The Resolutions I Will Not Make

A brand new year - and it's resolution time! Time to feel good about becoming a better, thinner, stress-free, more fun, more balanced you. Which means six weeks of self-righteous gym sweating, a few days of counting kjs and measuring palm-sized helpings of pasta, one hardcore meditation session, and maybe a couple of hours without chocolate. (No need to restrict wine. That would just be over the top stupid.)

The promises you make to yourself are so easy to break! Give yourself an excuse, justify it with flawed reasoning, and then you can forget about it and move on. Making promises to someone else is a bit harder when you have to face up to that look of crushing disappointment in their eyes.

So here are three resolutions I would like to make to my children this year which I am never going to tell them about.

1: I will stop shouting at you.

Obviously this is not going to happen. If their stubby little legs are heading for a busy road, I will move my stubby little legs faster whilst shouting like a banshee. If they are about to drink bleach, I will shout that water is a far better choice. And if they do what I have asked them not to do for the third time, I will shout, if only to be heard over their indignant wailing. I do not want to be a shouter, but I am. Sorry kids, but since the anti-smacking law came in, that's all I've got.

2: I will stop giving you junk food.

This is an easy one. They hardly ever get junk food anyway. On my son's third birthday we indulgently let him eat as much crap as he wanted including a huge piece of double chocolate mud cake for dessert. That night in bed he was scratching and twitching like a junkie on crack and neither of us got to sleep until after midnight. It was horrible and I felt like the worst mother in the world. Needless to say Christmas, the traditional time for overindulgence in scorched almonds, candy-canes and Roses chocolates, was a very quiet affair. But boy, did they enjoy their carob covered carrots.

3: I will play more.

The point of having extra babies is so they have someone to play with when Mum can't be arsed. But when they're little they don't really have that 'playing together' skill set yet. They have, 'I'll play with this and you play with that and then you take my stuff and I hit you.' I need to play with them more - a) to teach them how to do it, and b) because it's more fun than housework (and then maybe they'll like me more than that cradle-snatching bitch, the TV).

The best resolutions are those made to yourself and not shared with anyone, least of all with your children. All it takes is three little words from a quivering, cherubic lip, "But you promised..." to guilt you into keeping whatever ridiculous declarations you made in January.

So, Mums the word... and roll on February.