Tag: responsibility

Accountability and the choices they make is a big lesson for kids to learn!

The role a parent plays in the lives of a child is to nurture them and provide opportunities for them to learn and explore themselves. As a child’s educator, guide, authority and counselor we can provide much for them. When they are young it feels like we are making most if not all of the choices for them. As they begin to grow though they are making choices about many parts of their life. By the time they are off to school the choices they make are now having an effect on them.

I believe this was one of the biggest revelations in my parenting life about children, choices, and control. As a first time parent, I thought I could control a lot of the end outcomes of my children. Even when my youngest was born I still thought I could make him into what I thought he should be. I tried my hardest to get him interested in sports and other areas of life that were of interest to me. All he wanted to do was read, watch movies and a few other creative activities. I did not get it, understand or particularly even like.

But I finally got the lesson. My job was to give him opportunities to explore, but in the end, it was his choice. While keeping commitments, following through and finishing started tasks were all lessons that I helped him to learn, I had a lot less to do with his personality, likes and dislikes, and who he was growing into being as a young adult. The reason I tell this story is that many of us parents figure out at a point in our parenting career that everything a child does is a choice they are making.

Even when they are younger they choose to go along with our request for their own reasons. It may be so they do not to get into trouble, or because they want something later on. But they make a choice. When we the parents learn to allow them to make choices after we educate them in the consequences of their choice we are doing two things:

1. We are teaching them how to make choices
2. We are teaching them to deal with the consequences.

So how do we do this when they are young? There was a young boy in my martial arts school one time who was about 5 years old. His mother came in a big hurry, flustered because she felt the need to go back to her son’s school and get his homework that he had forgotten to put in his backpack. What she was not thinking about was the lesson this was teaching the young boy. He was learning that if he made a mistake that mom or dad would swoop in and fix it for him.

Now really at the age of five one homework paper is not going to ruin his career later in life. But if he does not learn to be accountable for his responsibilities that could follow him for a very long time in life. It is hard as a parent to see your child not get what they want. But the actual consequence in this situation is less dramatic than years from now when trouble or mistakes are made and mom or dad is not there to fix them. Accountability in small things when they are young help them to grow into responsible men and women, accountable for themselves.

In a quote from Abigail Van Buren about responsibility she encouraged parents to put some responsibility on the shoulders of children. In today’s world, there are two somewhat opposing opinions about responsibility and children. One camp promotes the idea that children should be allowed to be children and the other camp suggests that they need to have responsibilities if they are going to stand on their own two feet as adults.

Unfortunately we often see big swings in the thoughts about parenting that shift from one extreme to the other. As with most thoughts, ideas, and practices, balance is critical so that neither extreme is placed on the child. I would agree that it is important to allow children to be children. They need time to play and learn about themselves.We see youngsters playing sports earlier and earlier while studies have shown that waiting and allowing fine motor skills to catch up to gross motor skills is the way to play at a higher level later in life.

More troubling is that in the world of childhood from fashion, cosmetics, and risky behaviors like drug and alcohol, sexual activity, trouble with the law has gone from a mid-teen issue to the 8-12-year-olds. Many of these children are seeing themselves as independent and as described by the Manhattan – Institute “isolated from family and neighborhood, shrugged at by parents, dominated by peers”. Even in my speaking with children, they may have very few chores or responsibilities within the family, saying Oh we have a cleaning person or I don’t have to do …. Someone does that for me.

The virtue of responsibility is known by every adult to be a part of everyday life. So how do we help our children to learn to be held accountable and allow them to have a childhood?  It is simply about how old the child is and where they are in their developmental stage. Giving a child a task to be responsible for does not need to be given as an authoritarian taskmaster.

Beginning at an early age showing a child how to do a task and then allowing them to do it to the best of their ability without insisting on perfection is a great start. It may be picking up the toys together, pulling the covers up on the bed. Later as they get older they might learn to match socks, unload the silverware, and soon they are able to sort the laundry and put dishes away. These are all ways for them to contribute to the family and feel needed.

Responsibility though is also about learning to keep their promises and commitments. We can teach them that getting to events or things they are participating in on time is showing responsibility. This they can learn by using language to guide them to that understanding. We may say to them, “When we get to your lessons on time, we are showing responsibility.” Later if you need to get them to move more quickly you may direct them by saying, “I need you to show responsibility and be ready to leave in 10 minutes.

Responsibility can be practiced as they learn about returning items that are borrowed and making sure they are in good condition when we return them. It may be a toy or a library book, but when we guide them with the word and the behavior they begin to understand what responsibility looks like.

