We cannot afford the luxury of waiting for the crystal ball to drop to make positive changes… We are required to do them when the time is now.” ~ Michele Gianetti

Happy New Year!

And that means it’s resolution time, is it not?

Go to any home shopping channel on the new year and you will see it for yourself. Treadmills, healthy home delivery food services, exercise mats…. the works.

But as we all know, those resolutions are typically slowly but surely relinquished to the activities of our life. Now don’t get me wrong, sometimes they do stick and that is great but for the most part, not so much.

And when you have special needs in your life, it is even harder to make them and keep them, just because our lives are intricately tied to the lives of our children. And their journeys take us all on the rollercoaster that is their lives.

I have never been a real resolution kind of person. I guess my logic was always why wait until the start of the year to make changes or adjustments? Why not try to make those changes on say, a random Friday in June. In other words, we don’t need to mark positive adjustments as things we do ONLY when the ball has dropped and the calendar has flipped.

With our individual journeys with special needs in our lives, we have honed the skills of both assessment and adjustment. We have become veritable professionals at keeping your eyes on the happenings of today and yet, still be able to plan the next step.

But back to the whole resolution thing, we have to adjust as needed, fix things, arrange things and make changes when we need to. Therefore, aren’t we in a way doing the same thing as others do on January 1st? We cannot afford the luxury of waiting for the crystal ball to drop to make positive changes in either how we see things, do things or function. We are required to do them when the time is now.

So, yes, I get it, we are not planning a new fitness for our child with the hopes that they drop those last, pesky five pounds, but we are planning sensory diets that change often, We are not vowing to put our child on a diet, but we do have to keep offering new foods to those picky eaters or to those on gluten free diets. We aren’t promising to “think positively at each moment and breath through the stress” But we do have to keep talking ourselves through many tough and heart rate raising moments.

So for the moment, realize all you do as parents and caregivers to these wonderful amazing children. And allow yourself the luxury of not officially making resolutions because in reality….you already do them…and unlike those who try and let them go in mid January…you keep them going!!

So, I always resolve not to resolve!

I wish everyone a great start to the new year.