Crafting A Vision For A New Year (Alongside Children)

illustration by Mila A., Age 5 (Happy Birthday, Mila!)

Happy New Year!

In some ways, January 1st is more like a finish line than the starting line. The end of the year so often becomes about pushing through, jumping hurdles and schedules, weathering winter illnesses, and playing our parts in traditions and rituals. We spend weeks or even months doing what we feel we have to. So, by New Year’s Day, our resolutions feel tacked on to an endless list of obligations. How exhausting. It’s no wonder so many New Year’s resolutions fail, bound up as they are into a timetable of endless tasks. 

But what if we refresh our vision for this time of year by making it about just that: refreshing our vision of ourselves, our families, our classrooms, and the life we are creating. 

Look at your life as an art form. You don’t know exactly how it will turn out, but you have control over its contours, the shape, the color palette. What do you value? Do you want the life you share with children to be big, expansive, and all about the freedom to explore? Paint with blues and gold. Perhaps you want to live with a warm, cozy sense of interdependence. Autumnal tones. Each decision you make, every brushstroke, can bring you a little bit closer to the idea you have in your mind. From how to spend a Saturday morning to the tone of voice in which you respond to a child’s fifteenth “why?” your small actions add up to your whole life together.  

Here’s the crucial secret: the internal circumstances in which you make daily decisions will impact the final product of your life more than anything else. Will you do so in the heat of a hard moment? At bedtime? When the crayon’s already on the wall? 

Do it now. It doesn’t have to be January first. Now is as good a time as any to get clear about how you want to move through the world as a teacher, a parent, a person whom children will see and learn from. Clear out time and space to think - even if it’s just over coffee in the art studio of your mind. If you partner with others, make a special point to come together and talk intentionally about the life you are creating for yourselves and the children in your care.

Let your only resolution for the new year be to think in broad strokes: What do you want life to feel like?

Then, when things happen, change, or otherwise come to a head as they always do, make it your mission to respond based on those principles. Choose to draw from the pallet you’ve prepared with thought and care. Looking for that spacious, adventurous life? Maybe relax a little on the chore chart and build in more family hikes instead. Be firm with the bedtime that will allow that hike to happen on time. Be okay with a scraped knee ... or ten. When your child climbs a tree and nervously asks you to get them down, smile and say, “I know you can do this. I’ll talk you through it.” Let your child learn to be as resilient and confident as your adventurous life calls for. Together, you can rise to any occasion. 

Maybe you want life to feel peaceful, industrious, vibrant, beautiful, or creative. Whatever they are, organize your hopes so that once you really need to draw upon your resolve, you don’t pull from your fears instead. More than a new year, you’ve got a life to craft into something great. Lay your tools out now.