Reality Magazine
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January 2006

Why keeping your New Year resolutions is more important than you think.
Be careful when you tell people about your New year’s resolutions writes

Carmel Wynne

Most of us make New Year resolutions.  But it’s safe to assume that within a few weeks the majority of those well-intentioned people will have abandoned their goals.

There are all sorts of reasons why people fail to follow through.  In many families there is an expectations that the resolutions won’t last.  It’s like someone asks ‘What are your New Year resolutions?’  Everyone joins in to list them off for fun and no one is really serious or very motivated to succeed.

By the end of the first week of January the resolutions are forgotten or broken by the adults.  But what appears to be a bit of harmless fun to them may have an impact on children that few realise.  Much of a child’s behaviour is learned from what parents say and do.

Psychologists call this learning from observation learning from modelling.  A mother smiles at her baby and the baby smiles back.  Most parents are unaware that they are a child’s role model for how to feel, think and act.  Children indiscriminately imitate what the parent does.  They learn how to respond to people and situations from the behaviour modelled by mum and dad.

At an early age when their critical powers are still in the process of development children want to trust that their parents are dependable.  They believe what their parent says even when experience shows that the parent doesn’t do what s/he says.

From observation they learn how men
Isn’t it a sobering thought that parents teach their children how men and women are ‘supposed’ to act?

treat women and how women treat men from observation.  Isn’t it a sobering thought that we are their models that teach our children how men and women are ‘supposed’ to act?

Gender roles
In today’s world gender roles are getting blurred but in most families women take the major role in childcare.  Youngsters observe that the mother does most of the housework, cooking and childcare.  When both parents work outside the home they see that the work of men and women is not of equal status.  Even very young children pick up the non-verbal signals that dad’s work is more highly valued or is more important than mum’s.  If a child is sick and has to stay at home from school it’s never the father who can take time off from work.  So the child senses that men’s work is more important because dad has to go to work when mum can stay home.

Keeping commitments
Parents play a fundamental role in helping children learn about keeping or breaking commitments.  Say at a family party a ten years old boy heard his father make a New Year resolution to spend more time with the family.  His Mum said she would take more exercise and he promised to keep his room tidy.

By the second week in January he found that neither of his parents had kept their resolutions.  His father did not chang his work practices.  He was late home and even brought work home with him to do at the weekends.  So instead of spending more time with the family as he promised he was spending even less.

His mother couldn’t go out in the evening because his father was not at home to mind him.  She didn’t tell him this but he assumed that her plan to take more exercise involved going out after dinner when his father was there.  He expected her to go out with two of her friends who already walked every evening and was disappointed when his assumptions were not met.

If his parents were aware that he had expectations of spending special time with his father when his mum was out they might understand what got into him when he stopped tidying his room.

Influences their actions
What children observe a parent do or not do strongly influences their actions and beliefs throughout their lives.  Much of what a child learns from observation is internalised and becomes his or her unconscious criteria for how things get done and what doesn’t need to be followed through.

Most families have unwritten rules about who is supposed to do certain things and who gets away with not doing what they are supposed to do.  Without parents being aware of it children make assumptions that reflect their beliefs about these unwritten family rules.

Based on their observations they generate beliefs that do not reflect the reality.  For example if mum does all the cooking and the children in the family are told to clear the table and put the dishes in the dishwasher, the child may assume that dads don’t have to do anything in the kitchen.  Children have a tendency to generalise from ‘my dad doesn’t help out in the kitchen’ to ‘men don’t help out in the kitchen’.

Importance of open communication
In families where there is open communication the parents will talk to the children so they understand the family rules.  Often they involve them in making decisions.  Their point of view is taken into consideration.  The children are aware of the consequences when people break the rules.  They understand they have to take responsibility for their actions.  Occasionally a family will even devise a system to appeal parental decisions.

Implicit expectations
In families where communication is closed the expectations parents have of their children are implicit.  Issues are seldom discussed.  The parents hold the power.  They make the decisions.  The children are not encouraged to express what they think or feel.

Implicit family rules apply when nobody speaks about difficult situations but they are dealt with.  For example, if a grandparent’s visits are not enjoyed by the family, nobody says openly that the grandparent bores everyone.  The message is conveyed indirectly.  By not inviting the grandparent back or saying everyone is too busy to have him or her over the issue is resolved.

Unless parents encourage open communication in the home, they have no sense of what a child thinks.  It’s fascinating to discover the logic behind a child’s beliefs.  Younger children with limited life-experience cannot distinguish between reality and fantasy.  They trust and believe in what a parent says even when they sense that it can’t happen.

So if you’re a parent consider what you’re modelling for your observant child when you tell others about your New Year’s resolution. 

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