You set goals for your personal achievements, goals for your work, and goals for fixing up your home so why wouldn’t you set goals for your family? Goal setting is a great practice that keeps you aiming higher and achieving more. It is hard to get somewhere if you don’t know where you are going. Family goals are worth setting because they help unite everyone under a mission and provide a roadmap for how to get there.
Family life can be stressful and overwhelming if the whole family isn’t being supportive of one another. Everybody is moving in different directions, doing their own thing, making their own plans; when do you find time to take care of what matters most, your family? That’s were family goal setting can come in to help make sure everyone is playing for the same team.
What are Family Goals?
There are two types of goals you can set as a family. You can set goals for things you want to do together like how to spend family nights and vacation time. Or, you can set goals for how you want to work together as a family. For instance, you can create a goal to give everyone the same amount of screen time so there’s no more arguing over whose turn it is at the computer.
Setting family goals requires the cooperation of the entire family to be successful.
Why Family Goals are Important
Happy families don’t just happen by chance, they take work, focus, healthy habits, and decision making. As the parent, it is your job to guide your family and create a loving and supportive home. While everyone participates in reaching the goals, the goals originate with your decisions about what you want for your family.
Once goals are created and everyone’s on board with working together, it creates a family bond that builds trust, love, and respect.
How to Set Family Goals
Setting goals doesn’t need to be difficult, but it does require some decision making about what’s important to you. Your family goals should reflect your family values.
1. Decide What You Want for Your Family
This is a time to come together as parents and decide what you want for your family. What do you want to achieve together over the next several months, the next year, the next few years? These goals can have an end result like “we want to take a cross country road trip” or be ongoing goals like “we want our children to show each other respect.”
2. What Would You Like to Copy or Avoid
Think about other families you know, or even families you watch on TV, what do they do that you want your family to do as well. What do they do that you want to avoid? Look for examples of things you like or don’t like in other families and set your goals accordingly.
3. What are Your Challenges as a Family
Where do you see your family struggling? What do you wish your family did better? The answers to these questions will help you define goals that you want to set.
4. Don’t Forget the Most Important Goals
Keeping your family bonded, healthy, and happy should be at the top of your family goal setting. Be sure to set goals that include fitness, healthy habits, encouragement, appreciation, gratitude, and being social together.
Family Goal Setting Worksheet
You may also find this Family Goal Setting worksheet helpful, you can print the pdf here or pin the image below for later.
Family Goals Examples
These family goals examples may inspire you in creating your own goals. Use these examples to get you started thinking about things that you want to achieve as a family.
1. Be Active in Your Church – attend weekly services and participate in church events.
2. Deal with Conflict – set a goal that will help your kids work through conflict resolution in a mature and responsible manner.
3. Create a Family Financial Plan – that includes savings, investments, education, travel, etc. You might like to use this family financial plan workbook to help you.
4. Generate Sufficient Income – fights over money can lead to family stress and divorce so this is an important goal. Come up with ways that you can easily increase your household income and reduce spending.
5. Maintain Open Communication – when your kids feel safe telling you anything, they’ll be more truthful and open with you.
6. Work/Life Balance – set a goal of the maximum hours you’ll work in a day or a week to give you work/life balance.
7. Family Health and Fitness – how will you work together as a family to eat healthy and stay fit.
8. Family Night– set a goal to make sure you have at least one family night a week where you do something fun together like watch a movie or play a game.
9. Family Meals– set a goal to enjoy a certain number of meals together as a family without any distractions.
10. Extended Family Time– decide what works best for your family according to where people live. Maybe a monthly get together would be a nice goal or a yearly vacation if they are far away.
Conclusion
Family goals are a great way to create a solid foundation for your family. Working together will build mutual respect and trust as well as a strong family bond. As your kids get older and they can participate more in helping to reach goals, the family goals will evolve and change. That is a wonderful part of the process to watch the growth as you move from accomplishing small goals together to taking on larger challenges.
Related Posts:
Budgeting For Kids: Teaching Your Children To Budget
A Mindful Parenting Book- The Present Mother Excerpt & Worksheets
How To Write A Personal Mission Statement For The New Year
Source: Parenting - familyfocusblog.com
