What is your goal? Begin with the end in mind

We are obsessed these days with setting goals. Sometimes the goals get in the way of the whole thing, we get stuck on the detail and miss something really great that has happened while we took our eye off the prize, while we were busy with the paperwork or the checklist.

It is a really difficult one. Do we set goals? Do they need to be specific or is it ok to be general? I remember when I was still a student that I assumed that for every child I saw the goal would simply be 'for the child to have age appropriate skills' in whichever area we were working, be it speech clarity, understanding or expressive language. Simple right? Hmm that's ok and is probably in the background of most cases, and that's ok if it means we are looking for progress - we should be looking for progress unless we are aiming to maintain skills. Aim high and you will move higher, but aim low and you will certainly stay low. But goals in reality end up being much more personalised and varied, depending on people's motivation, expectations, standards, hopes and dreams; depending on medical conditions or diagnosed learning difficulties; depending on people's values - is there a trade-off between determined focus on skills and relaxing and being happy?

I have always struggled to fully buy into the goal-setting culture. This is my reason: what if you set amazing specific, relevant goals that are easy to measure etc. etc. but 8 weeks down the road the child doesn't meet them, BUUUT they do make progress in a completely different area? Does that still mean they 'haven't achieved'? or does it just mean we set the wrong goals? Let me explore the technique of Intensive Interaction in this way. I am passionate about Intensive Interaction and its benefits. But if we apply goal setting we end up saying things like, 'my goal is to get more eye contact', or 'my goal is for him or her to copy me when I say "more". For me that limits the approach and misinterprets the philosophy of the approach in one big double-whammy. Do the approach with no strings attached and you will definitely get results. They will be big and they will be general. The child's whole social interactive ability will improve. Not just eye contact or repetition of a word, but enjoyment, joint attention, improved concentration, calm behaviour and many many more skills.

I do agree with the need to know where you are going though, not just aimlessly wandering along. That does help. Know what you want to achieve, not just 'we want lots of therapy', ask the question, 'why? why lots of therapy? what will that achieve?' and you will be much more positive along the way, working towards a meaningful objective.