I am a teenager mom. My daughter Alena is 13 years old. For the past 3 years, I have regularly asked her what she wants to be when she grows up. But everything was useless: Alena avoided questions, because she could not say anything specific. I thought for a long time how to help Alena formulate her future, her goals for adulthood, and then one day I tried to do this …
I sat her in front of me and said: “Alena, make yourself comfortable. Good. Now close your eyes and imagine that 10 years have passed… Tell me where are you? What are you doing there? What is around you? Alena (with my help) relaxed and began to fantasize, gradually we switched to where she is now studying, then where she began to work after that. This fascinated Alena, and now she has already begun to tell that in the future she imagines herself in the courtroom, where she makes a speech that proves the innocence of a person. The more she told, the more details she added, the more confident her voice sounded. “Great!” I said, and we returned to today. “Now tell me what needs to be done today to get such a future?” And then Alena began to think …
In order for Alena to present her goal and the steps to achieve it more clearly, I asked her to draw it on paper. At the same time, I asked her not to try to do the right thing, but to write everything that comes to her mind.
Alena got this picture:
When Alena finished her drawing, she looked at him and exclaimed: “Mom! It turns out that I can already do a lot to achieve what I want! It was a revelation for her! Of course, even before that, I constantly told her that now she can build her future, for earlier for Alena these were empty words. And now the picture-diagram, drawn by her with her own hand, turned out to be a ready-made plan of her actions with clear steps. It was already her own project, and he did not cause her protest. Alena has a project of her life!
The next day, Alena transferred her map to a large sheet of drawing paper and hung it over her desk. «What for?» I asked her. She said: “I want my plan to always be in front of my eyes!”.
Her life began to change rapidly. Previously, when I drew her attention to the fact that she was wasting time, she snorted, and now my friendly (only friendly!) Questions: “Does watching this series lead you to your goal?”, “For what purpose are you sitting on VKontakte ?”, “For what task do you play this game?”, Alena thinks … Yes, she spends a lot of time on VKontakte, but now she is looking for useful training videos, articles on self-development and video tutorials there. Her self-esteem rose a lot: “I don’t mess around! I’m on my way!» And most importantly, I’m sure that after a while my voice will turn into her inner voice, and she herself will already ask herself such questions: “Why?”, “For what task?”. Alena has already started talking about the fact that the poster needs to be finalized: I see what my daughter is thinking, planning, doing!
Many families have a tradition of making wishes for the New Year. I want to suggest that this year your child not only make a wish, but set goals and write down real steps towards this goal, just as Alena and I did.
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