as a family, keeping each other accountable and discussing progress is a great way to bond and stay on top of your goals. Working on accountability with kids is an important step in goal-setting, and like most everything in life, kids learn best by example.
If staying on top of your goals is difficult for you as a parent, discussing these difficulties and creating a plan with your kids is a great way to get them involved and teach valuable lessons at the same time!
New Years Resolution Bookmarks for Reading Resolutions
While you’re making your New Years resolutions with kids, don’t forget to add more reading to your list! This is always a valuable one. Print off some of these free reading resolution bookmarks to keep track!
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