Goal Setting and Task Accomplishment

On Saturday I blogged about helping your child set goals for the new school year, and helping them use visualization to imagine their goals.

What else can you do to help your child become a super-achieving goal setter?

Well if you think of the final goal as the destination, you reach your goal by taking lots of small steps. So a great thing to teach your child is how to set little tasks each day that will help him reach his goal, one step at a time.

There are all sorts of ways of learning to set and achieve mini-goals or complete tasks, and it's a good skill to have - the earlier you start the better.

One nice idea is to get an index card box and a lot of index cards. Each evening, sit down with your child and have him write down on one index card what steps he would like to take towards his goals next day. They should be things that he feels he is able to do. If he asks for your help, that is fine, but he needs to OWN his goals and his tasks - they are his very own.

It's great for kids self esteem to tick off all the different things they achieve towards their goals on the card the next day. Teach your child that it is OK to move a task to the following day if for some reason it doesn't get done - never allow him to beat himself up for not completing a task - only allow positive praise and rewards for tasks accomplished, never punishment or self-depreciation of any kind.

If your child writes the date on each card and files it, he will love getting his index card box out once in a while and reviewing all that he has achieved so far!

Happy Goal setting with your kids!

Cassie