since seventh grade, goals have been made for me. they are things beyond academics that I need to accomplish to be a successful human being. they are made by teachers and my adults. my teacher in seventh grade who also did art and theater clubs made goals easy for me by making them into a project. she designed a project around my pervasive interest, castles. the goals were 1) attention span, 2) project completion, 3) and not freaking out of details aren't perfect. at first, she had to sit at the table with me so I would focus for more than ten seconds. then after a while she still had to sit there but it was every thirty seconds or so. when it was theater day, she added the goal 4) no stage fright. if we played a game of that kind, I was made to play unless I had had a meltdown during the day or was on edge for any reason. when I was to do the castle project, I would sit on the floor in from of the stage. she would tell me to focus every minute or so. it took me a year to finish the project.
each place has goals for me. my youth group has goals like every Wednesday I read John and write about it. when we talk, I am supposed to maintain eye contact and conduct a conversation on topic 100%. during actual youth group, I am expected to play at least one round of every game and communicate during small group. some goals are easy, like working super hard to focus. some are super hard, like maintaining eye contact during talking and listening.
I think that the goals set before me and the rules that line the way are good for me. being autistic, I don't set my own goals because I don't think about it. they are linguistic when my adults or teachers make them and if I made them they would be 90% images. at least my adults know me well enough to create realistic goals for me. this way I can accomplish them.
there are some days when I do not want to work on goals. I do not want to look in eyes, I do not want to focus. if I am in a bad mood my adults try and make it better so there will be a point to working on them. if I just don't want to and argue, I get into trouble, I have to talk about what happened to make me mad or upset. this always includes "what are you feeling" and "what are you thinking" which I hate to be asked unless I can draw a picture. usually though I am able to complete the days goals without issues or meltdowns.
