Adventures in Parenting

I am generally not a disciplined type of person. I am what my sister nicely termed “fluid.”  I don’t do well with setting goals because I lose track, then feel guilty for not keeping my goals.

For people like me, setting very short term goals is a good way slowly ease our way to a more disciplined life. This is what I like to do with my family.

Have everyone in the family, adults and kids included, write 3 specific goals they want to accomplish within the next 7 days. For young children, you can help them by giving them 5 ideas and have them choose 3. For older teens, they should set their own goals, with some guidance from you.

These goals should be attainable within 7 days if they apply themselves diligently. The goals should not be too easy such that is it no challenge at all.

Here are some examples of goals that I’ve done.

Clean out one specific area of the house – a cabinet, a drawer, a shelf.

Read a short book on a topic of interest.

Run a mile a day for 3 days.

Write that thank you note to grandma.

Try a new dessert recipe.

Sweep the patio.

Celebrate your accomplishments at the end of 7 days. .

Prepare an banana split ice cream sundaes.  Then share how much you have accomplished. If all 3 goals were met, that person gets as much ice cream and toppings as he wants. If you accomplish 2 of the 3 goals, you get up to 2 scoops of ice cream and 2 toppings. If you’ve only completed one goal, you get 1 scoop of ice cream and 1 topping. If no attempts was even made on working on the goals, they get just the banana. 🙂

Well, you can probably come up with some  better ways to celebrate.

The idea is here is to ease into being more disciplined, accomplish some important tasks that enriches your life, and then celebrate together. You’ll be surprised how much you can accomplish once you set your mind to it.