Thursday, January 9, 2025

It’s January!

All the Christmas lights are gone, school is back in session and everyone is eating kale. Why?

Because at the start of the New Year, we always come up with resolutions. We’ll show this year a thing or two! We’re going to eat better, exercise more and break our long-standing addiction to inappropriate amounts of queso. (That last one might apply only to me.)

Sometimes though, we set such crazy, far-reaching resolutions that we fail before we even start. What if this year, when it comes to parenting, we could give ourselves some ridiculously easy resolutions?

I think we can! Here are some you can keep:

1. This year, not every meal the kids eat will be chicken nuggets.

You probably have the same bag of nuggets we had in our freezer. They call it family size, but they should just name it, “I don’t want to fight anymore trying to get my kids to eat something” nuggets. This year, resolve to feed your kids one meal that isn’t chicken nuggets. There are 1,095 meals in a year. Surely we can all go 1 for 1,095.

2. This year, I will do a better job hiding Sharpies.

If aliens ever discover our planet and look at our Internet they will believe it was designed for the sharing of two things: photos of cats and photos of little kids covered in marker. What a golden age we are living in! This year, let’s all promise to do a better job hiding sharpies. Together we can put them on higher shelves, hide them deeper in drawers or keep them locked in our cars instead of the house. Sound extreme? Have you ever tried to scrub a sharpie mustache from a little kid’s face? That’s extreme.

3. This year, I will convince my kids to wear coats when it is below freezing.

There is a chance this one is just an Acuff family thing, but I suspect you know exactly what I am talking about. Nothing makes you feel like an inadequate parent like arriving somewhere in the dead of winter and realizing your child is wearing just a t-shirt. I am forever baffled at my kids’ ability to interpret 33-degree days as “balmy.” It always becomes an apparel negotiation, too. I say, “It’s cold outside, you need to wear a coat.” They respond, “It’s not that cold, what about just a long sleeve t-shirt?” I then counter with, “I need at least a sweater.” This year, I’m skipping the negotiations. If it’s cold outside, we’re all wearing coats.

Those are three resolutions that as parents we can all keep.

That last one might be challenging, but I believe in you!

What are some of your parenting resolutions for the year?