GOALS
How to teach your child to accomplish goals!
As a Parent, we have all sorts of goals, goals to give our kids an amazing up bringing, goals to teach them good manners, goals to be a great parent, goals to get them to eat their veggies at the dinner table. Again, we hardly realize that these“ goals” are goals at all, rather, an idea we are striving for, and we make tons of moves and plays in our daily lives to accomplish them.
Without realizing it, adults actively set forth goals and action steps on a regular basis. Although many of these goals hardly seem like a traditional goal such as weight loss or mastering a cooking skill, they are goals none the less. To give you an example of how often our goals come about, think of the times where you desired a job or career change, decided to hit the gym a few times a week, added in a new health food item into your diet, went on vacation, planted a garden, finished your home and work duties to mindlessly binge watch Netflix at night …
So how did we ever get to a place in our lives where our goals and action steps become hardly noticeable? Now, this isn’ t to say that we are perfect at accomplishing our goals. In fact, it is probably safe to say that most of us need some real TLC when it comes to doing them as well. But how do we ensure our kids develop the skills and ability to successfully put their minds to something and attain that goal?
After all, parenting is about setting them up with the best possible tools for life as we can possibly give them, and with all the goals, both recognizable and not, that occur in daily life, it’ s best that we make their goal setting one of our best parenting goals! Now, some of you may have already experienced that sense of frustration when your child doesn’ t try hard enough to accomplish things they they know they are perfectly capable of. No matter, often times a lack of motivation can be attributed by an overwhelming feeling of not knowing where to start, while others may just need to see the pay off of completing a goal in the first place. A great place for YOU( he parent) to start, is by helping your child learn to set goals and meet them, one small step at a time.
Identifying Goals Begin with ways that your child has already used some goal setting techniques. For example, perhaps you noticed that
your daughter had managed to save up her money for a new barbie doll that she wanted, talk about the steps she needed to take in order to get the doll. Discuss how she felt once she was able to accomplish something that she wanted. Take the conversation further by explaining how great those steps are for accomplishing a goal, and together, come up with a fun, small goal that she could achieve in a short time. Maybe reading a book or reorganizing her room. Meeting small goals will get them feeling great and reinforce the positive impact accomplishing things has on their life.