We reviewed our family goals for 2024 and marked off the ones we accomplished—spend more time with friends, make more music together, go to Legoland, etc.—and created new goals for 2025.

Our goals for the new year include “speak up,” “learn how to roller skate,” and “write a story in Swedish.”

I love writing these goals because it offers some intentionality for our year. And we post them in a conspicuous place in the house so that we’re always looking at them. That way: in view, in mind.

The goals also help us outwardly showcase our values to our daughter so that she can start to view our relationship with the world a bit more. “Speak up” as a goal led to a conversation wherein she asked what it meant and when you’d do it. Creating the goal on the day of the insurrectionist’s inauguration provided ready examples for when we might need to speak up in the coming days, months, and years. A goal of “read 10 pages a day, every day” foregrounds the importance of reading and, perhaps, of “slow entertainment.” Her goal of learning how to roller skate and skateboard tells us she’s ready for adventure and to learn new things her peers might be doing.

Our yearly goal-setting is a quiet, family-focused time to set priorities for the year. We’ve been doing this for 3-4 years now, and we’ve usually accomplished 75% of our goals—which is much better than the zero we’d have accomplished by setting none at all.

Hope you’ll give it a try. It’s a more realistic spin on New Year’s Resolutions, and it can bring a family together throughout the year as long as the goals are reasonable and fun.