Goal Setting with Kids

When new year starts, I have an exciting ritual of setting goals for the upcoming year. It does not only feel refreshing and exciting in the moment but also helps me feel grounded in my direction and ready for the next 12 months. The benefits and sense of accomplishments this ritual helps me experience over the years made me want to teach my child to start early.

Because I want to build a habit not a homework, I need the process to be fun and engaging not serious and pressuring. The focus is not about doing more in the year but about feeling in control of the life I want to create in the new year.

Likewise, number of goals does not really matter either. More goals means goals are broken down and we will get to check if off things faster. Less goals means we can work on focusing on a few important things. These are some areas we can consider when we help our kids to create new year's resolutions.

1. Skill goals: what do you want to get better at? Is there anything that you want to learn more about? By the end of this year, what skill/area you want to excel in?

2. Social goals: how do you want to show your love to your family and friends this year? Do you want to go deeper with your current relationships or make more friends and learn about new people?

3. Challenge goals: in which area do you want to push yourself this year? Do you want to try new sports? new hobby? new food? new country? new ways of doing things? Start volunteering or new club?

Even if kids are being too ambitious, let's just encourage them! We don't really know their capabilities, let alone in one whole year!

Now, we need to discuss some strategies to make goals happen. Goals become empty dream without bridges to get there. Together, we can talk about creating a system of how we will work on smaller tasks every day to get to the chosen goals. Consistency is so much more critical than intensity of actions when achieving big goals. In the long run, it also leads to learning about another important life lesson: doing something seemingly small everyday will get you somewhere you can't even imagine when time compounds.

Goal setting can be fun! It also creates opportunities for hard work, independence, sense of accomplishment, and working towards something invisible yet. It will make a great family routine. Talking about everyone's goals, discussing how we are going to achieve them and making a visual reminder together are great ways to start the new year as a family.

As a bonus, it will help us adults to take our own goals more seriously as our kids know them as well and watch us how our words match our actions everyday!