- What do you want to gain from this program?
- What anxiety symptoms do you want to tackle first?
- What do you hope your child will be able to do after this program?
Take some time and think about these questions. Then, follow these steps below to decide on your goals you would like to achieve after you have completed LUNA. These steps will help you decide on goals that are specific, measurable and achievable.
- Think about something that makes your child anxious right now. It could be a place (e.g., school), situation (e.g., around other people) or an object (e.g., bugs). Feel free to re-use fears or anxieties from the checklist. Write them down.
- Think about your child’s current behaviors. What does your child do when they are in a particular situation? How do they react? Do they avoid it? Examples could be:
- School – my child doesn’t talk to other kids and answer questions in class
- Around other people – my child freezes up and hides behind me, doesn’t like to go to parties
- Bugs – my child cries and runs away from a bug as soon as they see it
- Think about the behaviors that you’d like your child to do or not do in that fear/anxiety area. These could be something your child or your family is missing out because of your child’s fear. These would be your goals. Examples could be:
- School – playing with kids, answering questions in class
- Around other people – talking to new people
- Bugs – seeing a bug and staying calm (not crying and running away to another room)
- Now, it’s time to make your goals more specific and measurable. If your goal can happen multiple times a week, it’d be helpful to decide on frequency. Sometimes, your goal can be too broad, so you’d have to narrow down the focus. For instance,
- School – playing with kids at recess twice a week, answering questions in class twice a week (or maybe you can also choose a subject – answering questions in Math class twice a week)
- Around other people – talking to one new person when in a public place
- Bugs – seeing a bug and staying calm (i.e., not crying and running away to another room)
We recommend that you focus on three areas of fear or anxiety to work on during our program, but you can always be flexible. You can choose two or four! However, we encourage you not to go over four, as it can get overwhelming. Sometimes, there could also be two separate goals for one area. For instance, you could have:
- Feeling anxious at school? Goal: play with kids at recess twice a week
- Feeling anxious at school? Goal: answer questions in Math class twice a week
Write down your goals here!
Based on what you’ve read above, come up with the goals for your child and write them down on the Setting Goals worksheet. You can either print the form, fill it out electronically or use the text prompt below to make your own.
Goals prompt
Consider what areas of your child's anxiety you want to tackle first, and what you hope your child will be able to do when they no longer struggle with anxiety. Then write down some goals for your child below. We recommend you pick goals from three areas of your child's anxiety to work on. Remember to set goals that are specific, measurable, and achievable!
Below are Sally’s and Neil’s goals as examples
- Anxiety around her peers
Goal: Talk to different kid astronauts during every other training session.
- Fear of germs
Goal: Do not ask her parents "Are my hands clean" ten times after she washes her hands.
- Fear of germs
Goal: Use no more than three pumps of soap when she is washing her hands.
- Fear of public bathrooms
Goal: Use the kid's bathroom at the training facility once a day.
As you can see, Sally has three big fear/anxiety areas: anxiety around kids, fear of germs, and fear of public bathrooms. However, she has four goals – one for anxiety around kids, two for fear of germs, and one for fear of public bathrooms. All of her goals are also specific, measurable and achievable.
- Feeling anxious about being away from his mom
Goal: Sleep alone in his room every night.
- Feeling anxious about being away from his mom
Goal: Stay with dad or grandparent in the living room when mom watches her TV show alone in her bedroom for 30 minutes every day.
- Scared of the dark
Goal: Sleep with only one nightlight.
- Fear of change
Goal: Try our one new food a week.
Neil also has three fear/anxiety areas with four goals. He has two goals related to feeling anxious about being away from his mom, because his anxiety gets in the way across multiple parts of his life. Remember – be as specific as possible! “Managing anxiety better” and “being less scared” are great goals that your child is likely to achieve throughout our program, but they are hard to measure and not specific enough. Having specific goals will help you tailor LUNA to your needs and get the most out of the program.
Setting goals can be difficult!
We recommend you brainstorm the goals on your own, and then discuss them with your child. It’s important that your child works on something that they want to work on. However, it’s also important to have goals that would be meaningful to both your child and you. It can also be helpful to select goals with a range of difficulty, or at least one goal that you think your child will be particularly willing to work on. These goals can be a nice way of starting the program and learning new skills.