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By teaching your children to set goals, you’ll help them grow into the people they want to be. Start with goals that relate directly to home or school. For instance, “I will be able to do my chores without being reminded” or “I will remember to write down what my homework is every day.” Guide your children as they set goals, and then help them reach them.
There are three kinds of goals you can focus on—for yourself and for your children:
- Academic goals pertain to their schooling. In what subject(s) can your children improve? Are they starting something new such as a foreign language or calculus or drama? An academic goal is “I want to master my times tables” or “I want to be able to memorize my geometry theorems.”
- Process goals focus on how you do something. For example, “I want to finish my homework in a timely manner” or “I want to do my math neatly.” Think of adverbs (or words ending in -ly) to describe how you do something.
- Character goals describe the attitude with which we approach our work. For example, “I want to persevere through my math even when it’s difficult” or “I want to stop complaining about my English teacher.” Without a good attitude, you may not please a teacher or employer with your performance even if you did your job perfectly.
Begin by setting goals for yourself in these three areas. What do you want to learn more about? How can you improve the way you do your work? What character or spiritual issues need to be addressed in your life?
Then begin the same goal-setting process with your children.
The Process of Setting Goals
Follow these steps for successful goal setting.
1. Set goals for yourself before setting them with your children.
Setting goals with your children doesn’t have to be just one more thing we do as parents. If we first incorporate it into our own lives, we can then encourage that same process in our children.
Remember that children watch us carefully. They love show and tell, but the power is in the show. Let them see how these things work in your life before you expect them to use them in their own.
How do you begin choosing and setting your own goals? One way that works is to decide what in your life is causing you the most stress. Target that area first for improvement. If you can alleviate some of the bad stress in your life, you will be better able to help your children set and attain their goals.
What keeps you up nights? What eats up your time, your money and your energy more than anything else? These are areas for which goal setting is critical.
2. Set goals with and for your children.
Things just don’t get done unless we’re determined to do them. For some children, progress comes too easily. They don’t learn how to persevere because they didn’t have to in order to get the grade they desired. These children need really challenging goals in order to learn determination.
Others have tried and failed so often that they’ve given up. They see no value in perseverance because the tasks or goals overwhelm them.
Children need a supportive environment at home and at school. They also need to set goals within their reach until they gain confidence and then determination. Our children require our help to stay focused, to keep going when it gets difficult and to believe that what they’re doing is important for their own futures.
3. Monitor progress.
How do you monitor a child’s progress toward the goals you set together? There are two effective ways. One of the best is conferencing. Do this with your children periodically in a safe environment. Go out for ice cream or breakfast or whatever and talk about how well you’re doing together on the goals.
A second way to monitor progress toward goals is to keep a record. Teachers use grades, which work, but there are also checklists and rubrics. Monitor your child’s progress by creating a checklist of what is needed to achieve their particular goal.
If their goal is to clean their room completely, put a checklist for what makes a clean room on a clipboard and either hang it on their bedroom door or hand it to them when it's time for that chore. As they check off each item, you can both have confidence that they’ve done what was expected.
Maybe it sounds a bit like the army, but checklists are effective. And if you have an undisciplined child, you'll be glad you thought of it.
4. Celebrate attainment of goals.
We all need some kind of acknowledgement that we’ve reached our goals. In school, grades and awards fulfill that purpose. In a job, a promotion, pay raise or award of some kind also celebrate attainment of goals set. In our homes, we can celebrate in a variety of ways.
- Go out to celebrate, doing something that is meaningful to your child.
- Showcase your child’s achievement using a portfolio of learning and invite others outside your family to view the portfolio.
- Privately express to your child the pride you feel in his her achievement. Some children prefer not to have too much attention paid to them publicly.