How To Teach Your Child To Set Goals

If you are a parent you have goals for your child.  They may be growth and developmental goals, academic goals, and maturity goals.  As parents we want the best for our children.  Now we must teach our children how to want the best for themselves by teaching them how to set goals!

Teaching your child how to set goals will be fun for the whole family! In fact after you help your child set their goals you can begin clearly setting your own, which will have a huge impact on you reaching them faster. 

At Martial Arts USA, here’s how we teach them… First, Define a Goal. I like to use this definition; a goal is a planed destination, a desired result, or in kids’ language, something that you want.  Goals help us a stay on track, they give us reasons to do our very best.  Once your child understands what goals are, they can begin to set goals in three areas; Academic, maturity, and athletic.

It’s effective for a child to set yearly goals and review them each month to measure how far they’ve come.  What if they don’t reach their goal?  Extend the deadline, that’s all.

Let’s get back to setting them.. On a clean sheet of paper have your child write the three categories at the top.  Then under each category they will write as many goals as they can think of.  Here’s one example “I graduated the fourth grade with honors, June, 2012.” This would be an example of an academic goal.  Notice that we put the goal in the first person, present tense, and we state the goal as if it were already complete.  It’s very important that you follow this procedure, by doing so your child’s goal will become part of their subconscious mind.  Make sure your child re-writes their goals monthly.  You can begin your own list of goals and review them monthly as well.

By having your child do this exercise each month you will be doing them a huge favor!  It will take discipline on your part, but if you can follow through and stay with it you will give your child an edge.

At Martial Arts USA, we use Black Belt as a long term goal that each child will set for themselves.  By setting this goal children learn the importance of tenacity and follow through in any activity.  I want to leave with our “Black Belt Success Cycle." 1) Know what you want 2) Have a plan and a success coach 3)Take consistent action 4) Review your progress and renew your goals.

Jeff Cvitak

Martial Arts USA