6 Easy Strategies to Help Your Family Succeed in 2020

I love the feeling of getting a fresh start at the beginning of the year. When it's time to buy a new calendar, it's also the perfect opportunity to reflect on the past twelve months and plan new ways to improve my family's life ... and my own! Here are a few of my favorites.

Create a new everyday tradition

The holiday season is when most families celebrate traditions. The one that my family treasures each year is opening new pajamas together on Christmas Eve. I choose a theme each Christmas, and we all get matching ones, regardless of everyone’s ages. It’s a blast, especially when we take a family photo under the tree in our PJs, which range from whimsical footed onesies to jammies that light up or make noise.

Find ways to celebrate the ordinary, everyday moments you spend together.

Once the hustle and bustle of this exciting (and exhausting) time of year is over, however, its the perfect time to focus on your family. Find ways to celebrate the ordinary, everyday moments you spend together. You might choose to begin a Sunday brunch tradition for the first Sunday of the month. Or, you can grab your new calendar and schedule a few electronic-free evenings several times a year where you order pizza and play board games together. Your new tradition can be as simple or as elaborate as you’d like. To succeed in making the practice a true family tradition, all you need to do is be consistent.

Traditions, no matter the time of year, become special rituals your family will cherish and perhaps pass on to their own kids one day.

RELATED:  6 Ways to Create Family Traditions

Establish a daily routine

One of the best gifts you can give your family is to establish solid daily routines. Here's an example. If you find that you and your child are always stressed when it comes to getting organized and rushing out the door in the morning, form a new habit. Have your child pick out his clothing the night before school. Then, have him organize his backpack and place it by the front door. Imagine how much simpler both your morning routines will be!

Start with one area that your family has the most difficulty with—like the morning rush—and pick one or two ways you can improve on that.

You don’t have to go crazy and build in a dozen routines at once. Start with one area that...

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