Here we are in the beginning of yet another year full of promise and hope. Have you noticed that you are already falling back into old habits? Have you chosen your One Word to guide you toward more meaning this new year?
Before You Plan Ahead, Reflect Back: 10 Questions to Review Your 2024
Before you dive into setting resolutions, goals, and dreams for the upcoming year, take a moment to pause and reflect on the year that’s just passed. To truly move forward with intention, it’s essential to look back at the journey you’ve been on.
Why Reflect?
Reflection is more than a look in the rearview mirror—it’s a chance to celebrate victories, acknowledge growth, and uncover lessons that can guide you into the New Year. After all, you can’t know where you’re going until you understand where you’ve been.
Here are 10 meaningful questions to help you review your 2024 and set the stage for a purposeful 2025:
O Christmas tree. O Christmas tree. How lovely are thy ornaments…
Every December, we find ourselves wrapped up in holiday traditions. My favorite ritual of the holiday season is adorning our Christmas tree. I am fully aware that it has very little to do with our reason for the season in the birth of Jesus Christ, but I do love its presence nonetheless.
If the ornaments on your tree could talk, do they have stories to tell?’
Is your tree adorned with memories that represent your life?
A friend showered me with meaningful gifts and conversation as she couldn’t attend Nix’s adoption day festivities. One present that she gave me was this beautiful Christmas ornament.
It is perfect because we didn’t have a symbol gracing our tree for this momentous occasion. My friend and I then beamed, talking about our similar Christmas trees, full of life and memories.
Our legacy, memories, and purpose will only live on if we intentionally share them.
You can most likely tell all the tales represented on your tree. But, can anyone else in your family? We are the memory keepers, but we also must be the storytellers.
The passing of time dilutes our memories, so we must write them down. Likely, we will not remember one day why we ever bought that coffee cup ornament in the first place in the world.
5 ways to intentionally bring more meaning to your Christmas tree
1. Date your ornaments
Use a small black sharpie and date the bottom or side of ornaments you collect along your travels or that bring significance to a particular year. Adding this personal touch is a simple way to bring meaning to your treasure.
2. Store special ornaments with a photo or handwritten note telling its story
Decorating your tree will be a walk down memory lane as you pull out each ornament to hang upon the branches.
Store meaningful ornaments with a photo or notes that go along with them. It doesn’t have to be an essay, perhaps just a handwritten note on the back of a photograph. Do this so your precious family collection will continue to mean something to others when you’re gone.
Stories keep us present to the past. Without meaning, your little treasures may be discarded tchotchkes one day.
3. Chose an ornament representing every year
When our kids were born, I started collecting ornaments and storing them in decorative keepsake boxes. For years, I chose ornaments for each child until I realized that this is a difficult tradition to keep up when you have many kids and only one tree to display all the fun. So, the kids’ collections are primarily from their first five years of life.
I even started (that being the key word here) ornament collection scrapbooks for my kids so that I could pass on the stories of why each one exists.
Remember that your kids will one day leave and take their ornament collection with them. Just ensure this won’t leave your tree bare and lifeless one day. I loved what this Mom did with her tree when her kids all left home. Why not start incorporating photo ornaments like this now?
4. Honor loved ones who passed away with remembrance ornaments
I have chosen ornaments that represent close loved ones when they have passed. Not that we will ever forget them, but I love that I notice those ornaments walking by the tree and am reminded of that person more often.
5. Purge meaningless ornaments
If no one can recall why you have a particular ornament, get rid of it and make space for one of meaning- unless it simply makes you happy, even with no story attached.
O Christmas tree. O Christmas tree. How lovely are thy memories. Thank you for being a faithful visual reminder every year of all the blessings in our lives. Merry Christmas to you!
What’s the worst word someone could use to describe your child?
There is a slew of cringe-worthy adjectives to choose from, but Entitled would be it for me. Spoiled brat 2019 style. I’m on a mission to parent against this ugly trait running rampant in this me, myself and I generation that we are raising our kids in.
My recent post about 8 things you should stop doing for your teens this school year went wild around the web. Parents are weighing in and while the majority agree with integrating life skills into their kids lives, others have dubbed me uninvolved, lazy and say they feel sorry for my kids.
One reader said, so what do you do exactly if you aren’t doing these things for your kids? So glad you asked…
1. Laugh and enjoy life together
Star light. Star bright. First star I see tonight. I wish you may. I wish you might. Be my date on Homecoming Night.
As if Teenage guys don’t have enough on their plate, they must now come up with a cheesy proposal presentation to ask a girl to Homecoming. He’d better not think of asking her to the dance without at least a decorated poster board in hand.
Why are our sons expected to put on a proposal production to ask someone to Homecoming today?
My post on 8 things you should stop doing for your teen resonated with a lot of people.
The truth is, it is tough parenting resilient kids in today’s culture.
As a stay-at-home, work-from-home Mom, it’s easy to over-parent my kids because I adore them and want them to wholeheartedly know and feel that.
I have to really work at not over-functioning as a Mom.
Raising four not so-youngsters, I’m constantly fighting the urge to over parent. From the time my feet hit the floor each morning to the time I crawl into bed, I am trying to balance being there for my kids and showing up in my own life.
Why is parenting today so much more difficult than when we were growing up?
Or does it just seem that way because we are so heavily involved?
Today our children are so much busier than we ever were as kids. I played high school sports and thank goodness there was no such thing as “club teams” and rarely if ever, did we have hours of homework.
We do a lot of things for our kids that our parents never did for us. We feel bad for our busy kids, so we try and help them out, even when we shouldn’t.
