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Resolutions for real parents

Self-improvement? That's so last year...

By
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Originally published in Today's Parent January 2011

Illustration credit: Janice Nadeau

Every year it’s the same. Wait. Not every year. Every first-day-of-the-month it’s the same, every day-after-my-birthday, every day-after-Halloween, every Monday and, worst of all, every January 1: time to make resolutions. I will not eat sugar. I will be patient with my kids. I will not be late for work. I will exercise an hour a day. I will quit drinking Starbucks grande soy-no-water-Tazo-chai (see how that just rolled off the tongue)? Every imaginable landmark date is the same. It’s time to make resolutions. And every day-after-landmark-date it’s the same: Fail.

So I find myself asking, as 2010 makes its final descent and I espy on the horizon the hopeful rays of a new decade, Why? Why do I keep making resolutions when all I do, over and over again, is colossally fail? I’ve been trying to quit Starbucks and lose my “baby weight” since 2005, just to give you an idea.

I’m sure psychologists are brimming with explanations for those of us who are obsessive resolution makers: something about self-sabotage, perfectionism, fear of success, fear of failure, fear of change. But let’s not blame ourselves. We do enough of that. It’s Western culture’s fault, and I’ll blame skinny models too, and the people who put them on the runway, and Starbucks and whoever invented Mondays.

I have had enough of resolutions I can’t keep. So I’m taking a stand. This January 1 begins the dawn of a new age — the age of the attainable resolution. Are you with me?

Read on for my 11 totally attainable New Year's resolutions....

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