Goal Setting and the Brain: Helping Your Kids Set and Achieve Goals (Free Printable!)

Teaching kids how to set and achieve goals is a skill parents need to tackle. We often tell kids to reach for the stars, but we forget to show them the map to get there. Teaching kids how to reach goals is as simple as using small, actionable steps and positive, growth mindset dialogue. 

Here are three things you need to know when helping kids set goals:

Setting and achieving goals starts in the brain.  

Why can you accomplish some goals quickly, but others are very hard and cause us to give up? It has to do with getting two areas of our brain to work together: the amygdala (our emotional response center) and the prefrontal cortex (our executive functioning, decision making brain center). 

Let’s say you have a goal that you are very passionate about and emotionally motivated to conquer. Perhaps you’re all fired up and excited at the prospect of your goal, like many of us are at the beginning, but you have no plan. Your inability to create small, actionable steps will leave you stuck and unfocused. It’s like being incredibly excited to take a dream vacation, but jumping in the car and realizing you have no map, no apps, and no idea how to get there. Wanting to get there is not enough to get you there. Your amygdala, or emotional response center, holds all your emotional motivation to get there. But not having a map for your prefrontal cortex to help coordinate action steps and move you in the direction you want to go will hold you back from your ultimate goal.

On the other hand, if you have all your steps mapped out with small, actionable steps, but you lack the emotional motivation to get there, you also will have a difficult time reaching your goals. 

Can you relate to this scenario? You feel like you should do something about a particular area of your life - maybe change a habit or lifestyle behavior; however, your heart just isn’t in it. You drag our feet, although you know what you should do and have figured out how to do it. Your prefrontal cortex is ready in the car with that map, the coordinates and all the apps you need, but how motivated are you to get there if it’s not somewhere we really want to go? 

Talk to kids about why they want to try to reach a goal. Use some feelings or emotion words. If the motivation is because someone else is doing it or because they feel like they should, help them get clear about personal feelings or emotions that are motivating them to try. Trying to reach a goal because of someone else without real personal emotional buy-in won’t get you very far. Reaching for something because you feel like you should will almost always fall flat. Identify the emotional push behind the motivation is key for achieving goals.

Helping kids use those two parts of their brain means practicing how to use motivation and action steps to attain goals. 

Another way to reach goals is to learn to use growth mindset skills. Growing growth mindset helps kids understand that things may not always come easily. We may face challenges along the way to our goals, but that these challenges help our brains learn and grow. They set us up to make small adjustments or learn a valuable lesson that can propel us toward our goal. You have to get back up and try again instead of giving up. 

A great way to help kids learn how to do this is to acknowledge that there may be setbacks and practice what to do when you face them. What will you say to yourself? What will you do if it gets hard? What about if you want to give up? What should you do then? It’s like having your safety net set, so when you fall, you bounce back up again. This helps kids build the resilience they need to meet goals. 

In the freebie, this is where the comets come in. Having some positive dialogue to read and remember during a difficult time can help anchor us and remind ourselves that we are strong enough to get back up and try again.