As they get older we can begin to introduce the idea of prioritizing our tasks and putting the biggest and most important tasks first, even if it is more fun to do the other ones. Some children can have this virtue even overdeveloped and we may need to help them to use moderation and flexibility. However, rescuing our children from things that they are developmentally prepared for, just to give them an easier life is not helping them grow up to be contributing members of society. Keeping the balance though will allow them plenty of time for play which is equally important to their development.

Responsibility is one of the character traits that parents want to see their children develop as they grow into adulthood. Parents know that being able to respond to the what is needed, expected or required in any circumstance we meet in life is critical for our reputation, relationships even self-esteem.

If we begin as we do with all of the virtues with the belief that all humans have all the attributes inside of them from the very beginning, the question is how do we help our child see it for themselves and discern the need to develop it fully? If responsibility is one of the virtues that are important in your family if it is one of your top 3-5 virtues you will want to envision and describe what ‘responsibility’ looks like in your family.

Take a few minutes to determine how you will know that you are responsible and what is the developmental stage of your child for developing their character of responsibility? Is there a chore they might be assigned – not as a job – but as their part of being on the team (the family). Describe for them some of the things in the household that mom, dad, and others do that the family depends on them doing.

Responsibility is about being Reliable, Accountable and Dependable. So if there is one person in the home that does the cooking talk about how others depend on the preparation of meals, the importance of reliability and how you feel accountable to give your best effort.

When it is time for your child to contribute to the family answer the questions of reliability, accountability, and dependability. Maybe the child is asked to serve the family by feeding the dog in the morning and the evening. What would show reliability on this assignment? Who is depending on them to complete the chore on time? How are they going to be held accountable? Is there a consequence for not contributing to the family by doing your task?

It may be that a checklist is needed to be sure the child (or even us parents) remember what we are responsible for in the family. Soon each member of the family is learning the roles they play, and others can depend on us to do what we say we will do and know that we will give our best effort.

The goal is that our contribution to the family chores is carried out in a super-responsible way. I mean the completion of duties without us being asked to do them or reminded that they need fulfillment – then we are showing responsibility in a super way. Chores, responsibilities, contributions to the welfare of the family can be discussed and divvied up at a planned family meeting, giving everyone the opportunity to ask for help and agree to what and how they will contribute to the team.

Each month we will discuss one life skill with all of our students. This month’s skill is Responsibility. This life skill will be defined in the following ways for our students.

Young students: I’m the one who gets the job done!

Older students: Doing what is required, needed or expected of us.

We are not your typical after school activity, in fact, we are an education center, working with students on physical self-defense skills while empowering families to bring out the best in our children and ourselves – through the martial arts. We believe every child has 52 gifts in them already. They only need to be taught how to grow and use them in their life. Balanced Life Skills serves parents, teachers, and students to reach that goal.

If you would like to see Joe Van Deuren and Balanced Life Skills at work, TRY CLASSES FOR FREE for 2 weeks.

We made a mistake – responsible people would do what?  We know that they are going to be accountable to others for being on time, following through with their commitments, and if they make a mistake – do something about it.   Here is the 3 step process we have given our students to showing responsibility for their mistakes:

1. Admit it
2. Apologize
3. Fix it

I asked each student to tell me which of these would be the hardest to do.  Amazingly they were evenly split with each of the steps getting about the same number of votes for being the hardest one to do.  Which one do you think would be the hardest?

Now consider this scenario:  You yelled at a friend when you were tired.  How would you show responsibility?  First you would admit it and that may sound like, “ I was wrong when I yelled at you yesterday.  I feel bad that I acted that way.”  Second you would apologize and that may sound like “ I Am Sorry”, each word sounded out and emphasized the way you would like to make the person understand how you feel.  The third step is ‘Fix It’  –  How would you do that?

Getting this conversation going with your children can help them to see how they can accomplish doing what is required, needed or expected of us.

Taking responsibility for ourselves is not just about when we make a mistake. Many times we hear children say after a bad behavior – “He made me do it.” The difference between an adult and a child is that as we mature we begin to realize that we are responsible for our thoughts and behavior. We are who we are because of everything we have done, the way we think and the words we speak. Our life experiences – good and bad – have created us.

Sometimes circumstances are not great at the moment, or we are in the process of changing seasons (age, relationships, financially) and blaming those things never allows us to move forward in our lives. The question we can ask though is what can I do now to get the job done, to keep the commitments I have made to myself and others, learn from my mistakes to make my life and the world a better place.

There is plenty that we cannot change – but we can always recognize what we can do to move forward with our lives. How do we help children learn this skill and attitude?

It comes down to the 3 step process – the same one for changing culture in our family.

1. Set expectations

2. Role model what you would like to see

3. Teach (talk about it) on a regular basis with our children

We are going to make mistakes in this process and on a day to day basis. When we do though, we must admit our mistakes rather than running and hiding from the mistake. Most mistakes can be fixed and doing so or dealing with the consequences sets the example for our children.