Real Changes for Real Families

By Sally Treadwell

We’ve all heard of them, but we’re secretly convinced they’re Urban Legends. People who make New Year’s Resolutions, and then keep them for longer than, say, a couple of nanoseconds.

Of course we all want to lose 15 (or 25, or 35) pounds, trek across the Himalayas with a sensitive and brilliant yet rugged goatherd, and/or win a Nobel Prize. But by this point we’ve got a pretty good idea that we’re probably not going to follow through—again.

So here are a few suggestions for real changes for real families; changes you can achieve with relatively minimal effort.

Get Dinner on the Table, Every Night

Yeah, we know. You’re running from the minute your toes hit the floor in the morning, and by the time dinnertime rolls around….helloooo, fast food joints, frozen pizza or take-out heaven. After slaving away at work and then hauling the kids to soccer practice, who wants to peer into the fridge and figure out what’s for dinner?

Get over it. You’ll save money and eat much more healthily if you (dare I say it?) PLAN some menus. The worst part of cooking is figuring out what to eat and making sure the ingredients are on hand. So call a family confab, grab seven large index cards and come up with seven categories (one for each day of the week) of foods that your family likes to eat.

For instance, if you tend to like ethnic food, label your cards with Mexican, Indian, Italian, Chinese, Thai, Burger, Pizza. Or try soup and salad, pizza (and a movie), grilled chicken, pot pie, stir fry, slow cooker (good for days you know you’ll be late—prep the night before and plug in first thing) or beef categories. You can even make up a Wild Card and a Night Out card, with reminders about healthy options at local eateries.

Then jot down the names of favorite family recipes for each category on the appropriate card. Add in the page numbers of cookbook recipes you’d like to try, and look up new pre-tested recipes in each category on cooking websites like epicurious.com. Make sure the kids have some input.

Now you have a master list. Print out a bunch of copies of a customizable shopping list and your pre-pre planning is done.

Then, each week—thrifty souls do it on Wednesdays when grocery store sales fliers arrive—sit down with your master lists and plot your category picks onto your calendar. Add vegetable, fruit and salad choices. Note needed items on the shopping list, and buy them in one fell swoop.

Whoever gets home first each night knows exactly what to cook and is sure that the ingredients will be on hand. Yes, you will spend a little time setting up and making weekly plans, but you’ll save a lot of time (and money) every night as well as eating better.

Train a Chef

My kids are too young to use a knife. It’s quicker to do it myself. They make too much mess.

Uh-huh. We’ve heard all the excuses, but it’s time to ditch them.

Teaching your children to cook might take a little time upfront, but the upside is that they’ll become confident, capable and independent; they’ll regularly apply their reading, math, science, social and even art skills. You’ll spend time together doing something positive and teaching/learning a life skill. Oh—and eventually you’ll be able to ask THEM, “What’s for dinner?”

All kids are different and require varying levels of supervision, but you can start when they’re babies if you like—talk to them about what you’re doing as you cook. As a rule of thumb, two year olds can scrub vegetables and tear lettuce, three and up can up can mix muffins and spread peanut better, four and up can beat eggs and measure wet and dry ingredients, seven and up can make a salad, nine and up can use a knife (with supervision). By 11 they should be able to prepare quite complex recipes.

Go to http://tinyurl.com/5pz9rv for the USDA’s round-up of healthy cooking tips and sites for kids, or try Spatulatta.com for kids’ video lessons. Kids (and adults) can even follow instructions on a Nintendo DS program like Personal Trainer: Cooking.

Breathe Deeply

Ever watched a baby breathing? Sometimes it seems as if they use their entire bodies, sending oxygen zipping through their systems to replenish every cell.

Now check out your own breathing. Pretty shallow, isn’t it? Your lungs are huge, reaching to your waist, but it’s a good bet that you’re only using the top third of them. Stressed people are still more likely to breathe more shallowly and even to unconsciously hold their breath.

And not breathing properly decreases the amount of oxygen you take in and the corresponding elimination of carbon dioxide and toxins. You’re more likely to suffer from high blood pressure and chronic tiredness.

Consciously practice breathing deeply every day—at every stoplight, for instance, take several deep breaths, filling your entire lungs. Your stomach should move. Encourage your kids to do it too. Or try a yoga class for instruction in pranayama breathing techniques, named for the Sanskrit words prana, meaning ‘life force’ or ‘vital energy’, and ayama meaning ‘to lengthen’.

Get Smart—Globally Smart

Some 90 percent of the kids in my daughter’s civics class were horrified when their teacher told them that Russia had invaded Georgia. “OMG!” they squealed, “Russia’s invaded America?” (My daughter snickered, but—aha!—I noticed that she stopped whining about listening to NPR on the way to school.)

Even worse, a college professor friend in Miami reported that about 75 percent of the students she tested thought that Juan Valdez was the president of Cuba.

The truth is, none of us know as much as we should do about our world. We talk about globalism, but we’re a little vague about it—even though the internet has given us unprecedented access to knowledge, and even though the global economy is increasingly affecting our lives.

Play World Monopoly with your kids. Go to festivals celebrating other heritages. Occasionally pick out international movies like Children of Heaven, The Story of the Weeping Camel, The King of Masks, or Not One Less, instead of the latest Disney flick.

Teach children to learn in small daily bites by buying a World Almanac, vocabulary or Spanish phrases page-a-day calendar. Subscribe to one or more of the Oxford University Press’s free “fact of the day” e-mails—choose from geography, history, languages, African American studies, art, religion and more.

