Looking Forward: Desires, Goals and helping Children Succeed with BrainMoves
Today, we're going to talk about behavior improvement and resolutions. It seems like a great topic for a 2026 blog post. The very formal idea of New Year’s resolutions can be either positive or negative for adults. Some people treat resolutions with perfectionism, only to feel the side effects of not achieving sometimes unreasonable goals. Others are energized and focused by the idea of having two or three things upon which to concentrate their energy. Both of these are very adult understandings of resolutions.
Yet we also have things we’d like to see improve for the young people in our lives, so this seems like a good time to talk about resolutions or goals for preschoolers and kindergartners and how they relate to BrainMoves. Children are naturally oriented toward the future; their entire world is about preparing to be an adult and a contributing member of society. They are sponges for information—learning about social dynamics, life skills, and school subjects that will help them become the adults we want them to be.
Children are naturally surrounded by measurements, goals, and desires for their behavior to change, grow, and ultimately improve. If your child is at a life stage or in a situation where their behavior lags behind their peers, you may feel a deficit and be tempted to set up a very adult solution to improve your child’s behavior. Because children are not simply little adults, and their brains and understanding of the world are not adult-like, it might be better to take a slightly different approach to behavior improvement and goal-setting for our children.
Resolutions vs. Desires vs. Goals
This means that we need to break down our children’s behaviors into smaller steps so we can understand how to create a BrainMoves practice that will help.
For example, we often set an intention or resolution for a child’s behavior when a deficit or issue is brought to our attention. Perhaps a babysitter points out that Jill is defiant, or a playdate doesn’t go well because Evan will not share and lashes out. Perhaps there is an issue at school. Or, let's say a preschooler or kindergartener's teacher reports to the parent, “Corey is having a challenge learning the alphabet. He is not confident in his writing; it takes a long time, and the letters are messy and incorrect. Often, he confuses the name of a letter or draws a letter backward. He needs to improve to catch up with the other children.”
Let’s take a moment to look at “Corey” a bit further to help us understand the difference between resolutions, desires, and goals.
Resolutions
So, what is a resolution? A resolution is an intention for the future; it is a moment of identified self-improvement. A resolution doesn’t contain the ingredients for achieving it. It’s an ambition or a statement. In the situation with Corey, the resolution is that Corey will do better in school. Parents can classify their own resolutions by asking a few questions: Is it actionable? Is it observable? Is it time-bound? Creating a checklist like this can help transform abstract intentions into more concrete desires and those desires into more practical goals.
Desires and Observation
Some would say, “Improving Corey’s handwriting is the goal.” In actuality, this is a desire—a future intent for the child held by the adults in his world.
Desire: for Corey to be performing the task of writing the alphabet at grade level.
The goal is an actionable evocation of the desire, and this is where benchmarking comes in. We need to ask ourselves,
“What would improvement look like? How would we measure improvements?”
We can’t set a goal without collecting more data. Do this by observing the child. What do you notice? Noticing is a powerful skill for adults who live and work with children. Does he hold the pen comfortably? Does he scan the page, or is he distracted by other things in the room? Is he able to sit properly in his chair? Can he trace the letter with his finger, or does he have difficulty tracking the shapes of the letters with his fingertip? This will give you an idea of the specific goals for Corey.
Here are some examples:
Observations:
Corey has a hard time tracking his eyes left to right on the page. He picks letters from the beginning,
middle, and end of the alphabet at random when asked to trace the letter on the page. His eyes don’t stay focused moving from left to right and doing the letters in the traditional, linear order.
Corey has difficulty with the pencil or crayon. He grasps the pencil too hard and seems to tense up, making his fine motor control poor.
Corey gets upset when he sees his project isn’t as good as the other children’s. This makes him restless, and he frequently gets up to look at other people’s work.
Goals:
If the desire is helping little Corey better recognize and write the alphabet, you might start by watching the child try to do the task. This observation helps you determine where you are starting and creates the goal.
Goal: I would like Corey to better understand the shape of the letters so that fewer or no letters are backward.
Goal: I would like Corey to be able to hold a pencil or crayon more comfortably.
Goal: I would like Corey to feel calmer and more confident in doing this task.
Goal: I would like Corey to sit comfortably in his seat.
Selecting Movements
Once you have established the goals for the child, you can go to the 38 BrainMoves movements and select movements that support this child’s specific needs—fine motor skills, focus, confidence, and eye tracking.
Each movement can be learned from its own quick video; they are approximately 5 minutes each. In fact, most BrainMoves sessions with your child can be helpful in less than 10 or 15 minutes a day. Many report improvements with just 5 minutes a day. By emphasizing a minimal investment of time, you can seamlessly incorporate these sessions into daily routines without feeling overwhelmed.
Benchmarking:
But how can you see improvements toward your goal?
Each BrainMoves Movement has a benchmark movement. Improving the benchmark movement isn’t a goal, but the outcome of doing the movement correctly and frequently improves the benchmarked behavior. Tracking a starting and ending point allows you to see the in-the-moment impact of a BrainMove and determine if you need to repeat the movements, add a different movement, or move on to more complex movements.
Benchmarking is done with a measurement activity. Each movement has a measurement activity. You and the child do the measurement activity, then the BrainMoves movement, and then do the measurement activity again. This allows you to see individual day-to-day progress toward your goals and to make changes or add different movements to help your child along the way.
Goal setting can be hard for many at this time of year. Often, we confuse the ideas of a desire and a goal, and thus the actions we take to try to achieve our goals can be frustrating or disappointing. With BrainMoves, you can set goals for yourself, your child, or your classroom and have the tools to break down desires into individual daily tasks that help you and your children be happier and more focused.
Today we’ve talked about intentions and aspirations, and how the desired changes, improvements, and ambitions we have for our children influence what we ask of them. We discussed the relationship between aspirations and our future intentions for children, and how this relates to the goals we set in the present—goals that are actionable and address specific elements we want our children to improve.
We discussed how BrainMoves, with its pre- and post-movement benchmarks, allows us to see incremental improvement and make measurable progress towards our children’s goals and our aspirations for them every day.
If this makes you excited to learn more about BrainMoves and how you can help your child be more successful, focused, happier, and more peaceful at home and at school in just a few minutes each day, click below to get access to the lifetime, online, self-paced BrainMoves course. One payment provides lifetime access to movements that both you and your children can use to achieve your goals.
https://thebrainmovescourse.com/#custom-code-h8-M12CN4iJ
