Get Your Kiddo Ready for Success! Teach the Art of Goal-Setting Today.
Reading Time: 8 minutes Listen to the podcast version:
Show Your Kids a Bright Future: How Goal Setting Builds Resilience and Confidence
Ready to spark a lifetime of success? Goal setting is an invaluable tool for kids, providing them with the essential skills to craft their own destiny. With purposeful direction and meaningful objectives, they’ll learn how to prioritize their tasks, manage their time, and create a brighter future. It’s a win-win scenario—as the rewards of surpassing their ambitions will enrich every aspect of their lives!
So, let’s give our little ones the empowering gift of goal setting.
Why should kids set goals?
Having the ability to set goals provides children with a tool.
Once learned children are empowered to take charge of their lives and work towards achieving their dreams.
Some of the key benefits to teaching your child to set goals are:
Improved Focus:
Goals help children concentrate their efforts and attention on specific tasks.
Because there is a “built in” intrinsic reward, the child is usually more motivated and less easily distracted.
Enhanced Self-Confidence:
As children reach their goals, they gain confidence in their abilities.
This helps them to develop a positive self-image.
Time Management Skills:
Goal setting teaches children to manage their time effectively by prioritizing tasks and breaking them into smaller, more manageable steps.
Perseverance and Persistance:
It can be easy to give up on a goal when faced with challenges or setbacks.
Perhaps one of the most important benefits to goal setting for children is encouraging perseverance and persistence.
How Do I Help My Child Identify Their Goals?
How Do I Help My Child Identify Their Goals?Your child is so excited!
They can see benefits to having a goal and working towards it.
They just have no idea what their goal should be.
How can you help your child identify and have a passion for their goal?
Ask Open Ended Questions:
Start by finding out what your child is passionate about.
Ask them questions that encourage them to think deeply about their interests, passions, and values.
Find out if there is an area in their life that they feel they would like to improve upon or grow in?
Encourage Self-Reflecting:
Your child does not have to come up with goals in five minutes or the opportunity is gone!
Encourage them to take some time to reflect on their experiences, both positive and negative and think about what they have learned from them.
This self-reflection can help you child identify areas where they want to grow or develop.
Provide Opportunities for Exploration:
They can absolutely venture into something new.
Encourage your child to try new things and explore interests.
They may discover new passions or talent they did not know they had.
Accept the Material:
Setting goals seems like such a lofty endeavor.
Remember, these are kids.
If you have a preteen, the number one goal on their mind may be to save up to buy their first car; this is a fabulous goal!
When my sister and I were young, we set a goal to buy a trampoline.
The important exercise is the actual lessons learned within goal setting.
It is not important what the actual goal itself is.
How do I teach my child to keep going when the going gets hard?
How do I teach my child to keep going when the going gets hard?While teaching the perseverance and persistence may be the most important lessons of goal setting for children, they are not easy lessons to teach.
Many of us, as adults, have not been taught how to face and overcome adversity.
Celebrate Small Wins:
If you have a spreadsheet, sticker chart, or goal setting app, this is easier to track.
Every time your child takes a step towards the goal, even a small one, celebrate their progress.
This will help motivate them and focus their attention on positive movement.
Think about your wins…do you celebrate them or do you think of the next step?
Take time to give yourself a small cheer, for kids it can be something as minor as acknowledgment with a sticker.
Emphasize Effort Over Outcome:
Achieving the goal is important for many of the benefits.
However, sometimes we meet unforeseen challenges or obstacles.
Instead of focusing on the end result, emphasize the effort your child puts into achieving their goals.
You want them to understand hard work and dedication are keys to succeeding their goals in the end.
The lessons they learned from the work they put into this goal can help them with the next one.
Encourage Problem Solving:
This is one of my favorite lessons!
Your child will need to be able to problem solve various scenarios their entire life.
When your child encounters a challenge, encourage them to think outside of the box, look at other steps to the goal, other times when the goal may be more successfully accomplished, other people who many be able to lend expertise or help to get past this hurdle, etc.
By helping your child to find solutions rather than giving up, you will be growing problem solving skills while also helping them to develop resilience .
Be the Role Model:
Sometimes I can be real snarky.
My latest “thing” is these politicians who say “We look towards our next generations to lead us…” basically out of the mess our country has “found itself” in.
So, snarky Kara is thinking, well, be a role model for what you are saying and let the next generation who you are hoping will “turn things around” and get out of office so they can get in!
They cannot change anything in if they do not have the power to do so.
Chances are good you have a child with a little snark in them as well.
If they hear you say one thing, but see you give up, blame others (or yourself), or yell and curse the roof off the house the minute things are not going well in your life, they are going to “hear” your actions, not your words.
How Do I Teach Actual Goal Setting to My Child?
Have you ever noticed how your child can come up with so many big dreams and ideas, but then can’t seem to figure out how to make them happen?
It’s like they have the vision of what they want to do, but no idea how to get there.
Here are some ways to help your child to actually set their goal:
Start Simple:
Remember KISS, Keep it Simple Stupid?
It is a fabulous acronym that few forget because we all identify with it.
It is so much easier to remember a small list.
Or to assemble something with few, easy to follow simple instructions.
Your child’s goals are no different.
Begin with small, achievable goals.
For younger children these goals can be putting toys in the correct bins at the end of the day.
What if your child wants to become more engaged in their community?
Or learn to help others?
Use this kindness calendar to bring empathy and awareness into their lives.
Bring the family together!
Get a daily activity or thought to bring your family compassion towards each other.
Why would they want achieve this?
There has to be a reason they want this.
Is it easier to find their favorite toy the next time?
Have they stepped on a toy and broken it before?
Has the dog chewed up and destroyed one?
For anyone, any age, word of the day is a great goal towards building your vocabulary.
It is small, achievable, and simple.
However, again, there needs to be buy in or the intrinsic motivation will not be there.
Make Goals Specific:
I wanted my boys to clean their rooms once a week.
I quickly learned that “clean” was too vague.
They needed terms like: make your bed, put dirty clothes in laundry room, put away clean clothes, empty your trash, vacuum the floor, and wipe all of the surfaces with a Clorox wipe.
The difference in the results was amazing!
Obviously, this was not one of their goals, it was one of mine.
However, it is a great example to show specificity.
Break the Goal Into Steps:
Bite size pieces.
We all can handle a lot if it is broken down into smaller, achievable steps.
Think of the “do better in school” example.
That is huge.
This will need to be small steps.
It may start with waking up earlier, organizing papers the night before, eating a good breakfast, getting all classwork done on time, etc.
Each goal is done individually and celebrated on its own.
If your child is old enough, see if they can walk through this process and come up with a journey of small steps to achieve their goal.
Create a Vision Board:
First, this is totally optional.
Second, there are a lot of different “kinds” of vision boards.
I actually like an audio “vision” board that I listen to daily.
If your child is not visual, but an audio learner, I suggest this.
Vision boards can be very motivating.
The general idea is to create images, colors, and words in a creative display that represents your child’s goals.
They then display this three they will see it daily.
Or, like me, listen to the positive way these goals are playing out in their lives daily.
Teaching your child to set goals is a valuable skill that will benefit them throughout their lives. It helps your child learn to manage time, problem solving skills, and gain self-confidence. By providing support and guidance you can empower your child to dream big, work hard, and achieve their aspirations!