The Editor's Blog

It's that time of year again. The time when, in the aftermath of an indulgent silly season, we make ridiculous promises about the changes we are going to make to our daily lives. But for parents, pie-in-the-sky idealism is never a once-a-year proposition. Sometimes we need the promise of better times ahead just to get us through -whether through the crying-baby sleepless nights, the toddler tantrum days, the newly-discovered moods of our usually sweet-natured pre-teen or simply through the times when we know we have not reached the parenting bar we have set for ourselves.

It's something I didn’t bargain for in my pre-parent days - the number of resolutions I would make. I’m talking daily resolutions; promises to myself every night as I go to sleep that I will try to do things differently the next day. So there’s nothing new about the following list. But I guess now is as good a time as any to put into writing the areas in which I aim to do better this year.

Food: This year my goal is for Levi to taste his first vegetable. Levi is seven years old….and I’m only exaggerating a little bit. On a more personal note, I vow to stop eating chocolate between meals and I will also resist the urge to inhale lolly snakes at bedtime. (Okay, that’s enough incredulous snickering…)

Homework: Indy, Levi and I promise to do our homework in a timely manner. I will stop modelling the type of behaviour which lets my kids believe that frantic breakdowns on deadline are best practice when it comes to working at home. We will also not read the nightly reader while parked out the front of the school with the morning bell ringing urgently in the background.

Television: Levi will have less than four hours of screen-time per day… Oh, who am I kidding? Instead, I will stand my ground and work my usual spin which insists that his copious viewing/gaming habits are the training ground for his future as an Oscar-winning animator or hip, world-renowned adman.

Bedtime: Actually, I feel tired just contemplating 365 x 27 renditions of “Go to Sleep, NOW!”

Shouting: No, of course I’m not giving up shouting completely (as if), but I am going to take advantage of the ‘rare shout’. Last year I found that a request repeated quietly about six times followed by a nice, loud shouty one seems to get an instantaneous result.

These are just a few of the areas where improvement is possible for me in my role as a parent. But in all seriousness, there is one parenting approach that I would truly love to adopt this year. It’s the one I remind myself of each night as I roll into bed after a hectic day which starts with the torturous job of waking my children and progresses through tear-filled hair brushings, uneaten packed lunches and sugary afternoon snacks followed by dinners left to go cold, snappy, rushed bedtime stories and lacklustre teeth brushings.

Being 'in the moment' is a concept I have written about before - one that I am continually trying to integrate into my busy life. The theory is that, when you are with your kids you immerse yourself completely in them as people and whatever you are doing together. All other thoughts, issues and tasks are simply relinquished to the wondrous experience of ‘now’. The same applies when you are away from your kids. Knowing that they are safe and cared for in the childcare arrangements you have made means that you are able to be completely present in your work or whatever it is you are doing. It’s a fabulous theory – sort of like a parenting nirvana. I have glimpsed it in the past but only on too rare and too brief occasions. But this year I promise to keep trying. I really do...

What would you like to do differently this year?