Parenting Teenagers And The Difficulties Of Instilling A Sense Of Responsibility

By Author: Donald Saunders
Total Articles: 84
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When it comes to parenting one of the most difficult tasks we face is that of teaching responsibility and this is particularly problematic when it comes to parenting teenagers. More often than not you find yourself faced with the dilemma of trying to instill habits into your teenagers which will result in appropriate behavior without at the same time stifling the need for them to be able to make individual personal choices.

Being 'responsible' for something simply means being the agent for some action which produces an effect that can be either bad or good. Teaching responsibility is thus very much a matter of getting your children to understand that every action has consequences and that these consequences may affect not only their own lives but the lives of others.

If you can get your child to make the connection between his or her actions and their natural consequences then you will go a long way towards teaching responsibility. This method is also a lot better than following the time honored, but normally totally unproductive, route of simply resorting to telling your teenage children that they can or connot ...
... do something 'because I say so'.

Now this is all very well but, in reality, it is normally much easier said than done. Take, for example, the teenager who is tempted to start, or has indeed started, to experiment with drugs. The undoubted consequences of this are that he is quite likely to move from 'soft' to 'hard' drugs, will become addicted and probably start lying and stealing, or worse, to feed his growing habit. His school work will begin to suffer, as will his state of health, and at some point he will fall foul of the law and might well end up in jail. But, you try to explain this to a fifteen year old who knows that he is completely in control of his life and more than capable of ensuring that this will not happen to him.

Now This is possibly an extreme example of the difficulties of teaching responsibility and one for which the solution is a little too complicated for this brief article. Nevertheless, it is a relatively common problem these days and one which many parents will recognize.

At this stage however let us look at simpler, but extremely common problem - that of getting your teenager to take responsibility for keeping his room clean and tidy.

For many parents the answer here is to withdraw privileges until the room is tidied up. For example, when your teenage son comes home from schools, drops his bag on the floor and is just about to rush off to join his friends at the mall, you stop him from going out until he has cleaned up his room. This usually sets off an argument in which words such as 'not fair' feature prominently as he heads off to his bedroom and slams the door behind him.

The difficulty in this case is usually that the boy has not yet made the connection between his actions in simply throwing his clothes in the corner of his room and the inconvenience which this creates for you in having to go into his room and sort out the mess when it comes to laundry time. In addition he has not made the connection between the fact that you have just spent a fortune rewiring the house because mice, attracted in part by the food left in his room, had chewed through the cabling.

In simple terms you have inconvenienced him by restricting his freedom but this is not fair because at the end of the day he is the one who has to live in the room and he cannot see that it should matter to you what state the room is in.

The answer is simply to educate him by helping him to make the connection for himself between the state of cleanliness of his bedroom and the inconvenience that a dirty room causes for you. Once you have achieved this, taking away his privileges and inconveniencing him when he does not keep his room clean will suddenly seem to be quite fair.

While teaching children to connect their actions with their natural consequences is clearly the key to instilling a sense of responsibility in them, it should be remembered that the child must be in a position to understand the connection between his actions and the consequences.

Although it is frequently all too easy for an adult to see the connection, a child may not always have enough experience or knowledge to make the connection. For this reason it is important to start teaching your child responsibility at an early age so that, when difficulties of understanding do appear, the child will come to trust you when you say that he really does not want the consequences of whatever it is he is about to do.

One final point to remember is that, just like adults, children have some degree of their own free will and, whether we like it or not, the influence that you can exert upon your children is limited. The best that you can often do is to set reasonable expectation and, wherever needed, to take a firm, but certainly not too authoritative, position. When all is said and done you are after all rearing an individual with the capacity to think for himself, stand on his own feet and exercise self-responsibility.

Setting a good example and showing your children the path which they should follow is as much as most parents can do. In the end your children will decide for themselves whether or not they are going to follow the path which you have shown them.