This is the sequence of tag points that I used to teach my son:

My first tag point, Touch Ball, had nothing to do with kicking.

I put it in because I wanted to build up a positive association with the ball before starting the teaching sequence. I carried a ball with me, asked him to touch it. When he did, I tagged and reinforced. He learned quickly that “Ball is Good.”

You can see that the tag point “Walk Near Ball” was subdivided.

I knew my son would not walk up to the ball, so my goal was to reinforce him for getting closer and closer to the ball. As he drew closer, I stopped tagging him for being within 10 feet of the ball, and only tagged him for being within 6 feet, and so on.

This is how I “shaped” the behavior of getting closer to the ball.