Making Resolutions to Be a Better Parent

Making Resolutions to Be a Better Parent, Every Day of Every Year
December 30, 2015

If I kept a journal — one of those five-year books, maybe, which allow you to look back at the same day in previous years (a service Facebook now provides, without the pesky introspection) — the entries might look something like this:

Today I resolved to do better. Today, or rather tonight, after an afternoon of shouted demands to help me put away the groceries and help me empty the dishwasher and finally, a sulking retreat to my bedroom and a refusal to make dinner for people who were so inconvenienced by such things as foodstuffs and dishes, I resolved not to do that again. I will not ruin another evening by wallowing in self-pity, I will not again turn a little whining into “complete disrespect and not caring about other people at all.” I will not wind one instance, or even many, of failing to clear the table into an entire future cloth of filth and negligence and entitlement.

Today I resolved to do that again. To have more dance parties in the living room like that one, to decorate a thrilled child in tinsel as often as she likes, to say yes to ice cream, to let little things slide, to notice that the older child speaking scornfully to the younger is also helping her, and that the younger child, far from being as offended as I am on her behalf, is appreciating the unexpected attention and the rough kindness. I resolved to sit with as many children at bedtime as would have me, and to never, ever skip the loving good night.

I wrote neither of those things today, or on any day. I wrote them, in the borrowed style of Heidi Julavits’s “The Folded Clock,” (one of the best books I read in 2015), somewhat after their respective “todays.” But I wrote them in my head as they happened, something I do nearly every day. “Are parent resolutions a ‘thing?’” a friend asked me recently. They are for me, although they are not really a New Year’s thing. They are a constant thing. My resolutions are always on auto play somewhere in the recesses of my mind. More like that. Less like that. I can’t believe I did that. Why can’t it always be like that?

I could consider that a bad thing, a nattering that keeps me from being fully present in any moment. I don’t. It’s a part of me, a person who thinks in words and is always, in some way, writing, even if a pen or a keyboard is nowhere in sight. At times it’s even overlaid with other voices, as I imagine the stories forming in my children’s minds: my mother read to us nearly every night; my mother was there for me when I wanted her; my mother always liked my brother/sister best; my mother yelled at me all the time, I could never please her.

I wonder what I am saying that will iron itself into their brains and become a part of them. I resolve to make it something good, something powerful. My mother always thought I could do anything I set my mind to. My mother believed in me. And then I worry that it will not be, as on a daily basis I don’t even believe any of them will wipe the kitchen counter.

Do I make specific resolutions as a parent at the end of every year? Yes, but in large part they’re the same resolutions I make every year. In January 2012, in this space, I vowed to “clean it, own it and enjoy it.” I’d organize our home to make living there easier, I resolved (clean it); I’d make affirmative choices about how we spend our time, knowing that a “yes” to even a fun thing is a “no” to hanging out together at home (own it) and I’d appreciate all the journeys rather than straining toward the destination (enjoy it). In 2013, I graded myself and renewed the same resolutions. In 2014, I focused on “enjoy it,” writing in Resolved: The Best Moment of 2014? This One:

A few days ago, a Facebook friend shared a conversation she’d had with one of her children, in which she asked for “the best moment of 2013.” Her child, at a moment that rather distinctly didn’t stand out in any particular way, enthusiastically declared “this one!”

I still love that — “this one!” Because, as I wrote then, when things are going badly it really is the ordinary moments we miss. This moment, right now, 15 minutes from leaving to pick up a child at hockey, with another downstairs re-reading Harry Potter in the newly illustrated edition he got for Christmas, a third playing Playmobil horses with a friend all over the floor in a way that I know she won’t want to ever clean up and the last child making Rice Krispie Treats to mail her grandfather — this moment is the best.

But it’s really less the larger resolutions that count than the little daily ones, just as it’s not the grand speeches and lectures that my children will remember as adults but rather, the way we are together, every hour, every day. My inner monologue of daily resolution is less an evaluation than a narrative. It’s the story of my life as a parent as it spins out behind me, and an emotional playlist for how I’d like to meet the challenges ahead.

So my resolution for 2016, along with my beloved fresh start home organization plans and a new calendar filled with professional goals, is simply more following the smaller resolutions. I hope for gentle course corrections, not grand change. Things are good here for now. And, as always, I resolve anew to enjoy that.

What will you resolve, big and small, for 2016?