New (School) Year Resolutions 2017

It has been a long while since I have posted and I honestly did not know if I would ever begin posting again. My kids are now 7 and 9 years old on the verge of being 8 and 10, I wondered if this was a stage anyone would even care about discussing Montessori and parenting philosophy.  I ultimately decided to resurrect the blog in the hopes of reviving my own reflective parenting practice. I realize that as my children get older if I am not checking into my parenting and assessing how it is going, we as a family can easily get off track and begin building habits that do not align with our long term goal of raising healthy, productive, interconnected adults.

With that I decided a go-to post would be to set my beginning of the school year goals. You can see previous year’s goals here and here. While I haven’t written down new school year goals in several years, I am excited to share our goals for this school year.

1. Building Empathy:  We live in Houston and if you have seen the news in last few weeks, you are aware of the catastrophic events that occurred in our city. While we, as a family, were very fortunate to escape any harm to ourselves and our home we know many friends, family members, and classmates were not as lucky. This school year we will focus on empathy for others and building our capacity to support and help our community. I look forward to reading more research on this topic and coming up with a concrete and ongoing plan.
2. Restricting Family Screen Time during the Weekdays: This is always one for us, but becomes even more important as the kids get older. I am the worst offender in my family and I have to do better to show my kids what healthy limits look like. So we will recommit ourselves to no screen time while kids are awake on the weekdays.
3. Building Conversation Skills: During my day job I work with high school students getting them ready for college as a college counselor. One of things I try to do is build “cultural capital” in my students before sending them off into the real world. I want to do the same for my children and help them both, but in particular help my daughter, build conversation skills. It sounds so silly, but the ability to feel comfortable and confident when speaking with peers and adults is a skill I know will take them my kids very far in life. I hope to expand on this goal in a future post.

What are your new school year resolutions this year?