New Year’s resolutions for parents: Anxiety-reducing habits for a fresh start

January is the month of grand beginnings. Even if you’re like me and not a New Year’s resolution person, it’s still nice to think of a fresh start. What more worthy a goal is there than to direct our fresh hopes on our kids and our parenting approach? If I’m the perfect parent a reasonably high enough percentage of the time, then my kids will turn out healthy, emotionally fit, financially successful adults. It’s easy peasy!

Actually, it’s the opposite. Instead of parents happily dusting their hands off feeling like a job well done, they’re ringing in the New Year wringing their hands.

Millions of parents across the country experience extremely high stress levels as compared with other adults. The research says 48% of parents say that most days their stress is completely overwhelming, compared with 26% among other adults. A few of the factors that parents say are the most stressful are: financial strain, time demands, children’s health, children’s safety, parental isolation and loneliness, technology and social media, cultural pressures and children’s futures.

I don’t know about you, but I’m snapping my fingers over here; those factors sound all too familiar in my household.

Beth Collums. (Courtesy of Beth Collums)

For many, pressure-filled parenting looks like the only way to parent. Parents feel like their children’s future is riding on their every move.

So, let’s decide to let things go that are anxiety-laden and pick some things up that will contribute to wellness. I love a good list, so below are 10 of each. If you’re resolution-resistant like me you can pick just 1 or 2 of these concepts to try on for size.

Things to let go this year:

• Obsessing over our children’s future as it pertains to choosing college majors and jobs.
• Controlling cultural pressures that our kids face.
• Doing their schoolwork, homework or projects for them (hint: teachers can tell).
• Bulldozing any potential challenge they face and eliminating the risk of failure.
• Making their age-appropriate decisions for them.
• Controlling their behavior when they are out of our supervision.
• Trying to magically transform their internal motivation or desires into adult maturity.
• Hover ‘til they become prodigy status in all things extracurricular.
• Push them into leadership positions they have no desire to hold.
• Enable them to continue making bad decisions by softening the natural consequences (i.e., e-mailing/harassing the school about the grades they earned).

Things to pick up that are within my control as a parent (as based on the work of psychologist John Rosemond):

• Stop giving expensive gifts and “event parties” for kids on their birthdays, but let it be a time of connection with relatives and/or one or two other families.
• Spend at least as much time helping kids develop good manners as we do helping them get good grades in school. 
• Properly discipline kids, insisting on proper behavior, and reprimanding immediately (even if that means in front of other people) when they behave otherwise, and on those occasions, insist they apologize appropriately.
• Assign a routine of daily chores and state that said chores be done before they engage in recreation or relaxation. Keep extracurriculars to a minimum.
• Tell kids they may have technology privileges when they have demonstrated sufficient maturity, responsibility, and self-control — or when they are able to pay for the device and its monthly costs. Until then, their primary social development will take place face-to-face, not screen-to-screen.
• When our children complain they are the only ones without smartphones, social media accounts, or unlimited screen time, remind them that learning how to be different is essential to the development of character, independence and good judgment.
• Teach them to recognize and manage their emotions by listening, empathizing and expecting them to regain self-control. 
• Practice sleep hygiene by kids sleeping in their own beds and at a bedtime early enough to give parents time together every night. Bedtime is for rest and preserving proper boundaries serves both children and marriage.
• Eat dinner as a family around our own table as many nights as possible each week.
• Highly value adult relationships with our partner and other peer friendships by spending consistent time on coffee dates, dinners and game nights.

Kids don’t operate with a restart button, so we can’t exactly erase the memory card and start over. When you’re a parent, starting with a clean slate can look a little smudged. And that’s not a bad thing. Kids need to see that parents are aware of their own imperfections and not above saying “I’m sorry, I messed up” or “I realized some things need to change around here.” In fact, my kids have heard this so often I’m sure it’ll be written on my epitaph. But, it’s what’s beyond the apology or promise that matters.