Kids and Personal Responsibility

QUESTION: Kids and Personal Responsibility – How can I teach my kids to be responsible?

ANSWER:

You can find a lot of advice on kids and personal responsibilities from other parents, grandparents, books and advisers, but here are some tips that most books and society, in general, seem to forget.

• Children need to learn at a very early age that whatever they do has good or bad consequences. They are not born with the ability to discern right from wrong behavior. When children behave and obey their parents, the result is rewarding and proper. When a child misbehaves, they need to understand that it will result in punishment and negative consequences.
  
  
• Teach responsibility not only for their behavior, but for their own space. The greatest teaching is done by example. If they see you picking up after yourself, they will adopt or imitate your actions at an early age. If care is taken at home to keep it neat and orderly, they will understand the importance of neatness.
  
  Tidiness in work is an important hiring attribute for when your children enter the workplace. Employers want their property maintained, too.
  
  
• Teach your child to respect other people and their possessions.
  
  
• Gradually, give your child more responsibility. Introduce chores and small jobs.
  
  
• Once the child is ready, begin to teach about financial responsibility. As they complete small jobs or chores, reward them with small amounts of money. Encourage the child to give a percentage to charity or the church. Teach them to save money in a savings account or piggy bank.
  
  
• Keep balance. Obsession with anything is not good. Keep it simple and understandable. When you correct behavior that is unacceptable, do it in love. Get your point across and understood, then let them know that it’s the behavior that is wrong and not them.

Train a child in the way he should go and when he is old, he will not depart from it (Proverbs 22:6). You have a choice, as a parent, to educate your children in the way they will go.

Teach them to be responsible adults. Give your child an inheritance that will not tarnish or fade so that they can become examples to the next generation.