It wasn’t long ago that a parent of a teen client came to us and asked about goals for their teen’s health. The parent expressed concerns about their teen’s low motivation to eat a healthy diet and do any physical activity. After trying several strategies without much progress, the family decided to pursue some extra support to help their teen make better choices and establish new habits around healthy living.
This family is not alone in encountering goals about their teen’s health. According to the CDC, more than 24% of teens ages 16-19 report trying to lose weight in the past year. That number is significantly higher for girls and young women. In addition, nearly one in three children in America are overweight or obese, meaning many families face significant questions about the long-term health habits of their children.
Today we’re sharing some of the tips and strategies we shared with this family to help your teen with unique learning needs develop and achieve their health-related goals.
Why is having goals about health important?
But before we begin, let’s first point out a few things that make health goals crucial for diverse learners:
- According to the CDC, obesity rates for adults with disabilities are 58 percent higher than for adults without disabilities and 38 percent higher for children with disabilities than for children without disabilities. The families we work with require immediate strategies and goals to prevent and avoid the negative health impacts of a sedentary lifestyle.
- Many other ‘higher level’ daily living skills (like community engagement, leisure, recreation, employment) are more challenging to achieve if a learner struggles with health-related issues. A well-balanced diet, sufficient sleep, and regular physical activity lay the critical foundation for teaching other skills.
- While services continue to grow, in general, teens and young adults with unique learning opportunities may have fewer options in the local community for a healthy, active lifestyle outside of IEP services.
With these factors in mind, it becomes important for parents and caregivers to start making plans to help their teens develop and achieve healthy-living goals.
Setting Health Goals with Your Diverse Learner
Now that you know why these goals are important, it’s time to start addressing the how–or how to help your teen set and achieve their health goals.
Decide what you and your teen value first.
Before any work is done on developing a goal, it’s best to evaluate what you and your learner value about topics like diet, exercise, and healthy living. If we don’t examine values first, chances are we’re going to develop a goal that our teen doesn’t find worthwhile–or worse. There will be conflict over how to set goals.
For example, if your teen values looking good or looking like their peers, they’re likely to come up with a very different goal than if you, as the parent, value your teen getting outdoors more often. So spending time exploring values can save a lot of time later as you start writing goals.
For more on this, check out our article How to Get Started with Teaching Healthy Living Skills for a free .pdf values assessment you and your teen can use to explore this topic together.
Develop a SMART goal.
Decades of research have shown that some of the highest goal achievement rates happen when goals follow the SMART template. We recommend it to families here, and it is our gold-standard method for developing successful goals.
SMART stands for:
S – Specific – What is the behavior we want to achieve?
M – Measurable – How will we know that we’ve achieved it?
A – Attainable – Is the goal realistic? Is the outcome practical and achievable?
R – Relevant – Why is this goal important to achieve? What difference will it make for my life or others around me?
T – Time-Bound – When will this goal be accomplished?
With these elements, SMART goals help us establish a clear vision for what our goal intends to accomplish and begin to chart out a path to get there.
SMART Goals for Healthy Living
When it comes to health goals, it’s particularly important to use the SMART method because behaviors around diet and exercise can be challenging to change. SMART goals help give your teen the best chance of success. Consider some of these traditional goals and how they’re transformed when written as SMART goals.
We’ve created a free downloadable template below for you to get started. Just enter your email and we’ll deliver it straight to your inbox.
Help your teen focus on healthy behaviors and not on appearance.
As you and your teen write SMART goals, do your best to help your teen frame goals based on health outcomes and healthy behaviors and not on appearance. While not easy, studies show that plans based on specific behaviors that lead to a healthy lifestyle are achieved more than those written on appearance.
Identify motivation.
As soon as your learner sets a goal, the next step is to form ideas about rewarding progress. Most teens and adults will need some form of external motivation to achieve health-related goals. If it were just as easy as “willpower,” we’d all be super fit and skip out on junk food!
Remember that your “why” or motivation may differ from your teen’s motivation. For more info on motivation and goal setting, check out our article: 6 Steps To Help Your Child Develop A Strong “Why” When Goal Setting.
Write goals down and publicly post them.
Once you and your teen have a few goals in mind, have your teen write them down and post them where they’re likely to encounter them often. Top-of-mind plans are kept a priority and more likely to be achieved in the long run.
Individuals with diverse learning needs also benefit from other visual supports. For example, consider graphing progress on health goals or using a visual thermometer to log progress toward achieving a goal.
Choose milestones along the way.
Successful SMART goal setting involves setting milestones or key indicators for your teen to know they’re on track for achieving their health goals. For example, perhaps your teen set a goal to run a 5K. Choosing milestones or ‘micro goals’ like “I can run for 5 minutes” and “I can run one mile without stopping” help your learner identify they’re making progress and stick with it.
Ask for support if you need it.
Finally, as a parent or caregiver of a teen with unique learning needs, you’re never alone in supporting your child’s success.
Gathering friends, family members, and your child’s care team together to help with health-related goals can take the pressure off you as a parent and can help your teen achieve more.
Seek out professional support or coaching for your teen. Educate yourself by taking a deep dive into goal setting. Connect with other parents who might be facing the same challenges.
Further Reading
- CDC – Adolescent Health Data Briefs
- Disability Scoop – New Gym Created To Help People With Special Needs Stay Fit
- Helping Your Teen set SMART Goals.
- Lawlor, K. B. (2012). Smart goals: How the application of smart goals can contribute to achievement of student learning outcomes. In Developments in business simulation and experiential learning: Proceedings of the annual ABSEL conference (Vol. 39).
- Let’s Move – Childhood Obesity Initiative
- Life Skills Advocate – Life Skills Coaching
- Life Skills Advocate – 6 Steps To Help Your Child Develop A Strong “Why” When Goal Setting
- Mayo Clinic – Weight loss goals: Set yourself up for success