Goal Days

Goal Days are something that, as far as I know, I came up with all on my own.  That's so rare, I just wanted to make a point of it.  Most of what I share on this blog is from much wiser people than myself, and I've just learned and implemented it.  But this is one thing that I believe I created for myself.  (I'm sure other people have done it as well, but I haven't read it anywhere.)

So, my great idea is: Goal Day parties!  This idea came about when my girls were begging for another holiday during a long drought of them and when I was trying to encourage my oldest to put her new reading skills to use in reading books.  I had an idea that I still love: whenever someone in our family achieves a goal that we've been working hard on, we will celebrate with a Goal Day party!  This will match our (low-key) family birthday parties: the Goal Day achiever gets to decide on what to have for dinner and request a special dessert, and they gain one gift (from the thrift store or homemade for the kids, or bought used online for us adults).  And it's a celebration!  We can have holidays whenever, regardless of the calender, for achieving!

We all love this idea.  It comes naturally, since when we achieve a goal we want to celebrate.  It's fun to make it a little more formal and to really make a big deal of the big achievements we've done.  So far we've celebrated crawling, swinging across the monkey bars independently, reading a whole book independently, and writing a short story.  The adults have not actually achieved a party yet, but we started this with our New Year's Resolutions and the adult resolutions take a little more time and effort than the kid ones.  We hope to get there soon, though.

This year we're each having a goal in each of four areas: Mental, Physical, Spiritual, and Emotional/Social.  At the Goal Day party, we date the goal we've achieved on the goal chart in the kitchen and then set a new goal in that area.  It keeps us motivated to always have goals and work on them.