Goal Setting

Jan 3rd, 2010 | By kevinmetzger | Category: Article

Another year is over and a new one is beginning. This is often a time for setting goals and many people sit down to do it for themselves. I’m wondering how may of you sit down and set family goals and goals for each of your children?

Initially my wife and I did not start out setting goals for the children. We were too wrapped up in getting Haley diagnosed, she has cerebral palsy for those that don’t know. Plus how do you set goals for a 3 month old. However Haley wasn’t hitting some milestone and by the time she was two we really had to look at what levels we wanted her to achieve. There were some significant milestones that she was missing and we had some behavioral challenges we had to overcome. My wife was beginning to loose it and we needed to get things in order. It so happened that I was learning about goal setting at the time and we sat down and identified the behavior issues and physical challenges we wanted to overcome. After identifying the the challenges and issues we decided how we wanted to change the behaviors identifying how we wanted Haley to act and finally we developed a set of strategies including stimuli, responses, carrots and sticks the might work to achieve our desired behaviors. It turned out that we were pretty good at it and the behaviors changed quickly.

Since this initial effort we have used goal setting sessions every so often to help move all of our children through a stage or to the next level. We still don’t have a set time of year where we sit down and do this but when we see the need it’s great to have in our tool set.

So do you use goal setting with your children? How often? What successes have you had?

Related posts:

  1. Setting Christmas Expectations Preface: As a believer in Christ and one who celebrates...
  2. I Am Not Weird It’s hard for me to believe but I just went...
  3. The Journey Begins Today’s post is really a beginning. I’m a neurohacker at...
  4. Heroes? Over the holidays I was watching ESPN while helping...
  5. Panties and Business On Thursday my middle child Abby decided she was...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Tags:
  • The emergence of your child’s full potential is a natural process. An effective approach is to set goals for yourself to provide your children with an environment of love, compassion and varied stimulus so they can thrive. This cannot be scheduled and doesn’t require a grand plan, it just happens in the mundane moments of life from day to day.
    I took this approach with my three sons, now in their mid 20’s. They are now moderately to strongly goal oriented across their areas of interest in academics, career, sports and community.
    Setting goals for children required a fine balance and should be approached with caution. For a goal to be achieved it has to internalized, simply not possible for a three month old. You may be able to impose goals from the outside over the short term, but this can backfire and become a cause for rebellion in later years.
    Another perspective, look to your experience as you grew up. Were goals set externally, internally or some mix of the two? how did you react to goals? I recall, as the youngest in a large family I was expected to play a musical instrument, this was a goal imposed from outside and there was no room for discussion. I gave it a try for a short period but quickly dug in my heels and rebelled.
  • michaelslogan
    I have struggled with this for my kids and I. There are some areas of tension for my 11 year old and I (clean up after yourself, voluntarily pick up the house, because you see the need,ect) and I have often thought of putting them down in writing with a behavioral checklist stuck to his door, to be monitored each morning, but have not done that. That check list for him is really for me, because that is how I keep my semi-ADD brain on track for a few of its major projects. The boy is doing well in school, his interactions with his five year old sister are typical, and sometimes loving, his buddies appear to be in the normal range of behavior, and I am grateful that he is not abusing inhalants, or booze, or drugs, so on the whole, I will leave this situation as is, although we have been dealing with the morning pick-up since school started.
  • Goal setting for your children, never gave it a thought. I'm not sure if that is something that we will adopt with our daughter who is 2 years old. I'm not trying to brag but my Eva has some incredible verbal skills and I haven't seen her miss a milestone. So goal setting hasn't been something that my wife and I have thought of talking about. However, this post does give me something to think about and possibly talk about with my wife. Bottom line is you made me think.
  • If I made you think then I was successful. I think you'll find as Eva's experiments with behavior that you may find the goal setting techniques helpful. Sticker charts work wonders when you want a new behavior to emerge.
  • Great thought provoking question. I was encouraged by Brian Klemmer several years ago that you don't just set goals for the current year or 5 years out, but for 50, 100, 150 years out. It's based on the idea that these longer term goals are legacy based. Therefore if you have kids you are leaving them a legacy of some sort, thus your kids should be a part of your goals. They should also be setting their own now too…regardless of age.
  • Andrew,

    I think your correct setting goals early establishes the value to our children and helps them learn what they can achieve. Of course you have to set the example by doing it for yourself too.
  • I am looking forward to being a part of Dadomatic
  • Matt,
    I'm pretty new here too so I look forward to getting to know you.
  • We use goal setting, though I can't say when it has, or has not made a difference. I was going to say though, that my step-brother has Cerebral Palsy, severe. My dad and my mom were divorced, but I followed how my father dealt with the challenges of Matt's life (Matt is the step-brother). He worked with him so hard - gave him things to do and helped make him feel better about himself in ways it never would have occurred to me to try...my dad was an amazing man in some ways...

    On the other hand, he was never that good with my brother and I ... one reason for the aforementioned divorce. I want to wish you every success in the goal setting, reaching those goals, and the challenges you face.

    And thanks for the article.
  • David,

    Thanks we are pretty blessed in that my daughters impairment is mild and she excels at living as if she has little impairment. That said she broke my heart today when she said "I hate falling" with a large degree of resignation.
  • Sounds like she's blessed too. The empathy and caring show.
blog comments powered by Disqus