Goals. I’ve read many leadership books on goal setting and feel like I have a relatively clear idea on what it takes to develop goals and the elbow grease it requires to achieve them. With that same gusto I’ve taken to setting goals with Jericho. Setting goals with a four year old is well… challenging.
I told him when’s he’s older I’ll let him have braids. Mardi Gras beads will suffice for now.
Goal #1 Tie Your Shoes. While this seems an easy goal to some it is a rather lofty one to a four year old who would rather take the laces out of the shoe and chew on them like a lion. He’s also used aforementioned laces to make a headband to keep his bandana on his head, and I’ve found them in the toy box. When I attempted to remove them he was in hysterics that I was taking his spaghetti noodles out of his kitchen. A more appropriate goal at this point would be: find as many uses as humanly possible for shoelaces without hurting yourself or your little brother.
Goal #2 Put Away Clean Clothes. Jericho is usually up for helping us around the house. We’ve recently encouraged him to put his clothes away. While he informs us the clothes have reached their final destination we’ve found that’s not the case. Instead we’ve found what appears to be the tail end of a photo shoot featuring as many clothes as possible strewn around his room. We’ve found dirty clothes mixed with clean clothes. We’ve found clean clothes hidden under his pillow. We’ve even found him wearing multiple outfits throughout the night. There was one instance where I peeked in on him around 11 pm to find him asleep with a pull up, underwear over that, pajama shorts, and then corduroy pants. He had on a nike sports tank top, and a t-shirt fashioned into a turban on his head with a sweatband keeping it in place. You would have thought he was trying to make weight for a wrestling match with all the sweat beading down his face. New goal: see how many clothes you can wear in a 24 hour period.
Goal #3 Write Your Name. We attempt to help Jericho write his name on the daily. He is slowly getting the hang of it yet is convinced we write our “J” backwards and the dot over the “I” should be both on the bottom and top of the line. While we gently instruct him to write his name with the letters in a row he assures me it’s unnecessary as long as all the letters make it on the same page. He will work on writing his name for approximately 3 ½ minutes before transitioning to stick figures of boys and girls with rainbows over them. Thank you enrichment class for reviewing ROYGBIV seven trillion times. His stick figures look similar to Mike from Monsters, Inc. if, and only if, a Disney artist was blindfolded and used his foot to hold his pencil. So while I’m determined for Jericho to write his name a more apt goal would be: draw whatever you want and then explain it to me with as much detail as possible so I know what on earth I’m looking at.
So my advice to you is be creative. Don’t limit to yourself to the ordinary goals that would make life easier complete with structure, order, and an understanding of the English language. Instead, go for the goals that require the most time cleaning up, reorganizing, and reteaching anything you’ve ever done in your entire life.
Looking for ways to entertain your kids that involve knives? Or maybe you are trying not to bite the head off a teddy bear when they are driving up a wall. Or maybe you just need to bless them when you want to scream.
