Family Goals: How to Set & Achieve Them

Learn how setting family goals can bring your crew closer together and help your family focus on what matters most!

Whether you are a rigid planner or a whimsical spirit, family goals are a fun and effective way to get your family on the same page and experience accomplishment together.

Setting (and achieving!) goals as a family is a great way to connect as a family and teach your kids about the joys of accomplishment in a nurturing way.

Setting family goals has been a game-changer in helping me have a positive outlook on habits that need to be addressed in our family. Setting goals gives us something to look forward to and focus our energy on in a positive way! Instead of feeling down or constantly defeated about something, I get to take small, proactive steps towards changing it.

Why Family Goals Are Helpful

As a mom, it’s too easy to stress out about the things I’m not doing well, the habits I worry our family is lacking, etc. Sometimes these concerns are valid, like when I realized I had gotten pretty busy homeschooling the older kids and wasn’t spending intentional time reading to my preschooler during the day.

Feeling stressed or guilty about something like this just made me cranky. I want to be a nice mom! I wanted to address this concern I had about my reading habits with my preschooler, not just feel bad/guilty/cranky about it.

In this instance, I shared with my family that I would like to be more intentional about reading together during the day. Three strategies we implemented to work toward this goal were:

1. I remade the kids morning routine charts. Each kid now has a space that says “read a story with mom” and their morning routines aren’t finished until I have read a book with each of them. Sometimes we all sit and read a story together, but on mornings when everything is going well and time allows, I read each child a story individually.

2. This particular goal-planning session was shortly before the holiday season, so I wrapped up each of our Christmas books in order to open one each day as an advent activity. This made it even easier to establish a daytime reading habit with my preschooler – all of the kids were begging me to read to them every morning!

3. We purchased a couple of new-to-us books that are perfect for late preschool/kindergarten. My favorite website for scoring great deals on used books is Thriftbooks!

To reinforce my “why,” I reviewed one of my favorite books, Honey for a Child’s Heart, shared my favorite parts with my husband who would be doing some of the daytime reading on his days off, and then we explained some, (not all) of those reasons to the kids too.

While things like sickness, playdates, doctor’s appointments, etc. still happen and sometimes interfere with this habit, we have come a very long way towards establishing a much stronger daytime reading habit!

How to Set Family Goals Together

Plan on making it a fun experience – get comfortable in the living room or around the table together, eat some popcorn, and drink tea, cocoa, lemonade, or another favorite beverage. (mom hack: spill proof cups with lids)

When establishing some family goals, it’s important to get input from every member of your family.

One year during a family goal planning session, our then-two-year-old daughter said her goal was to wear her pink backpack more often, which at first we all chuckled at, but it turned into a family goal to hike more often!

This led to us discovering new trails at our favorite state park, trying a few new hiking places around town, and in general spending more time outdoors which is VERY important to us! Here she is about 6 months later, sporting that pink backpack far from home in Yellowstone National Park:

Casting a vision for our family every year by setting family goals AND touching base with those goals periodically throughout the year has helped us focus on the things that matter, make adjustments as necessary, and celebrate positive progress towards building habits that matter to us!

We’ve practiced foreign languages as a family, improved certain habits, reduced our sugar consumption, and did it all with everyone on board. This is because we included everyone in the goal-setting process! It is so much easier to accept and work towards someone else’s goal when:

1. We had fun setting the goals!
2. We discussed the goals thoroughly.
3. Everyone gets to have their own interest reflected somewhere in the family goals.

Try to have an open mind to the things your kids say, but also be prepared to redirect things like “visit the moon” to “visit a space museum”! It is important to keep most of the goals achievable.

After discussing, I recommend writing down each goal, and talking about 1-3 strategies to implement that goal. Want to spend more time outside? Strategy 1 can be planning a weekly park date with friends. Strategy 2 can be getting a state parks pass or signing up for a local naturalist program. Strategy 3 can be planning a small garden!

These are just ideas. You and your crew will come up with strategies that will work for you – although I am more than happy to help you come up with ideas if you’re stumped! Just reply to the welcome email when you sign up for the free printable below and I’ll reply.

After you’ve listed the family goals, and the strategies for making them happen, there’s a “my why” box. This motivates me when I feel like I’m slipping on forming a new habit. It doesn’t have to be long – for example, when reducing sugar consumption, our biggest why was “taking great care of our bodies”!

For 2024, I designed a bright and inviting family goals worksheet! I’ve found that something colorful and nice looking tends to draw me in and keep my attention longer. I like having things around that I actually like looking at and my kids do too.

It has a space for everything mentioned above: a place to write 5 family goals, 3 strategies for each goal, a brief why, and for all of you box-checkers out there, a box to either put a checkmark or a date when your family agrees a family goal has been accomplished or new habit is thoroughly established!