How do you talk to your kids about their future?

How do you talk to your kids about their future? Start by talking to them about having targets instead of setting goals. Ask your children, “what are your targets for this year?”

A New Year is beginning, when conversations about goals and resolutions abound. What if you could have a different conversation with your children this year that gave them tools on how to choose what will contribute to their future and empower them to know what they know?

As the mother of three, two now into adulthood, I can remember the times when at least one of my children would come home with a school assignment on New Year’s resolutions. These assignments were not fun for my kids or me. I had never liked goal setting, it never made sense when it was asked of me and my kids had a similar point of view about these assignments.

How can you start a conversation with your kids about what they would like to create for this year and beyond? What question can you ask your children to create a future of possibilities instead of barriers to the conversation? Start by talking to them about having targets instead of setting goals. Ask your children, “what are your targets for this year?”

The problem with resolutions or goals is that they set in place an immovable decisions about the future when in actuality our futures are full of change. These decisions allow for very little wiggle room and if your children are anything like mine then you know wiggling is something they like to do often.

Goals lead to judgments. Judgement of whether you have achieved the goal or failed. They are mostly a measure of failure. A goal will stop you from seeing anything greater or different. You cannot even invasion anything that does not match the point of view of your goal.

When you look at the energy of a target it is different, less fixed, it has more wiggle room. It does not lock you down. A target gives you the energy of what you are aiming for and you can always be checking with how you are doing towards achieving the target.If you want to change it, move it or something really different. Targets are more creative, you can shoot past a target which could lead you to something even more fun. If you get close to your targets you are still creating it, with a goal you can only judge you have not met it.

Children’s futures are full of possibilities. My children’s realities are full of ideas, some they created, some that become uninteresting and some that are yet to actualize. Their ideas were and are fabulous and all over the place. “Mom I’m going to be a surgeon who works on babies in the womb” “Mom I am going to make the first flying car” “Mom I am going to animate Disney movies.” “Mom let’s get an elephant.” “Mom, I’m going to be a mermaid.”

If your target is being a Mermaid then you can play with how to be one. You can put your sister in a bathtub and have her drink salt water. (This is one way to become a mermaid that I did not know of). Now if it does not work and it is a target, then you and not wrong just because you still have legs, you can keep shooting for it. You can find out there are actual professional mermaid jobs at amusement parks that actually pay well and now you have a new mermaid target. If this is a goal then you are left judging your untailed legs and your sister for making you drink salt water.

Once you have the conversations going you can ask also ask your kids, “if you choose this what will your future be like in a year, a week, in 10 years? So they can begin to know what they know about creating the future they desire.

These are wonderful tools to have and the more your kids use them the bigger the muscle of knowing what their choices will create becomes. What a gift to have this as a kid! To be able to trust your knowing and to know that choice creates awareness!

The most important thing you can give your kids is the understanding that their point of view is okay.

~ Gary Douglas, Conscious Parenting Conscious Kids