Drawing the future with a teenager

I’m a teenager's mom. My daughter Alena is 13 years old. Last 3 years I regularly asked her what she wants to become when she grows up. But everything was useless: Alena left questions because she could not say anything concrete. I thought for a long time how to help Alena formulate her future, her goals for adulthood, and once I tried to do so...

I made her sit it in front of me and said: "Alena, get comfortable. Good. Now close your eyes and imagine that 10 years have passed ... Tell me where you are? 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 then began to work. This is Alain enthralled, and now she has begun to tell that in the future she presents 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. "Excellent!", I said, and we returned to the day today. "And now tell me what you need to do today to get such a future?" And then Alena began to think...

In order for Alena to present her goal and 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.

When Alena finished her drawing, she looked at him and exclaimed: "Mom! It turns out that now I can do a lot to achieve what I want! ». For her it was a discovery! Of course, I had always told her before, that already now she can build her future, for earlier for Alena these were empty words. And now the picture-scheme, drawn by herself, turned out to be a ready plan of her actions with understandable steps. It was already her own project, and he did not cause her to protest. Alena has a project for her life!

The next day, Alena moved her card to a large sheet of Whatman and hung it over her desk. "Why?" I asked her. She said: "I want my plan to always be in front of my eyes!".

Her life began to change rapidly. Earlier, when I noticed that she was wasting time, she snorted, and now on my friendly (only friendly!) Questions: "And viewing this series takes you to your goal?", "And for what purpose do you sit on VKontakte ? "," Under what task do you play this game? ", Alena thinks ... Yes, she spends a lot of time on VKontakte, but now she searches for useful training videos, self-development articles and video lessons. Her self-esteem has greatly increased: «I’m not messing around! And most importantly, I’m sure: after a while my voice will turn into her inner voice, and she will already ask herself such questions: "Why?", "Under what task?". Alena has already started talking about the fact that the poster needs to be worked out: I see that my daughter thinks, plans, does!

​​​​​​​In many families there is a tradition to make resolutions for the New Year. I want to suggest that this year your child does not just make a resolution, but sets goals and prescribes real steps towards this goal, just as we did with Alena.

Let our children become the Authors of their lives!