What Goals Do You Have For Your Child - T-Tees - Your Answers Await, Life's Questions Unraveled

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How to help your child set goals

Help your child to set goals by following these six steps:

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Ask your child the big questions
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Establish the purpose and link it to the greater good
Come up with ideas that will help achieve that goal
Break the goal into smaller steps
Create a visual plan
Plan how to deal with setbacks

Asking questions

Try a conversation along these lines…

Parent: What do you want to do in the future?

Zoe: I really want to work with animals.

Parent: You’d be great at that. Do you know what things you’re doing at school that can help you with that?

Zoe: Maybe science and maths.

Parent: Yes they would be important if you wanted to become a vet or even just helping as a zookeeper with feed and medicines. Do you think there’s anything else?

Zoe: Not sure.

Parent: I’m thinking English is important too because you’d probably need to do some research and read a lot about what different animals need. Shall we think about what things you can do at school and at home to help with this goal?

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Establishing your child’s purpose (and linking it to the greater good)

By asking questions you can establish your child’s purpose. In the example above, Zoe’s big goal is to help animals. This is a purpose that doesn’t just benefit her but has a greater social benefit.

Studies have found that students are more successful when they understand that their goal can also benefit others. Isn’t that wonderful?

In other words, you’re more likely to stick at the boring, unpleasant tasks if your end goal helps you and others.

Whatever your child is driven by, I am confident that you’ll be able to find a way to link it with helping others, and in doing so, you’ve increased your child’s chances at succeeding in their life goals.

Goal- I want to make great video games

How it benefits others- To entertain and challenge people

Goal- I want to invent something amazing

How it benefits others- It will make people’s lives easier

Goal- I want to be a really good footballer

How it benefits others- It will make my community proud.

Coming up with ideas

You can now discuss what might help them get there. Talk about the things they can do at school and those at home that will get them closer to their big goal.

Write the big, long term goal on the centre of a big piece of paper and surround it with all the things you could do to get closer to the goal on post-it notes so you can move things around.

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Let your child choose a couple of the ideas to take forward but keep this paper as inspiration to return to in the future.

Breaking the goal into smaller steps

So, maybe your child says they want to do better in maths. As a parent, you can teach children to break this goal down into smaller steps and set a goal that is SMART.

Discuss the things that they would like to improve on. What does doing better actually look like? When do they want to see change? You might end up with a statement like this:

“I want to score full marks in my arithmetic test next month.”