Our Top 10 Goals for Our Kids
“It’s not what you do for your children, but what you teach them to do for themselves that will make them successful human beings.”
Our children are our pride and joy. While we may accomplish many things in our lifetimes, raising children to be confident, joyful, self-sufficient, and generous with their talents and resources might be the most challenging and rewarding accomplishment of all.
By the summer of 2021, we had already raised two kids in a very traditional, public school environment. Our two youngest girls had just wrapped up over a year of remote learning through the local public school system. Due to Covid, they had already given up their traditional extra curricular activities. They were not achieving as well as we knew they could within the current situation and we knew we could do better. Kevin and I sat down and tried to put into words what we wanted our daughters to experience over the next few years to shape their future. How could we prepare them for a successful and joyful life?
We knew they needed traditional education in core subjects like Math, Science, History, and Language Arts, but we wanted them to learn and grow in bigger ways. With our desire to see more of the world, we became even more convinced that international travel would not only be fun but educational and life changing for each of us.
Out of this discussion came a list of the skills and traits we wanted each of our daughters to attain before they reached their 18th birthday:
Life Skills – Research shows that young adults today are struggling with basic life skills like making eye contact and conflict resolution. Basic home skills like cooking, making repairs, and managing finances are not as commonly taught in schools anymore. We want to equip them with these skills to help them be successful in life.
Generosity – We want our girls to have an attitude and desire to do good for others. They are naturally empathetic and we want to give them opportunities to share their time, skills, and resources with those around them.
STEM Skills – Critical thinking and creative problem solving are vital to preparing children for later success in life, regardless of what they want to do. These subjects of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math are considered their “core” curriculum and help to employ and improve their abilities to think outside of the box.
Explore their Passions – For Rachel, this means learning and practicing visual arts. It also means brainstorming characters and working on writing her own graphic novel. For Sophie, we are exploring her love of both baking and coding. She is also getting to put her crafting and engineering skills to the test through various projects that keep her thinking.
Foreign Language – As we travel to different countries, we try to learn basic conversational words and phrases like “hello,” “please,” and “thank you.” We’ve found that approaching a stranger by speaking their own language helps to bridge the gap and makes them more likely to work through the language barrier to help us and to connect with us. Ideally, we would like for our girls to reach fluency in at least one foreign language.
World History & Government – In addition to learning about their home country, we want them to learn about how things work in other countries. By studying different types of government and immersing themselves in other cultures they will have a better understanding of how our country interacts on a global level.
Confident Written & Oral Communication Skills – Making eye contact during conversations, the ability to have respectful debate, and the development of proper presentation skills in front of an audience are useful tools in any area of life. Having proper grammar, sentence structure, spelling, vocabulary, and attention to detail when telling or writing a story improves their ability to make a point or create something interesting to read. In addition to their study of these items, they will have various opportunities to write for our family blog, sharing their own perspective.
Financial Literacy – It’s important to us that our girls learn how to make sound financial decisions. These include learning how to create and maintain a budget, how to make smart investment decisions, and how to prioritize their spending.
Christian Values and Bible Literacy – We would like for our girls to have enough Bible knowledge to discern the difference between God’s Word and a worldly viewpoint. We want them to know that living with a heart like Jesus is often very different from what they see modeled in the world around them or even in their local church.
Health & Physical Education – We want them to understand how to take proper care of their bodies through nutrition and exercise. We’ve found that by getting them involved in menu planning and meal preparation, they are motivated to try new foods. Also, by prioritizing fun and active family time, they make positive associations with exercise.
Once we knew what our goals were, we were ready to develop an execution plan. You can read about that in another post. What are your goals for your children? Have you thought specifically about what you want them to know and learn before they leave your nest? We hope we’ve inspired you to be intentional about creating goals for your children and we’d love for you to share your process with us!
