New Year’s Resolutions For Moms

Making Resolutions for Moms and Families

The new year offers a fresh start and a new beginning. This is where you can officially layout your resolutions and have one set day to start it all. Before children, your resolutions would probably include reading more books, exercising often, and cutting back on unhealthy foods, all centered around yourself and your lifestyle. 

However, as every mom knows, life takes a new direction when a baby is introduced, and your resolutions take a sharp turn as well.

Being a mom does not mean you have to give up on making new year’s resolutions. Being a mom should give you more motivation to stick to your resolutions, and become more well-rounded as a parent, striving  to learn what you can change for the better.

To get you started, here are some wonderful resolutions for any parent to make for the new year:

Be More Present

It is so easy to get sucked into how fast the world moves, especially in today’s digital age. We need to clean our homes, take care of our little ones, and many of us work. There are errands to run, play dates to schedule, and appointments to make. While staying on top of everything is important, equally important is being present for our children. 

During this new year, let's make a resolution to be more flexible. Let's be okay with the risk of one ball dropping if it means more quality time with our children. Soon we'll see that nothing bad will actually happen if we don't keep to our schedules. We'll see that quality time, being present, creates more happy memories and joy filled days.

Less Scrolling

Following up on the previous resolution, another pitfall that takes us out of the moment and away from our children is screen time. Our phones, smart watches, and tablets can suck up more time than we are aware of. We might even be tempted to scroll on our devices while sitting or playing with our children. Not only are we not present, but we are also modeling this distracted behavior for our children. 

A good resolution for the whole family can be to put any screens away for 30 minutes a day, and spend time together as a family, maybe reading a book, playing outside, or just catching up on each other’s day. Or, you can set up your devices to track how much time you are spending on the device or within certain apps. You can also set up notifications to let you know when you've reached a certain amount of screen time. 

Make Family Meals Important

Life is busy, and some days the last thing on your mind is a hearty meal shared over the dinner table. Takeaway pizza and ready-cooked nuggets on the go are perfectly fine for dinner some nights, but try  and share a family meal a couple of nights a week. Having the family sit together over a meal is a great way to reconnect, and feel more in touch with each other.

You don’t even have to cook these meals. Order out, set down a blanket on the living room floor, and have an indoor picnic. It does not matter, as long as it is together.

Use Loving Words

As much as you love your kids, they can drive you up the wall at times. These moments often get the best of us, and snapping at them just happens. As a parent, it is your responsibility to build your child up with kind words, so make a new year's resolution to be kind and not harsh. Take a deep breath in the middle of a stressful situation, and think about how your words might affect your children.

Taking the time to be kind will not only help to calm the situation, but it also helps to inject kindness into your little one's life every day.

Give Yourself A Break

Comparing yourself to other moms is so natural, but it often leads to us being harder on ourselves, even when we are doing our best. For the new year remind yourself that you and your family are unique, you are doing the best that you can, and you know what is best for your family. Don’t let a happy vacation picture of another family on social media get you down, you never know what goes on behind the scenes.

Set a mantra for yourself daily if you must, just affirming yourself that you are enough and that you will try your best every day, after all, that’s all your kids ask of you.

Be More Sustainable

Individually packaged snacks, diapers, the plastic packaging, having a family creates a lot of waste. Not everyone is ready to switch to reusable diapers, but there are other ways to be more sustainable as a family. Instead of prepackaged snacks, opt for small reusable containers to take perfect portions on the go. Mama needs her coffee, but we don't need the single use cups. Reusable coffee cups have gotten super cute and stylish. 

Did you know that BeauGen Cushions are recyclable? Yep, you can pump in comfort both reducing friction and knowing you aren't contributing to a landfill.  Need to store your breast milk but wanting to cut down on plastic? Try Junobie reusable storage bags. These also make great snack bags too!

Tips for Sticking to Your Resolutions

Pick an Attainable Resolution

Do not try and set yourself unattainable new year’s resolutions. Instead, choose small changes that, in the long run, will have a positive effect on not only you, but your family life as a whole.

Keep At It

It takes a while for new behaviors to become a habit so give yourself some grace and keep trying. If you break your resolution one time, that doesn't mean you've failed and that you're done trying for the rest of the year. In fact, when we do fail with our resolutions this is a great teachable moment for our little ones. Showing them that we can try again is very healthy. 

Get the Family on Board

It's easier to make a change when the whole family is working together. If you want to make a shift in your life and your partner is onboard, they'll be more supportive and more encouraging. You can work together to achieve your resolution rather than trying on your own. 

And remember, if you want to throw in a resolution that is yours and only yours, do it!