Emma's Diary Feature: My Parenting Intentions For 2024

Partnering with Emma’s Diary has helped me reach so many prospective parents, newborn mums and toddler handlers. Working with this platform is one of my proudest writing achievements and I love having the opportunity to tackle controversial subjects. Now that January is in full swing, I’m dedicating this post to my parenting intentions for the year.

2023 was an amazing year for me and my family. I enjoyed life as a mum to Jack and watching him grow into toddlerhood, juggling work and parenthood and trying to find some time for my husband.

Being a parent makes you reflect and feel nostalgic about the silliest things. But it’s true what they say: time flies, the days are long but the years are short.

There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t wonder if I’m doing any of it right, or if I could somehow do more. I think that’s ingrained in us as Mums and Dads.

I’ve been slowly letting myself off the hook and realising that I can’t have it all – and that’s ok.

But I wanted to take some time to reflect and think about my parenting intentions for 2024.

The Power of Positive Words

Jack is a few weeks away from turning two and he is a bright boy. He’s very aware of what’s happening around him and how to make himself heard.

At the end of 2023, I began to notice that he understood when he was being spoken about and would eavesdrop in to these kinds of conversations.

I want to make sure that I am speaking to his stuffed toys, friends or his Daddy about certain things that he does well or needs to learn more about.

Things like:

“

Mr Elephant, did you see that Jack slept in his big boy bed all night? What a good boy he is!”

I’ve started doing this and seen just how much Jack laps up these pieces of information.

Even when it comes to something he shouldn’t be doing, I intend to do something similar along the lines of:

“We don’t throw our toys do we, Daddy?”

Modelling Behaviour

The older my child gets, the more I realise how important it is to model the behaviour I want to see in him – in front of him.

I want my little one to see how I interact with other people, including his dad, and people in our family. If I speak nicely and in a calm way, my hope is that he will mirror this over time.

We are quite a loud, fun household but there’s not a lot of cross voices or shouting – at least that’s what we try.

The importance of saying sorry and being accountable is also key for me. Even though he’s still small, I want him to see and understand the importance of conflict resolution and the power of words.

Being realistic, this won’t happen all the time, we aren’t perfect. With lack of sleep, big work deadlines and general life with a toddler, sometimes we do snap at each other. I am the worst for feeling like I’m at my limit when everyone wants me all at the same time.

But I want to try, in 2024, to give my toddler a solid and calm behaviour set.

Quality Time

Coming off the back of a very busy and family-orientated Christmas, I want to make it a big goal of mine to spend more quality time together.

We’ve rested, stayed in our pjs and had nice adventures. The difference is that most of our days together over the festive period were toddler-led.

Jack and I are lucky to spend a lot of time together: I work from home and he’s not in any solid childcare. The juggle is real but we’re like two amigos navigating it all together.

Quality time with Jack looks like: