#goals

A dear family friend asked me how I set goals. 

That's a loaded question, and maybe I'll write a few posts addressing different facets.

But one of the subquestions was about goals for my children. I've written before about educational goals but today I'm thinking about grown children. Two fifths of my children are grown.   

I don't have goals for my grown children. 

All I can have is goals for MY relationship with my children. Which is about how I'M going to behave. Not about them. 

My goals for that are pretty simple: 

• That they enjoy spending time with me (which pretty much is about me keeping my mouth shut about their life choices and me being pleasant to them)
  
  
• and that I don't dread seeing or hosting them because I've taken on food or housekeeping tasks that overwhelm me.

Learning Shemona Esrei

E's mostly fluent in shemona esrei now. So looking back, it took him about 2 months.  We are practicing 3x a week for 10 minutes, and if he finishes before time, he can stop early.

The last 2 paragraphs need a bit more fluency, but now we've started the other shemona esreis. Maariv, shacharis, mincha, for shabbos. The same 10 minutes 3x a week. Then on to musaf for Shabbos, musaf for rosh chodesh, musaf for Shabbos Rosh Chodesh, and shemona esrei for yontif. There's plenty to go.

In the meantime, I'd like to learn Torah with him. I think he'd enjoy thinking about ideas. But we'll hold off on that for now, and work on fluency.

The goal is for him to be able to finish shemona esrei with the tzibbur before they start chazaras hashatz.