How to Help Your Child Meet Their Goals

We began talking last time about the importance of goals, but, how do you write strong, meaningful goals? The goals are like a roof that covers a house. There is a lot more to a house than just the roof! What is holding up that house OR is the roof about to fall in? The best goals are made when people understand the components or building blocks that support the roof.

Start with The Annual Goal
The annual goal is a statement of what your child could be expected to learn over a one-year period of time. What is realistic for that time period? What is most important? You can start by dividing the list of IEP goals into three of the most important and manageable categories: academics, social-emotional and functional. Then prioritize and filter out what is most important as a starting point.

Break Down Annual Goals:
Here is an example of a functional annual goal: To develop age appropriate dressing skills (by end of the school year). This goal is huge when you think about all that goes into getting dressed! It is also very vague. If we look at dressing in general, we are apt to lose focus because everyone will splinter off and begin to work on a different dressing goals. The best thing to do is to think about what dressing goal should be considered first. For example, let’s consider putting on a shirt as our primary goal. Once a goal is agreed upon, break it down into basic building blocks or steps that need to be taken to achieve this goal.

Break Annual Goals Down Into Quarterly Objectives
If we look at the components of putting on a shirt, there are several steps to follow. Each one of these becomes a quarterly objective that leads to the final goal. Below is an example.

First Quarter: The child needs to independently retrieve the shirt from the closet and lay it in front of them (tag or marking on the upper inside of the collar).

Second Quarter: Pick up the shirt and pull it over their head independently with the tag in the back.

Third Quarter: Independently slip their arms into the shirt, pull it down, and straighten it over their body.

These three steps take us to the overall goal of putting on a shirt independently by the fourth quarter or end of the year.  Each step may take many weeks to accomplish and require that teachers, therapists and parents all participate.

Breaking goals into smaller steps keeps everyone more focused and becomes less frustrating to manage. It also makes it easier to track progress through each of these steps as the child moves toward accomplishing the annual goal.

We all have to remember that each child is unique and moves at their own pace toward their goals. One child may accomplish all the objectives (and the annual goal) in one quarter. When this occurs, and they have accomplished the shirt goal, another annual goal for dressing is to be worked on.

Our blog next week will discuss how to look at objectives and further break down these into even smaller steps. We will discuss how to observe your child’s strengths and weakness and how to use these to determine what exact skills the child has or is lacking.

In doing this, your child will also learn from you how to manage more difficult tasks. Instead of getting frustrated, over time, they will learn how to break down tasks into smaller pieces on their own! Make sure you talk them through how to do this, give praise and support, and demonstrate every step of the process!