The older I'm becoming the faster time seems to be going. I feel like it wasn't that long ago that it turned 2016 but here we are again waiting to celebrate the turn of a new year. As many people do, I often like to reflect on how my year went, the good and the bad. I like to use it as a learning experience so that we, myself and my family, keep moving forward. I am working on bringing this awareness to my kids as well because let's be honest, it's really easy to stay stagnant and not challenge ourselves to grow as human beings.
We were all sitting in the kitchen after dinner and I began talking about "new year, new you". I started to verbally reflect on things we could change as a family to make our lives better. It occurred to me that it's been a while since we revamped our family rules and I thought this would be a great time to do it. My husband and I thought of areas that we get frustrated with our kids and we created rules around it. For example, cleaning up after themselves; all toys, games and books must be cleaned up by being put back where they belong after they use them. If they are left out they will lose them and have to earn them back with chores. This was agreeable with my kids but they wanted to create their own rules for their dad and I. One of their rules is in collaboration of the above rule is that they get one calm (no yelling) warning from us to put all their stuff away. They will have ten minutes to comply after said warning and if at that point anything is left out it's gone. We both agreed to this and agreed to no yelling at each other because of it. This will help us all to be accountable to stay calm and be responsible for how we respond to each other.
We also each took responsibility for areas where we need to improve and discussed actions that will help us better those areas. There were many other rules and responsibilities we added. We all walked away feeling happy about the new year to come. It was a check in with our family and ourselves to see what's working and what's not. Now we can grow and nurture what we want to create for our family and ourselves.
Margarita Daskalakis
