Why Your Kids Need to Learn Goal Setting

Good parenting is a task fraught with responsibilities. In between all the bustle, we sometimes come up for air long enough to ask ourselves, "Just what do I need to be teaching my child?" Because of course it isn’t enough to cook, clean and chauffeur. We need to pass on values and skills that will help our kids lives happy and successful lives, both now and as adults.

One of the skills that children need to learn somewhere along the road of life is goal setting: how to turn a vague desire into a committed ambition and how to then take action that will achieve their dream. Imagine if you had this kind of success training as a young person, how different your life would be today. So many adults meander through life, wishing for this thing and that, never understanding the principles that turn a wish into a goal that then can be achieved and experienced. Without the skill of goal setting, so many things we could have had slipped right through our fingers.

That’s why kids need to learn how to set a goal, how to create strategies to reach it, how to make a commitment to their dream, the importance of rewarding themselves along the way, and how to track their own progress. When kids learn these techniques as steps toward achieving something they genuinely want to work for, they not only attain the object they desired but they learn the skills of success in the process. They then carry those skills in their experience bank, to be drawn on next time they want to achieve anything.

Success, for kids or adults, is not a random occurrence. It is had by applying principles that successful people have used as their own personal guiding stars down through the ages. Children need success tools as greatly as any coping tools we can teach them. Learning how to goal-set can make the difference between a random life for children in their adult years versus a focused and fulfilled one.

Winsome Coutts is author of Go for Your Goals for Kids, a set of illustrated, downloadable e-books on visualization and goal setting for young people. Winsome holds a teacher’s certificate in education and has written hundreds of articles on self-development. She personally studied with Bob Proctor and John Demartini, popular teachers featured on "The Secret" DVD.

www.4lifehappykids.com