Setting goals for your children is an excellent way to achieve outstanding results in their development. In fact, one of the best ways to enhance your child's life is to teach them how to succeed using goals.

We all want our children to do well, to stand out and be proud, to find purpose, meaning, and success in life. When your child learns that he can get results by working towards a specific goal he will feel excitement, satisfaction, a real sense of achievement, and he'll grow in confidence with every successful task.

As parents, we often lose sight of what we should be doing to give our children the best possible start in life. For many us, life is all about hard work. There are so many demands on us that we sometimes forget how to enjoy parenting. How many of us are slaves to our children? If we could see through our child's eyes what would we think of ourselves? Are we teaching our children about the struggles of parenting or teaching them that being a parent is the most wonderful feeling in the world?

We love our children dearly but do we have a gap in our hectic schedules to play with them? Have we forgotten that some of our own best memories from childhood are from special one-to-one moments with our parents?

There's a reason that spending quality play time with your child is crucial to their well-being and overall development. Modern teaching methods are focusing more and more on fun activities and attitudes towards learning. A child might know the name of every single character in his trading card collection, and yet simple pieces of information from school just seem to slide right through his head. Could it be because one is fun for him to learn but the other is not?

Children love focused attention and they thrive in an atmosphere of love, trust, and being wanted. Working with parents with a specific aim as a goal, seeing progress towards the target, and being encouraged all the way is fun! Sitting in front of a television may be entertaining, but a child is only required to watch, usually in a trance-like state. Playing means being involved and doing something. Playing with a parent and being given focused attention the whole time is the perfect environment for learning and therefore it's also an excellent way to begin introducing goals.

Goals to set with your child can be anything at all, within reason of course. Try to encourage him to choose his own goals as much as possible, and to be specific. He can think of them as wishes that he can make come true.

Maybe he can't ride a bicycle yet. His goal could be to learn how to ride one.

Your child will start by writing down his goal:

"I am going to learn to ride a bike"

The next step is to write why he wants to be able to ride a bike:

"It's very good exercise for me and I will be able to ride with my friends on weekends. I like playing outside in the fresh air"

We now need to think about how long it will take to learn to ride. It can be as long or as short as you think he will need to achieve his goal:

"I will be able to ride a bike before my ninth birthday"

The final step in planning his goal is to write down as many ways as he can think of to enable him to reach his goal:

"I will watch my brother riding on his bike. I will practice on my brother's bike in the yard every day after school. I will not give up even if it's tricky at first"

Once your child has his goal set out in this format, on paper and in his mind, you can encourage him as much as possible to work towards success. If the goal is too big at first, you can break it down into smaller goals. Younger children might need to see far quicker progress and success, so adjust their goals accordingly.

If your child fails to achieve any of his goals then it doesn't mater one bit! Reassure him and point out that there are many different ways to succeed and sometimes it takes a bit longer than we thought, but he will get there. Learn from any mistakes or set-backs. A great tip is to let your child watch as you create your own goals and work towards them. It's amazing how much of a positive influence it can be to set a good example for your child in this way.

Being patient, encouraging, flexible, and positive, will reap rewards for you and your child.

Goal setting for children is a fabulous life-enhancing skill when you take the time to learn how to apply it to their lives, and it is a skill that will stay with them all the way into adulthood. Self-help experts have been encouraging grown men and women to use similar goal-setting methods for decades, and there's a reason for this - it works!