Assessment is a critical part of any personal improvement framework.

Reflection is a wonderful assessment tool.

Weekly reflections on actions and their results is a good habit to form.

It’s not something I do on a regular basis, even though I know I should be doing it.

While I continue to improve on this habit, it’s also a habit I’d like my children to develop.

But, you can’t get granular with children. It just doesn’t work that way. Even with adults, it can get tedious after a while. With their short attention spans you just can’t be too granular on topics like this. Especially if you want to continue doing this in the long run.

Rather, I feel the assessment should be of very high level with kids.

I’ve come up with three simple questions I’m going to start using with my kids on a weekly basis, preferably Sunday evenings.

Here they are:

Question 1 – What have you completed?

Question 2 – What have you improved upon?

Question 3 – What have you failed at?

The first questions is about progress, second is about growth, and third is about experimentation.

They’re all critical components of personal growth. You can’t have growth without experimentation, and you can’t have progress without growth. Oh, and without progress life just becomes a hamster wheel … doing the same thing repeatedly expecting different results.

One last thought.

Celebrate! Regardless of the answers they give, Celebrate! Celebrate not just their successes or failures, but celebrate your kids for their courage, their resilience, their grit, celebrate them for just being kids.