Ah, a new year! 

New beginnings! 

The opportunity to hit the reset button on all those little or big things that we’d like to change and leave in the past.  Woohoo….for…maybe a month?  Or 7 days?  Or 12 days? Or…yeah. There are a lot of numbers, but according to Forbes “Research on the efficacy of New Year’s resolutions is imprecise”  So, just something else that the data is inconclusive on.

Quinn and I do not find that shocking-it is hard to change!!  

How many of your New Year’s Resolutions do you remember from years gone by?  Any?  How’d you do on the ones that you remember? Might we wager to guess that maybe you remember those that you succeeded in achieving? Personally I’m pretty sure I resolved to lose weight at least half of them. Why? It was there, easy to grab and for me,  I don’t really have a weight issue -save the college bulimia.  My resolution varied from 5 to 15 pounds, and I’ve never once succeeded in doing it following the resolution made on Jan 1. Good intentions, I’ve had more than a few.

These days there’s lots of folks down on resolutions and about New Year’s Intentions.   That does seem so much more kind and gentle on ourselves, eh?

Of course, hmm, we know where that road paved with good intentions leads, eh?  I can still hear my former spouse, beloved co-parent to my beloved children repeating me mockingly in a high pitched saccharine voice “Ohhh, ‘it wasn’t my intention’? ”  I felt like just a fool whose intentions were good and so I stay away from intentions because lord knows they will be misunderstood! 

The truth?  I’m not sure that my intentions were always good.  I mean, the intentions were good-I intended to be a good parent; I intended to get my kids to sleep, I intended to make my divorce as painless as possible to my kids, I intended to be the best parent of a teenager ever.  My intentions were good.  My actions?  My actions were a little misaligned, a “wee bit” more impacted by fear not hope. My intentions while good, did me no good and they may actually have done harm to those I love-my kid, that other parent, my spectacular spouse, and, honestly, others too.  I was frustrate by my perception that my intentions weren’t “working” and that frustration, those fears, impacted al of y relationships, especially at work no doubt.  That road paved with those intentions brought me closer to the gates of hell than I intended them to.  And, today, I am grateful. 

I know.  That sounds crazy.  The parenting road can be rough!   From the moment of conception we have such hopes, such dreams.  Sometimes those are cut short even before a baby is born, as happened with my niece Kiernan who died before she was born, and is with us forever. Often parents hit a detour around week three in baby’s life when they realize just what all that talk about “no sleep” meant-it meant no sleep and there is no technology that will get theirs to sleep.  Sometimes it happens at the 5 month mark when parents realize that baby did not read the book that said they could sleep through the night…they could, but they choose not to?! There are many intentions which hit a roadblock during elementary school, whether that roadblock says ADHD, Dyslexia, OCD, Anxiety etc-suddenly our intentions are the same, good, we are just terrified of the cliff without a guard rail and in that fear we see a roadblock, not a field of dreams detour.

For me, if I am honest, that intention about surviving the divorce without a scratch, just meant me reading Dinosaur’s Divorce to them about 3000 times, moving books, socks and anything else across town whenever it was needed and saying “Whew, that went fine!” because I wanted to believe it went fine.  I was scared that I had made a  selfish decsion.  And, et it be said, that it was not made lightly, there is a whole side story there.  In truth I was taking care of me, and not letting my kids have their feelings.   The truth?  We all lived through.   A regular therapist might not have been a bad thing, or a play group with other kids going through the same hell.  

And time passed And, we moved on. To high school! Let the good times roll?  Bumps, but no breaks with the first kid. Until whoa, my intention became completely muddied with the second and I was engaging in a battle of strength with closed doors, yelling, recording conversations so I could play them back and prove that I was right and they had broken yet another promise and….yeah, I lost my shit.  That kid was suffering.  And we were not helping.  Okay, their step parent might have been, she was the most fairly reasonable.  Fairly.  With her own needs.   That road got really really hard, but, it got me to change my direction and stop the compulsive paving.

So, hope.  Hope is always there, it is always an option!

And make decisions to change.  Take the time that you need to process what it is that you want to change. Remember that things take time to change.  Changing our behavior is not, sadly, like flipping a switch.  Same is true for our kids.   I recently reminded our now 26 year old of the attitude adjustment dial which I used to use on the back of their neck-it was invisible, and it was a dial, not a switch.  We parents install a lot of buttons on our kids.  I don’t know about you, but I’ve spent no small amount of time and money in therapists offices uninstalling some of the ones that my parents unintentionally installed. 

 What do we want? As a parent often that includes what you want for your child.  What we have found to be  a really good place to start is to remember that all children want to be seen and heard.  Sometimes listening to them can elicit a reaction in us:/  What do they want? If we practice what we teach young children-to stop, look and listen-to our kids, then the odds increase that they will feel seen and heard.  We get to relearn, retrain and build new neuro pathways. It takes time and patience. No switch flipping, no “results guaranteed in 24 hours”.  The amazing thing, that we have been honored to witness is seeing, is that when people(including parents) do the work, and change…other people (including teenagers even) who feel seen and heard? They stop, look and listen back!  

So,here it is.  A new year. The truth?  Every day is the start of a new year. Is opening this new venture a new years resolution?  Nah.  Does the start of another communal circle round the sun feel like a good time to launch?  Yes. Softly, gently, slowly. It is an opportunity.  We all have opportunities every day.  What are your hopes for this new year?  What opportunities do you see?  Which ones are you open to exploring slowly, kindly, gently? What are your hopes?  Dreams? Intentions?  What is your action plan?