Here are 5 Books that help me when I want to over-parent
1. Stay Overnight at LaPosada Hotel
The crown jewel of Winslow is the LaPosada Hotel! This amazing piece of historic architecture is known as the last of The Santa Fe’s great railway hotels. It has been beautifully restored and I would love to tell you all of the details of this special place, but I don’t want to spoil your visit. The grounds are gorgeous and it’s so relaxing to just walk around and take in all of its beauty.
Read more
Don’t judge me if you happen to see my kids eating packaged Ritz crackers for school lunch.
Don’t judge me if they’re on the sidelines of PE because they forgot their uniform.
Don’t judge me if they didn’t turn in their homework because it’s still sitting home on their desk.
What some may view as a lack of parenting, is what I deem parenting on purpose, as we work to build necessary life skills in our kids.
I stopped making daily breakfasts and packing school lunches long ago.
I don’t feel obligated to deliver forgotten items left behind at home.
School projects and homework are not any part of my existence.
How do we raise competent adults if we’re always doing everything for our kids?
Walk away from doing these 8 things for your teen this school year
1. Waking them up in the morning
If you are still waking little Johnny up in the mornings, it’s time to let an alarm clock do its job. My foursome has been expected to get themselves up on early school mornings since they started middle school. There are days one will come racing out with only a few minutes to spare before they have to be out the door. The snooze button no longer feels luxurious when it’s caused you to miss breakfast.
I heard a Mom actually voice out loud that her teen sons were just so cute still, that she loved going in and waking them up every morning. Please stop. I find my sons just as adorable as you do, but our goal is to raise well-functioning adults here.
2. Making their breakfast and packing their lunch
My morning alarm is the sound of the kids clanging cereal bowls. My job is to make sure there is food in the house so that they can eat breakfast and pack a lunch.
One friend asked, yeah but how do you know what they’re bringing for school lunch? I don’t. I know what food I have in my pantry and it’s on them to pack up what they feel is a good lunch. It will only be a few short years and I will have no idea what they are eating for any of their meals away at college. Free yourself away from the PB and J station now.
3. Filling out their paperwork
I have a lot of kids, which equates to a lot of beginning of the school year paperwork. I used to dread this stack until the kids became of age to fill all of it out themselves. Our teens are expected to fill out all of their own paperwork, to the best of their ability. They put the papers to be signed on a clipboard and leave it for me on the kitchen island. I sign them and put them back on their desks. This makes life much easier for everyone.
Hold your teens accountable. They will need to fill out job and college applications soon and they need to know how to do that without your intervention. When they start applying for college, they’ll need to be more organized because of the workload they’ll be receiving.
4. Delivering their forgotten items
Monday morning we pulled out of the driveway and screeched around the corner of the house when daughter dear realized she forgot her phone. “We have to go back, Mom!” Another exclaimed that he forgot his freshly washed PE uniform folded in the laundry room. I braked in hesitation as I contemplated turning around. Nope. Off we go, as the vision surfaced of both of them playing around on their phones before it was time to leave.
Parents don’t miss opportunities to provide natural consequences for your teens. Forget something? Feel the pain of that. Kids also get to see, that you can make it through the day without a mistake consuming you.
We also have a rule that Mom and Dad are not to get pleading texts from school asking for forgotten items. It still happens, but we have the right to just shoot back “that’s a bummer.”
5. Making their failure to plan your emergency
School projects do not get assigned the night before they are due. Therefore, I do not run out and pick up materials at the last minute to get a project finished. I do always keep poster boards and general materials on hand for the procrastinating child. But, other needed items, you may have to wait for. Do not race to Michaels for your kid who hasn’t taken time to plan.
This is a good topic to talk about in weekly family meetings. Does anyone have projects coming up that they’re going to need supplies for so that I can pick them up at my convenience this week?
6. Doing all of their laundry
“What? YOU didn’t get my shorts washed? This response always backfires on the kid who may lose their mind thinking that I’m the only one who can do laundry around here. Every once in awhile a child needs a healthy reminder that I do not work for them. The minute they assume that this is my main role in life is the minute that I gladly hand over the laundry task to them.
Most days I do the washing and the kids fold and put their clothes away, but they are capable of tackling the entire process when need be.
7. Emailing and calling their teachers and coaches
If our child has a problem with a teacher or coach, he is going to have to take it to the one in charge. There is no way that we, as parents, are going to question a coach or email a teacher about something that should be between the authority figure and our child.
Don’t be that over-involved parent. Teach your child that if something is important enough to him, then he needs to learn how to handle the issue himself or at least ask you to help them.
8. Meddling in their academics
Put the pencil down parents. Most of the time, I honestly couldn’t tell you what my kids are doing for school work. We talk about projects and papers over dinner, but we’ve always had the expectation for our kids to own their work and grades. At times, they’ve earned Principals Lists, Honor Rolls, and National Junior Honor Society honors on their own accord. At other times, they’ve missed the mark.
These apps and websites, where parents can go in and see every detail of children’s school grades and homework, are not helping our overparenting epidemic.
Every blue moon I will ask the kids to pull up their student account and show me their grades because I want them to know I do care. I did notice our daughter slacking off at the end of last year and my acknowledgment helped her catch up, but I’m not taking it on as one of my regular responsibilities and you shouldn’t be either.
What is your parenting goal?
Is it to raise competent and capable adults?
If so, then lets work on backing off in areas where our teens can stand on their own two feet. I know they’re our babies and it feels good to hover over them once in a while, but in all seriousness, it’s up to us to raise them to be capable people.
I want to feel confident when I launch my kids into the real world that they are going to be just fine because I stepped back and let them navigate failure and real-life stuff on their own.
So please don’t judge me if my kids scramble around, shoving pre-packaged items into that brown paper lunch bag, before racing to catch the bus.
It’s all on purpose, my friends.
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