Some people don’t bother with New Year’s resolutions; it’s just another day, another year, big deal! Some make a big deal of them and try and better themselves or their situation with goal setting. A week ago I was sent some marketing info’ about a course on how to make 2016 your ‘big year’. I was simultaneously left feeling skeptical and guilt ridden: ‘Another course for the gullible!’ and ‘Stephen, you could really achieve if you knew how to apply yourself to a clear set of goals’.
Well I’m broke so the course will have to wait. But it did get me thinking…what about goals as a parent? I’d never thought of it before. Out of all the things we could set our mind to improving…exercise, health, money, business…what about being a parent? Raising our kids has got to be our greatest work. As the book of Proverbs reminds us ‘A wise son brings joy to his father’ but ‘a foolish son brings grief…’ (Proverbs 15:20; 17:25).
Have you ever set yourself goals as a parent? Would you consider doing it now? Can you share your ideas with us?
I’ve got some ideas for you that are firstly about the ‘big picture’ and secondly some soundings to get us started on the nitty gritty. I’m hoping that with this start, you can spring into your own brainstorm...
The ‘BIG’ parenting NY resolution
As soon as I contemplated the possibility of NY parenting resolutions my mind was sadly blank. I was stuck in the abstract…parenting goals…hmmm. What should a parent do or be? What are we trying to do? Who are we? Who or what decides a parent’s framework of success?
Well, I’m still chilling out from the Chrissy break and not quite ready to delve heavily into theological detail; but as I ponder the big picture, even if only for a moment, I’m reminded of a verse from the Bible… ‘This is my son, with whom I am well pleased’ (Mark 9:7). God spoke from heaven and perhaps uttered the best words He’d ever spoken since creation. His Son, Jesus had fulfilled what was required of a human being, to love and fear God in joyful obedience. Now that’s a pretty big complement. It’s also a great goal setter for any parent. Perhaps that’s the biggest ‘check box’ we can set on our parenting ‘new year resolutions’ is to further our kids’ love and joyful obedience to God. I know it’s very general, but we do need to recover that big picture and own it before we start getting into details.
So let’s resolve to take up that mantle; it’s ours, not the church, not the school; let’s get re-involved in ‘teaching our kids the paths to wisdom’ from the Bible.
Let's share the journey together
But then, life is complex isn’t it? What will this look like for us as parents? Kids are always changing, developing. Opportunities, challenges and disappointments come thick and fast or life just potters on, hum drum, hum drum. The life of faith in Jesus is not a straight line walk in a park, more like a trek through an overgrown and broken trail. So what will godly obedience look like in your child? It will be different for each kid and the situations you find yourselves in. In the year ahead, I’m looking forward to crossing dilapidated bridges and navigating missing trails with you all through this Purposeful Parenting blog.
So stay in touch, read the blogs, let me know what you think and please, please do share them.
The key to success: Make your resolutions specific
One of the key things about goal setting is getting specific. But before I could do this, I found it helped to start thinking in categories.
Here are a couple of categories I came up with; I’m just getting started, so it may change. I’d love to hear yours:
- Technology: As our kids grow older and their schools require use of more and more screens, we need a plan to encourage our kids to have a healthy lifestyle, avoid dangerous use of social media and organise some kind of ‘internet nanny’ to protect their movements on the internet. It wasn’t a big issue until now, so this year we need to come up with some ground rules and family policies.
- Hospitality: – We want to be able to use our home for hospitality, especially with our kid’s friends and families. We’ve been doing this, I guess we want to continue this and grow it, also with the aim of teaching ourselves and our kid’s generosity.
- Spiritual Health: – we try and read the Bible and pray together as a family most week nights. But it isn’t easy, some nights it can be quite discouraging as a parent, others it’s a spectacular success in terms of input and engagement from the kids. So this year, I want to ask for them to have more input, to get them owning it more and being responsible for its success. I don’t want it to be just parent to child, but child to child and child to parent in terms of how it works. As your kids get older in primary or high school, you may find this can work for you too.
- Discipline – with kids entering high school, I’m seeing the need to give my kids more space. They need to make more mistakes; they need to be told less what to do. I need to be less reactionary and just let some things slide as they go through early teens.
- Fun: Our lives are busy, but I want to be deliberate and try and connect with each kids ‘love language’ at least once per week in some small way (Google ‘love languages of children’).
Now, note that I haven’t made these categories into particularly measurable or specific and time bound goals yet, but at least I’ve identified some areas I might like to work on.
What might be your key categories? Why?
Please share them.
Where? Oh yes, my blog has not got a comment section, that’s currently a deliberate decision, (if you think I should have a comment section let me know), I’ve decided for the time being just to allow comments to appear on Anton’s face book page under the link I share for the blog post.
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