New Year's Resolutions

We did our annual goal setting with the kids the other night. It was fascinating to see how they each approached the task.
The youngest (ID personality) insisted on writing her goals out herself, which was interesting since she is not quite literate yet. She had no problem thinking of goals, like learning to "ti shoos," "reed beder" and "love on Mommy mor." For the past two days she has been very enthusiastic about kissing my whole face. It is, after all, a goal. Our oldest C daughter immediately made columns down her page and made categories for the goals she wanted to set for herself... "academic goals," "physical fitness goals," "spiritual goals," "financial goals," etc. She put one or two goals in each category and then drew elaborate designs all over her paper while she waited on the rest of us to finish. Our IS personality son put things like "soccer" and "eagle scout" and "A's and B's only"and was done with it. Then our 8 year old C picked up her list and said, "One of my goals for the New Year is to be more organized. So every day at 3:30 I will clean my room. I will practice the piano at 5 o'clock every day" and it kept on going from there. She must have listed 9 or 10 things like that... a specific goal along with an exact time she would perform the task and the frequency with which said task would occur. It was a thing of beauty.
It's easy to see what a parent's role is in helping each different personality type with their goals. The C's are already dialed in to the concept quite naturally. The most important job a parent would have here is to keep them from beating themselves up if they fall short. They're such perfectionists by nature. Convey to them the idea: you try and you either succeed or fail. If you succeed, bravo. Set another goal. If you fail, stop, re-assess, re-set goal and try again. Repeat process until successful.
The I's may want to set really grand, unattainable goals. I try not to discourage those goals. With our son I just help him to break them down into smaller, more attainable steps that will lead to the larger goal. Or, in our son's case, he set broad, non-specific goals. My job here is to help him nail down the specifics. Also important is having him set a timeline for each step to keep him from procrastinating. The S in him will make it harder for him to follow through than another personality type and I will need to remember to ask him regularly about his progress.
The D in my little DI personality child seemed to love the whole exercise and has been very matter of fact about doing the things on her list the last couple of days. The I in her prompted her to make "love on Mommy more" one of her goals. She's pretty little still, so my main job is to praise and encourage any and all efforts. She does so enjoy applause.
They all need to learn how to set and attain goals no matter what their personality type. As parents it's our job to teach them how. Knowing their individual personality helps us to identify what their strengths are and how to use them when setting goals. It also gives us an idea where the trouble spots will be for them and enables us to help them overcome those hurdles. Ideally, the end result is happy, healthy people from all quadrants of the wheel achieving their goals for a lifetime.