On Setting Goals

A friend I had lunch with recently made a comment about me related to goal-setting that struck me as being both interesting and insightful. Paraphrasing him from memory: he mentioned that he'd noticed that I always prefer to engage in activities in which there are more than one goal involved, and that I'm probably the most goal-oriented person he knows.

I've always been well aware of just how driven by goals I am, so that last bit was no big revelation to me. But the more I thought about the other observation, the more truth I could see in it. As luck would have it, Tammy arrived for a visit on Friday night and we began talking about the sorts of games that we used to play when she was a young child. She very quickly remarked on the fact that, in hindsight, she's realized that most of those seemingly-silly activities actually had educational values of one sort of another.

When we'd have "superhero adventures" (with her collection of DC and Marvel action-figures-don't-call-them-dolls), I'd often insist that she dream up the scenario under which the adventure would begin. That, of course, was so that she'd develop an active imagination and not simply react to stimuli provided by others.

Once Tammy got familiar with a card game (such as "Crazy 8s" or "Go Fish"), chances were good that Vicki or I would introduce her to a new one. Inevitably, the additional game would be slightly more complicated in its rules, require more memory skills on the part of the players, and/or have some other challenge involved in it. This allowed us to accomplish many desirable results, starting with having fun and spending time with our daughter, but also involving the satisfying experience of seeing progress in her development.

I also used to do a lot of "flash card" games with Tammy. Typical ones were arithmetic questions (cards with "7 x 6" or "12 + 5" hand-written on them... a great use for out-of-date business cards!) or reading/spelling ones, which once again served several purposes, one of which was simply "have a good time together". Tammy still remembers, all these years later, that "Frog" almost always showed up on one of the cards that I'd show her. She'd be concentrating intently, solving problems like "9 x 7" or "8 + 9 - 4", and suddenly she'd be shown a card that simply said, "Frog." That was always good for lightening the mood and reminding us all that we were supposed to be having fun, as well.

So, as I reflect on all of the preceding, I wonder how many parents enter into activities with their children with multiple goals like that? Every such interaction, after all, is a golden opportunity for learning for the child (and possibly even the parent!) That doesn't mean that it can't also be fun, but in this day and age, are parents sliding all of the way to one end or the other of that spectrum? I always figured that, public school system notwithstanding, we, as parents, were responsible for developing our child in as many ways as possible, which required a lot more out of us than simply making sure she did her homework, buying her toys, dropping her off for soccer practice or getting her to Brownies (although all of those are important, too). In fact, as I've said for years, parenting is one of the toughest jobs in the world to do really well. But if you like setting goals, it can be an even more rewarding one.

[Milestone Alert: This is post # 2400 on this blog.]