Or sign up for a free email subscription to online newspapers and hit the world sections. For instance, the Christian Science Monitor, known for independent and thoughtful reporting and analyses, often links to other newspapers in its reports. A story about a suicide bombing in Israel might contain links to stories in both the Palestinian and the Israeli papers—thus giving your older children not only a deeper understanding of their world but also a valuable lesson in media literacy, facts versus viewpoint, and how other nations actually see things as opposed to how we think they might.

“Do the Little Things”

Back in the fifth century St. David told his followers to “do the little things” (well, actually he said 'gwnewch y pethau bychain”, but then, he was Welsh) and all these years later his advice still makes a lot of sense.

The best ‘little thing’ you can do is the smile-plus—smile when you’re waking your kids up in the morning, while you’re holding the door open for someone. Smile when you take a moment to compliment a total stranger on her beautiful skirt, or the way she’s handling a screaming child in the grocery store; when you stop to warm up your spouse’s car for them on a cold winter’s morning.

Practice courtesy. Let another car into the traffic flow. Allow the harried father with the fussy baby to go ahead of you in the grocery store line. And sure, it’s now considered acceptable to e-mail thank-you notes, but aren’t hand-written cards a pleasure to find amidst the bills in your mailbox? So write some. And take it even further—send a complete stranger a thank-you note for the joy you get from passing their absolutely spectacular flower garden each morning on the way to work.

Be Contagiously Happy

Happiness is contagious—and the effect lasts for at least three degrees of separation, according to one study recently published in the BMJ. If a spouse, friend, neighbor or sibling is happy, it increases the likelihood that you are happy by up to 34 percent, and even a happy friend-of-a-friend can make you about eight percent more likely to be happy.

"… people are embedded in social networks and… the health and well being of one person affects the health and wellbeing of others... Human happiness is not merely the province of isolated individuals,” the study concluded.

So make a conscious effort to shift your mental gears into happy mode each day (“fake it ‘til you make it” if need be) and listen to cheerful music on the way home from work. Find the amusing side of life. It’s not just your happiness that’s at stake!

Live Richly

OK, so maybe that phrase was badly exploited by Citigroup’s rather cynical advertising campaign. But there’s still truth in it. However iffy the economy may be, you can still live richly by simply taking deep, daily pleasure, in the moment and in what you have.

Lie still instead of bounding out of bed when the alarm shrills. Enjoy the warmth and the softness of your sheets. Then stretch every limb for a few seconds, luxuriating in the strength and flexibility of your body. NOW bound out of bed—with an extra spring!

Pause, and perhaps say grace, before you dig into dinner. Inhale the fragrance; appreciate the colors and textures of your meal. Savor every bite.

Clean your house or apartment. Rearrange everything so that your possessions seem new again. Can you shift an armchair into your bedroom for a cozy reading spot? Do some guilt-free de-cluttering—if you really never liked or needed that lamp that was given to you, doesn’t it deserve a chance to be loved by someone else? Pass it on to your friendly neighborhood thrift store.

No money for flowers? Arrange a handful of acorns in a bowl or snip an armful of evergreens for a tall bronze vase.

Giving is the ultimate feel-good luxury that everyone can afford. Bake extra cookies and take them to someone who needs a pick-me-up. Volunteer to walk your elderly neighbor’s dog, or pick up groceries for her. Tutor a struggling child. Wash dogs at the Humane Society. Or find opportunities to fit your schedule and interests at volunteermatch.org.

Get free entertainment from Nature. Walk out into the starry night sky. Relish a spectacular thunderstorm. Make regular visits to the park or your yard to watch the progress of spring bulbs. Really take the time to LOOK at things.

Celebrate stupid but fun “holidays’ like Leave a Zucchini on Your Neighbor’s Porch Day or Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Go Soda-Free

Positive resolutions usually work better than ones that are about denial. But resolving to keep colas etc. out of your house—well, that makes so such sense and is so relatively easy that it may just be the exception that proves the rule.

Soda drinkers are far more likely to be overweight or obese, have some 60 percent more cavities, are three to five times as likely to break bones, not to mention having an increased risk of esophageal cancer…oh, and did we mention that soda’s addictive?

Part of the problem is what is in soda (like phosphoric acid) and part of it is what isn’t (like calcium). Diet sodas are no better for you, and possibly worse.

If you must have soda, resolve never to buy it for home—save it as a special treat when you’re out. Or try making a simple syrup by boiling up lemon or lime juice with sugar, cooling, and adding soda water. Despite the lack of preservatives and phosphoric acid it’s not ALL that much better for you, but the effort of making it will cut down on the amount you (or your kids) drink!

 

If you can implement any of these resolutions during the coming year your life will be just a little easier, a little richer, than in 2008. Truthfully, they all boil down to one thing—be kind. Be kind to yourself, to your partner, to your children, to your family, to your mind, to your surroundings, and to your body. So here’s to a fabulous—and kind—2009!

 

"New Year's Day: Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual." ~Mark Twain

"For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning."
~T.S. Eliot, "Little Gidding"

“When we feel love and kindness toward others, it not only makes others feel loved and cared for, but it helps us also to develop inner happiness and peace.” –HH Dalai Lama

“Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate.”—Albert Schweitzer

“No kind action ever stops with itself. One kind action leads to another. Good example is followed. A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees. The greatest work that kindness does to others is that it makes them kind themselves.”—Amelia Earheart