Have you ever witnessed a toddler stepping up onto a stool to reach something? Or maybe watched them put crayons back into the box? Well, whether you realized it or not, these clever cognitive milestones are just a few of a child’s very first lessons in goal setting.

“From an experience standpoint, there is an innate understanding of goals from a very young age, even as young as infancy, as goals are in many ways an offspring of our initial instincts to first survive and then thrive,” says Danielle Roeske, a clinical psychologist and vice president of residential services for Newport Healthcare. “Children will necessarily develop a sense of goal setting and ambition, but there are teachable aspects. Kids who are taught to have and follow through with goals improve their confidence and they tend to feel happier.”

Here, experts break down the basics of goal setting for kids just in time to head back to school, and explain how parents can support them every step of the way, from toddlerhood to the teenage years.

When to start talking about goal setting with kids

“Goal setting is really a form of problem solving,” says Jennifer Vaughan, a national certified counselor based in Charleston, South Carolina with over three decades of experience working with children both clinically and in schools. “There is something you want or need to accomplish, and you have to figure out the steps to get there.”

Children as young as 30 months can master simple problem-solving skills, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). However, they aren’t able to understand the concept of a concrete goal until 4-5 years old, according to Deborah Offner, a psychologist based in Boston who holds her doctorate in clinical psychology and specializes in adolescent development, student mental health, and school life. This is the ideal age to introduce the idea of goal setting to kids.

“Start early and small,” Offner says of setting goals with kids. “Find attainable, age and personally appropriate goals, and help your child build confidence from there.” In preschool and kindergarten, a goal might be learning how to catch a ball, or how to put on a shirt and shorts in the morning.

“At this age, the biggest thing is to start bringing consciousness to the process of goal setting, which happens when we verbalize with our child the steps and outcomes so they can begin recognizing their experience in a new way,” Roeske adds.

How to help kids set goals at every age

At any age, goal setting for kids has less to do with reaching success and more to do with what they can learn from working hard to achieve something that matters to them. Consider this your age-by-age guide to supporting kids with goal setting and improving their problem-solving skills along the way.

Goal setting in elementary school (or from ages 5 to 10)

Teach children to generate their own goals

The first step in teaching goal setting to kids ages 5-10 is to help them identify something that they would like to work toward. To help them generate their own ideas for goals, Offner recommends asking questions like, “What would you like to learn?” “What would you like to do more of?” or “What would you like to improve at?” And remember: As long as the goal is safe and important to your child, there is no such as a wrong answer.

“So often we are worried that kids are interested in childish things, but they are supposed to be concerned about childish things,” says Ned Johnson, educator and founder of PrepMatters, an academic tutoring and standardized test prep company, and co-author of “The Self-Driven Child. “Let them work hard, and then they can change their mind. The idea that you have to pick what you want to be doing at age five and stick with it until you head off to a university is just silly.”

Set a SMART short-term goal together

“The younger the child, the more immediate the goal and action should be,” says Vaughan. “Young elementary school children just do not have an adult sense of time, memory, or the impulse control to think long-term.” A short-term goal is a goal they can achieve today, tomorrow, or during a single week of school.

According to Vaughan, parents can introduce the idea of SMART Goals to kids this age, which stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Results-focused, and Time-bound. “Keep in mind, though, that the vocabulary for SMART is over a young elementary school child’s head,” Vaughn says. “However, there are plenty of great animations in YouTube videos for younger kids that explain the concept of SMART goals.”

Break down goals into simple steps

Goals at this stage benefit from being broken into smaller, simpler goals, explains Roeske. “Parents can help establish what steps will need to be taken to meet a given goal, along with a plan, and, when appropriate, timeline, for implementing these steps,” she says. “At this early stage, it is helpful for parents to walk alongside their child with each step, checking in on their understanding and feelings along the way.”

“As a parent we want kids to work hard, but more important than wanting them to work hard is making them want to work hard.”
— Ned Johnson, educator and founder of PrepMatters

Avoid external motivators

“As a parent we want kids to work hard, but more important than wanting them to work hard is making them want to work hard,” Johnson says. “So many kids are driven by stickers or rewards, but that is fear-based thinking, and it will make them think they will lose approval if they don’t reach a goal.”

The key here is choosing a goal that a child is both motivated to accomplish and will provide its own reward. For example, if a fourth grader would like to make a new friend at school, she is already motivated intrinsically to accomplish this, explains Vaughan. A parent may help her break down how to do this and support her by setting up play-dates, but there is no need to go further with a “reward.”

How to set goals in middle school (or from ages 10-14)

Help kids pay attention to their unique talents

Ask kids this age what they are naturally drawn to and what they may be better at than most people to begin a conversation about goal setting, suggests Johnson. “A lot of times kids don’t recognize what their natural talents are for two reasons,” he says. “They are trying to think of what people want them to do, or they think that what they can do well isn’t a big deal.”

However, helping kids identify and pay attention to what they do really well is essential to choosing a goal that is best suited for them. “When kids get to have a big say in what the goal is, then they will work hard and will be flexing those brain muscles to make a plan for it, work hard for it, and when they fall short, figure out what to do. All we have to do is take curiosity in the things they are interested in and help them with both the planning and the problem solving.”

