Goal Setting for Kids

By James Robbins

Goal setting like many other valuable skills in life is usually not taught in school. This leaves parents the responsibility to pass on the great power of effective goal setting to their children. Of course one of the best way to teach goal setting to our children is to be modeling the process ourselves.

Children actually love to set goals. One time my family decided to do a little goal setting in order to make the house run more efficiently. We sat down and created some goals and the kids became contagiously excited. The key for kids, is that you need to make it into a game.

What we did to make the goal setting process fun for them was add a few important elements.
Here are a few tips for goal setting with kids.

1. Set measurable goals.

This is important for anyone setting goals, and it is a good thing to teach your children this lesson early. We had simple goals relating each week to completing chores around the house.

2. Create a fun way to measure.

Children need to visually see their progress. What we did was print out a large photo of a mountain and stuck it on our fridge. Our goal was to reach the top. Then we cut out little flag magnets so that as we completed our goals we moved higher and higher up the mountain. This made goal setting fun for the kids. You should have seen their excitement every evening, as we would update our mountain. We had kids running off to clean rooms, make beds, and sweep floors so they could move the flag higher up the mountain.

This tiny game we developed on our fridge eventually became the inspiration for building the online goal setting game The Summit.

3. Have a reward.

Rewards are important for goal setting. I cannot remember what the reward was but our kids were excited about it. We told them that if we reached the top we would get the reward as a family.

Day by day we moved up the mountain and our kids had a blast at the same time. It made our house cleaner, our children more motivated and it taught them some important principles of the goal setting process. You can make your own family goal game, just do what we did and cut out a picture of a mountain and tape it to your fridge, and you kids will have a blast. Goal setting can be a lot of fun.

And if you want to play the online goal setting game inspired by the events in this article then take the Summit Challenge. In addition to creating the Summit Challenge James Robbins also delivers keynotes on personal excellence and leadership. To find out more about the Summit Challenge, go to www.ontothesummit.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=James_Robbins