How Parents Can Make Goal Setting For Kids Fun

Marvin Steinberg, the founder of Reach Goals, a motivation and goal-reaching app, emerged from his darkest days with an unwavering commitment to personal transformation through goal-setting. In the depths of his life crisis, Marvin recognized that clear goals could serve as a lifeline out of despair and into a fulfilling life. Below, he shares how parents can make setting goals for kids, fun.

Many adults have set New Year’s resolutions, but few children consider setting goals for the year ahead. Some may feel goal setting is too advanced for such young humans but I challenge them to think again. Despite their age, there’s no reason not to get your child setting goals anytime they want. Goal setting is a great habit for them to get into from a young age that will help them greatly in adulthood.

There are many benefits of goal setting for children. For one thing, it teaches them how to face challenges head-on. If your kids set goals, they will think logically, communicate, manage priorities, and solve problems. Therefore, they will learn creative ways to achieve their objectives, which can be useful later in life.

Setting realistic and meaningful goals will also motivate your children to have the perseverance and self-confidence to work towards their goals. They will also naturally experience roadblocks and challenges along the way, which all help to build the child’s resilience. These setbacks are part of the journey, and learning to overcome these situations and succeed will always be a valuable lesson.

This alone is vital for a child’s personal development and growth. When children set goals, it also teaches them how to develop plans to get what they want and reduces feelings of overwhelm, frustration, and stress. Not to mention, the clarity that goal setting provides, will offer them a clear and defined target, which offers an increased level of purpose to accomplish and succeed.

Ultimately, teaching your children to set goals teaches them to take responsibility for their own learning and behaviours, promotes a can-do attitude and can be the start of a lifelong powerful habit. Now that you know how goal setting can enhance your child’s development, how do you go about encouraging them to be interested in setting goals and make the process fun?

Start by allowing them to take control of the goal. In other words, let them choose the big, overarching goal. To get them to decide on their desired goal, ask them things like: what is something you would love to achieve, or what is one thing you would love to do if there was no possibility of you failing?

Encourage your child to really brainstorm here and dream about what they would like to achieve.

The next step is to discuss the purpose of the goal because you want to ensure that the objective your child identifies with is realistic but also beneficial for their personal development.

Ask them things like how can the goal help others and what will be the greatest benefit of achieving that outcome. Once you have determined the goal with your child, use the goal ladder technique to break it down into small easily accomplishable steps.

Consider drawing a ladder of steps on a big sheet of colourful paper and write the main goal on the top or bottom step. Then, work your way down and add the smaller steps of the larger goal into each of the stairs of the ladder. That way, you are breaking the big goal into bite-sized pieces, which will help your child to realise they can achieve it too. Once you have done this, you can pin the paper somewhere in the house, so you can track progress together.

After that, get back to brainstorming with your child and explore any potential obstacles they could face in working to achieve their goals. Encourage them to plan for these obstacles by discussing how negative self-talk or poor habits could intrude and halt progress. Remember, you want them to feel hungry and ready to achieve their goal and not give up.

To encourage this, ask them what they will do instead when they feel like giving up and abandoning their goal.

Boost your child’s confidence in their ability to achieve their dreams daily through affirmations. It is also beneficial to get them to write down their goals. One research study on goal setting with 267 participants found that you are 42% more likely to achieve your goals simply by writing them down.

If you find your child steering away from their goal or they are expressing feelings of wanting to give up, there are several things you can do. Remind them of the purpose behind their objective and what the positive outcome will be. Be sure to also revisit the goal ladder diagram to show how far they have come and share examples of when you were their age and struggled to achieve a goal.

Try to focus on how they can continue to improve and celebrate their accomplishments on their journey to achieve their goal. Remember that the journey of working towards a goal is hard work, and just like adults, it is easy to feel discouraged if you do not see the results you want, or as fast as you would like. The most important thing you can do at this stage, is encourage your child and remind them that they are doing a fantastic job and you are proud of them whatever the outcome of their goal.

There are huge lessons in striving to accomplish, making mistakes, learning from them and progressing.