Give them ownership of the planning process

“At this stage, it is helpful for parents to allow the child to lead the process, using their experience from previous goal setting opportunities,” says Roeske. “Parents can listen for windows where guidance and support might be needed, but it is important to allow the child to have a sense of autonomy in the process.”

Johnson recommends using the WOOP method, which stands for:

Wish
Outcome
Obstacle
Plan

This will introduce middle school students to goal-setting within a structure that allows for parents to lend support without taking control. “This is where parent curiosity is so important,” Johnson says. In order to encourage a child’s interest, he recommends asking open-ended questions every step of the way.

“I love social and interpersonal goals as much as I like academic and activity goals, especially for children 10 and up. Children should be encouraged to think about how they want to show up in the world, and how they want to treat others.”
— Deborah Offner, a psychologist based in Boston

When kids move from elementary school into middle school, academic requirements get more strict. But at the same time, kids are beginning to view themselves in relation to others. “I love social and interpersonal goals as much as I like academic and activity goals, especially for children 10 and up,” says Offner. “Children should be encouraged to think about how they want to show up in the world, and how they want to treat others. School does a lot of academic goal setting with our children, so if they are in a constructive, supportive educational setting, you can let the school take care of that for you.”

Don’t rush in with the answers

Parents should fully expect a few missteps to occur when kids are working toward hard goals. But as tough as it may be, parents should resist offering up solutions if they hit a wall. “All of those executive functioning skills we prize – the planning, organizing, and problem solving – you only learn when you have to struggle with problems,” explains Johnson. “So if someone hands you the answer, that is not problem solving.”

Rather than stepping in during the middle of the process to offer solutions, Roeske suggests checking in after a goal is achieved by asking questions like what they may have learned along the way, what went well, what felt challenging, and if there is anything they may have done differently if they were to do it again. These conversations can help highlight the lessons they learned that will help them reach another goal in the future.

Goal setting in high school (or from ages 14 to 18)

Play a supporting role, not the main role

“The autonomy and individuation that we saw with your younger children only builds in the teen years and is an important part of their developmental journey,” Roeske says. “With that, being a supportive player for your teen as they set goals is all the more important while allowing them to find their own voice and path through the process.”

How do you know if you’ve crossed the line? “If a parent ever thinks that he or she is working harder than their child to reach a goal, there is something wrong,” Johnson says. “First, that probably means this is a parent-driven goal, and not a kid-driven goal. Second, kids are going to feel that. When they reach that goal it will be a parent’s success, not their own.”

Leave the tough decisions to your teenager

Whether it’s getting stronger, joining a band, or making the soccer team, the hardest goal-setting work teens do is deciding on the trade-offs needed to accomplish something. “There is a cost to everything, and nobody can tell me what to do because I have to weigh those pros and cons for myself,” Johnson says. “This can be a lot of hard work and, as parents, we just don’t want to deprive them of this work. If I pick them up, then drop them off a few blocks from the finish line, they will not have a credible path in the future to go from unsuccessful to successful because someone else has done the hard work for them.”

Prompt your teen to visualize potential obstacles

One way in which parents can support teens without taking ownership of the goal setting process is to ask them to visualize a situation that could pop up along the way to achieving their goal, then imagine how they would handle it. “Just rehearsing that gives the brain a sense of control, and you’re better prepared if heaven forbid, that thing ever happens to you,” Johnson says. “Also, just knowing that I have a plan for how this would work makes you less fearful of doing the thing that you think might be hard because you have made a plan for if it doesn’t go well.”

Don’t shy away from failures

“When we deprive kids of struggle, we are depriving them of the formative experiences that will teach them and will give them a great confidence of what they can do in the future,” Johnson says. “When we give them those experiences, we develop in them a sense that they can handle it and create an opportunity to develop resilience.”

Helpful resources to help kids with goal setting

In their clinical work with children and parents, Vaughan, Offner, and Roseke have come to find these books, tools, and videos helpful for any adult working with kids on goal setting:

Goal-setting books for parents

“Love and Logic Magic for Early Childhood: Practical Parenting From Birth to Six Years” by Jim Fay and Charles Fay Ph.D.
“The Blessing Of A Skinned Knee: Raising Self-Reliant Children” by Wendy Mogel Ph.D.
“The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed” by Jessica Lahey

Goal-setting books for kids

“The 7 Habits of Happy Kids” by Sean Covey
“Whistle for Willie” by Ezra Jack Keats
Ruby’s Wish by Shirin Yim Bridges

Goal-setting kits and tools

Big Life Journal has created printable Goal Setting Kits which can be great for kids at the start of a new year. Parents may want to utilize calendars, journals or vision boards for setting and achieving goals. Roseke points out, “Anything that helps your child visualize and keep track of their progress will be beneficial when first starting out.”

The bottom line on teaching kids how to set goals

Ultimately, it’s best to be concerned less with whether kids are successful in meeting their goals and more about how they are successful or unsuccessful with it, points out Johnson.

“When we are thinking about what matters to us, and working hard to figure out how to get it, we are developing motivation and problem-solving skills,” he notes. “As we get older, the problems we will have to solve will get more sophisticated. So apart from getting enough sleep, this process may be the single most helpful thing for a developing brain.”