New Year — Establishing Goals and Routines

Jan 1

When our babies are newborns, we strive to get them on a schedule. We work tirelessly to include feeding times, diaper changing, and napping schedules in our lives. Once we’ve built a successful routine, a new habit gets thrown into the mix, and before we know it, we’ve been adapting for 5 years and Kindergarten starts - leading to another ball in our juggling act. Our children pick up on our habits and routines. They watch us brush our teeth in the morning, start laundry on Thursdays, or dust maniacally once every three months. Establishing routines early on helps you manage a more fluid schedule, alleviating stress and maximizing your time throughout the day. Establishing routines and setting goals with your children helps them grasp time, and build their time management skills, helping them identify, prioritize, and execute tasks. With a new year at our feet, what are some practices you’re hoping to introduce to your home? Are there any you’d like to refine, or maybe abolish altogether? Before January ends, let’s take a look at some healthy habits to adopt and help set us up for success in 2023.

The Benefits of Building Structure In Your Home

Building structure in your home can help your children feel safe and secure. Over time, it will have a lasting, positive impact on their self-esteem and confidence. According to the CDC, “Structure helps parents and their kids. Kids feel safe and secure because they know what to expect. Parents feel confident because they know how to respond, and they respond the same way each time. Routines and rules help structure the home and make life more predictable.” While it may be a challenge to remain firm through your consequence, the long-term effect it will have on your children makes it worthwhile.

While building a new routine, it’s important to keep structure in mind. Structure builds consistency, predictability, and follow-through into a habit or routine. If a nighttime routine is going to be picking up all toys before bedtime, it’s important that the same task occurs the following night, and the same consequences for not following through are enforced. It’s also important to initiate this task at a similar time each day. If you have decided to make bedtime at 8:30 pm, clean-up should begin at 7:45 so the children are in the bath by 8:00, then able to be tucked in around 8:30. A routine such as this is simple and manageable, and ensures the children are adequately rested for the following day’s activities.

How Establishing a Routine Supports a Goal

Routines and habits are the foundation of a goal. If your goal is to read 3 hours a week, but you aren’t building dedicated time into your schedule to meet that goal, how successful will you be? Setting our children up for success is one of our greatest responsibilities as parents, and it begins at a very young age. Introducing your children to goals and how to tackle them will create a can-do mentality and boost your child’s confidence once they’ve met their goal - encouraging them to reach out into their future and build the life they want.

How to Set a Goal

Just about anything can be a goal. Drinking more water each day, eating all your vegetables at night, or reading for 10 minutes before bed are all easy goals to start with. An acronym to keep in mind when establishing a goal is SMART. This stands for Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, and Time (deadline). Begin by making sure your child understands exactly what they’re working towards, how they’re doing it, and how they’re measuring success towards that goal. Boosting their confidence so they know that they’re capable, and can make it happen within a reasonable timeline, will reduce the risk of them losing sight of what they’re working towards and giving up on their goal.

Introduce Small Goals and Benchmarks

Introducing goals in bite-sized pieces is a great way to help your young one establish benchmarks to achieve their goals. Let’s say your five-year-old has decided they want to learn how to tie their shoes. The first benchmark could be identifying which shoe goes on which foot. The second could be crossing the laces to form the foundation of the bow and forming the bunny ears. From this point, they may need to practice a few times to tighten the laces without pulling one of the bunny ears all the way through. It’s important to remain positive and encouraging through this process as little fingers can become frustrated and want to give up, but a positive influence will keep them moving forward. Once this has been mastered, we can celebrate them reaching their first goal! From here, we can suggest tackling something else, maybe related to school, reading, or chores.

Confronting Goal Abandonment

As your son or daughter grows older, their goals should become more challenging and include more benchmarks to help them reach success. Oftentimes, we set off with a goal in mind and are full steam ahead before we collapse under the mundane work in front of us to make it happen. Goals can be abandoned for a variety of reasons. Have you heard the saying, ‘failure to plan is planning to fail’? Keeping up with routines and making sure the appropriate amount of time is being allocated to achieving their goals is imperative, especially when the concept of working towards a goal is new. When it seems like their actions towards their benchmarks are derailing, shifting focus to the prize is one way to boost motivation. Making sure the goal is realistic is another way to keep us moving forward without feeling like we’re trudging through mud to get to the end. A fear of failure, combined with excuses, can compound and permit negative thoughts to impede progress. Drawing attention to these behaviors and discussing the emotions around them will help redirect focus, showing your child that working towards a goal isn’t easy or linear, but is possible.

Obstacles might be the most challenging roadblock a growing mind might face. A challenging obstacle could result in goal abandonment. Obstacles can be completely disabling depending on your child’s age because obstacles are generally seen as immovable and can induce a defeatist attitude. If your child’s goal is to read the entire Harry Potter series before the end of the school year, but they are unable to find a copy of the next book they need to read, they could begin procrastinating, or feeling like all hope is lost; like time isn’t on their side, and, soon, they’re thinking “what’s the point?” before they give up entirely. Helping your child find a copy of the book at a different library or downloading it on Kindle will show them that obstacles are minor hurdles in the overall process, and are bound to happen from time to time. Learning the patience to think calmly and navigate through moments of distress will help your children in more ways than one throughout their lives.

We hope to have provided enough information to encourage you to set some goals with your children this year. Here at Tilton’s Therapy, we strive to help you establish your goals, meet your benchmarks, and reap the benefits of your hard work and dedication.