Do you remember about twelve or more years ago when a popular holiday gift item was TableTopics, a plastic cube, of various iterations, that could be used to prompt conversations at a party or dinner table? Perhaps its popularity continues to this day, but I remember when our family received multiple versions of TableTopics at the holidays. We worked through maybe a quarter of the cards. We never made it part of our dinner routine, but the idea was and still is a good one.
When my children were young enough to participate in a nightly family dinner (I use the term nightly loosely because of many dinnertime interruptions in the form of tennis matches, track meets, swim practices, and more), I intentionally saved topics worthy of family discussion for dinnertime, with a plan to have my children consider issues of morality, life lessons, or hot political topics.
This month I propose a table topic worthy of discussion at your table: New Year's Resolutions. It is not too late to embrace this age-old tradition; there is still time to set goals for the year ahead.
We understand the importance of goal-setting, and we need to pass along our appreciation of goal-setting to our children, particularly in our highly distracted, often unfocused world. Bill Copeland received credit for a goal-setting quote that I frequently share with my students: "The trouble with not having a goal is that you can spend your life running up and down the field and never score." That quote seems to grab my student athletes.
For goals and, for that matter, for New Year's resolutions to be fully effective, they need to be measurable, attainable, and disclosable. If a goal is not measurable, then we will never be able to celebrate reaching it. Unrealistic goals are demoralizing and will be abandoned within weeks; and, if we do not disclose our goals by writing them down and by sharing them with our families, then we will not be accountable for them.
That's why New Year's resolutions make such good fodder for dinner conversation. This table topic gives your children and you an opportunity to make public, to disclose, your goals for the year ahead.
I recommend that my students set goals in four categories: organizational, educational, physical, and personal.
I plan to organize one space in my house each week so that closet and cabinet doors and drawers may be opened without personal endangerment. I plan to read twenty books this year (Thank you Goodreads for prompting me to set and to disclose this goal). I want to lose my holiday weight gain by February 1, which may be my most difficult goal during these frigid winter days; and my personal goal is just that - personal - for my family alone to know.
What are your goals this year? And, perhaps equally important, what are the goals of your children? Remember that New Year's resolutions can help you teach your children another admirable character trait: tenacity. May you and your children have the tenacity to accomplish your goals in 2018.