Which of your child's goals are actually worth the hours?
A one-page test you run on every goal in the plan — and a verdict you can defend out loud in the meeting.
The Problem
You've read the plan. Twelve goals, maybe twenty. They all sound reasonable. Every one of them was written by someone who knows more jargon than you do.
And you have no way to tell which ones matter.
That's not a failure of attention. Nobody hands parents a standard for judging a goal. So the plan arrives, it looks official, and the only question anyone asks is whether your child is making progress on what's already there — never whether those were the right things to work on at all.
Meanwhile the hours are finite. Every hour spent on a goal that won't matter at twenty-five is an hour not spent on one that will.
The math nobody does out loud
A goal that sits in the plan for a year at ten hours a week is five hundred hours of your child's life.
Five hundred hours is enough to learn to cook, or ride a bus alone, or fill out a job application. It is also enough to get very, very good at matching colored cards.
The hours get spent either way. The plan decides on what.
What's Inside
Three questions that settle it. Run any goal through them and you'll know in about a minute whether it has earned its place. Most won't.
The two numbers already written into your child's plan. Nobody tells you which two to look at. Once you know, you can't unsee how often they're set backwards — high where it doesn't matter, low where it does.
Five questions about how it's taught. Because the right goal taught the wrong way still costs you the year.
TA verdict for every goal. Keep it, raise the bar, replace it, or ask about the method. Written down, in your handwriting, before you walk in.
A summary page. Exactly which goals you're raising and what you're saying about each one.
Who it's for
Parents of children with autism or a related disorder who have a plan in hand — an IEP, a Treatment Plan, or both — and a meeting coming.
You don't need to know the research. The worksheet asks the questions for you.
What it isn't
It won't write goals for you, and it isn't a substitute for the team that knows your child. It's a way to walk in having done the reading — with specific goals flagged and a reason for each one.
Ready to get started?
$9
Instant download. Printable, print as many worksheets as you need.
$9
pairs with…
The Meeting Kit — $19.
The Goal Audit tells you which goals to raise. The Meeting Kit tells you exactly what to say about them.
Learn more at makesureitsmeaningful.com
faq
How is this different from the Meeting Kit?
The Goal Audit is what you do at your kitchen table beforehand. The Meeting Kit is what you do in the room. Most parents use both, and the Goal Audit feeds directly into it.
Do I need the book first?
No. The worksheets stand alone. The book explains why these three tests are the right ones, if you want the reasoning behind it.
Is it fillable on screen?
No — it's built to be printed and written on, because that's how it gets used in a meeting.
How many goals can I audit?
As many as you like. It's one worksheet per goal, printed as often as you need.
Isn't this the team's job?
It is. And most of them are doing it in good faith, under caseloads that make careful goal-writing nearly impossible. This isn't about catching anyone out. It's about being the one person in the room whose only job is your child — and showing up with something specific to say.
who's behind this
Dr. Shanna Bahry
I am a board-certified, doctoral-level behavior analyst, licensed in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. I have worked with individuals with autism and related disorders for over fifteen years — across every age, every ability level, and settings ranging from classrooms to living rooms to job sites.
I did not choose this focus casually. I kept meeting families whose children had worked hard for years, whose programs looked fine on paper, and who arrived at adulthood with no plan and no skills to carry them. That is a preventable outcome, and preventing it is what I do now.
It is also why all of this exists. I co-wrote Make it Meaningful to make this argument to practitioners, and I train the behavior analysts and school teams who write these plans. The book, the worksheets, and tools like this one are that same argument, handed to you instead — because you are the one constant in your child's programming. Every practitioner is temporary. You should have the same information they do.
The rest of it — the free guides, the book, and the other tools — is at makesureitsmeaningful.com.