How to Make Good New Year’s Resolutions with Your Kids

With the New Year come new goals, both for you personally and your family. Whether you embrace this turning of the calendar or you balk at the idea of setting New Year’s resolutions, learning how to set goals with our kids is important. When they see how we think about what we want (and how to get it), they’ll learn to be more thoughtful and strategic in their own lives. Making good resolutions with your kids should include these things:

Make Your Goals SMART

Having a general resolution to read more, exercise more, get outside more, etc. may keep you motivated for a short amount of time, but these things often fade quickly as January goes on. Instead, try to get specific with yourself and your kids about what goals you’re trying to meet. SMART goals are:

• S: Specific (exactly what are you trying to accomplish?)
• M: Measurable (how will you decide that you’ve been successful, and how will you keep track of your progress?)
• A: Achievable (do you have the skills and resources to do this?)
• R: Relevant (why is this so important to do right now?)
• T: Time-Bound (what is your timeframe for achieving this?)

For kids, these ideas can be especially hard to think through, but we can help guide them through these thought processes for their own goals. For example, if your child’s goal is to do better in soccer, their SMART goals could be:

• S: I want to score X amount of goals this season.
• M: I’ll keep track of all the goals I score throughout the year so I can know how I’m doing
• A: I will need to train really hard to be a consistent forward on my team, but I think I can do that.
• R: I want to try out for this other team, and having these goals would set me apart
• T: I want to have this many by the end of May

Whether the goals are individual like the example above or as a family, reframing your goals like this makes them much more concrete and practical!

Set Yourself Up for Success

Every moment of every day, your brain is working to process new information, form memories, and guide you through your life. Whether that’s in the classroom, the workplace, the sports field, or a night out with friends, the way your brain interacts with the world changes EVERYTHING.

Strong cognitive skills are an essential piece of being able to establish and achieve goals. No matter your age, you need skills like:

• Logic & reasoning
• Attention
• Memory
• Processing speed
• And visual and auditory processing

If any of these skill areas are weak, you and your kids are likely to struggle through this goal-setting process. In addition, follow-through and achieving these goals are going to feel insurmountable at times.

If your child struggles to establish goals and motivations…

If your child is behind in school and nothing seems to catch them up…

If you feel like you’re in a never-ending cycle of trial and error…

It’s time to get to the root of the problem: improving how your brain interacts with the world around you. 

Setting your child up for success this year means making sure they have all the tools they need to keep up with their world. 

And strong cognitive skills are an essential starting point for that! Click here to learn more about how brain training targets these skills.