Early English Literacy Centre

January 2, 2012, 11:17 AM

New Year’s Resolutions to Parent By

By KJ DELL’ANTONIA

Either you’re the kind of person who makes New Year’s resolutions or you’re not. I most emphatically am and a few of my resolutions are very specific to me as a parent. I’ve made the whole idea of “the parent we want to be” versus the “parent we actually are” something of a meme for Motherlode in part because for me, there’s often such a huge gap between the two.

This January, I’m seizing the opportunity to work on three things that I’ve realized are eating away at the amount of pleasure I get out of being with my family. My resolutions are easy — easy to remember, at least. This year, I’m going to “clean it, own it and enjoy it.” What do I mean by my cute, shorthand phrase?

Clean It

This is the most pragmatic of my three resolutions. A few weeks ago, my mother said about a friend of mine, “She’s always nagging at her kids to clean up, but then you go into her kitchen and there are just stacks and piles of things falling all over everything.”

Busted. As it happens, mom wasn’t talking about me (I don’t think). But she had my number just the same. I can’t count how often I’ve come roaring through the living room, gathering up books and toys and hollering at my children that if their stuff meant anything to them, they would surely put it away, while conveniently ignoring the piles on the floor of my office and bedroom. I value the new bag my mother gave me for Christmas, even though it’s sitting on top of the pile of empty lunch boxes in the bin in the kitchen and not tucked away neatly in my closet. But you wouldn’t know by looking at it and apparently if my children are going by my example, they don’t know it either. There have been (a few) times in my life when there’s been a place for everything and everything has been in its place. I’m determined to make 2012 one of those. Then I will go back to scolding my children to clean up their mess.

Own It

This is a simple phrase for a complicated resolution. Too often, I find myself making excuses for doing the things I love to do and excuses, again, for not doing the things that really don’t interest me. I downplay the giant gingerbread house I made with my children (we’re still working on it), insisting that it was all my oldest’s idea and that I’m only doing it for them, when really I love to build and bake. Why shouldn’t we make a gingerbread train and depot, even if the results look more like something from outside London in 1945 than the picture on the pattern we downloaded from Ultimate Gingerbread? It doesn’t make me Martha Stewart but it makes me happy and it’s fun.

But as for that African dance demonstration for children at the college? Or the board of the preschool or the new book club? No thanks. It’s not that I don’t have time. I’ve got time to make maple syrup and bring home not just a new kitten, but the poodle friend who lives with her and who needs a home as well. As my friend Laura Vanderkam wrote in her book, “168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think,” there is time for everything that matters. It’s just that for me, those things don’t. You expose your children to African drummers and I will expose mine to royal icing and we will both be happy. We all have to do things we don’t want to do sometimes and we can’t always do just what we want. But when I can, I’m going to do what I love. No excuses, no regrets.

Enjoy It

I admit it, I’ve made this last resolution for years. I’ve made it at every fresh start, with the arrival of every child and with every one of the various events throughout any year that remind me that life is short and childhood is even shorter. In 2012, I’m going to “be here now.” I’m going to take a deep breath when we run crazy late for hockey practice and remember that it’s not the destination that matters but the way we make the trip — which won’t take any more time if I do it without slamming doors or even speeding down the driveway.

If I’m honest, most of the time, I still won’t take that deep breath. I’ll still get too frustrated with the child whose willful refusal to put her boots on (combined with my refusal to leave a child that young at home alone) created the late departure and all the tension that came with it. But in 2012, again, I’ll try. I’ll try to laugh at the spilled milk and the torn coat and the marker that went right through the paper onto the table or at the very least, not let those little things color a whole afternoon.

And those are my personal resolutions as a parent for 2012. I could make more (and maybe I should make more), but for now, those are what I’ve got. How about you? Will you make resolutions to change as a parent this year? Or are you resolved to ignore the ritual entirely?