Encourage Responsibility by Allowing Consequences
If your child
forgets an item needed for school, do you return home to retrieve it and take
it back to school for him/her? When
your child refuses to wear the outfit you picked out, do you allow him/her to
choose something else?
If so, you may be guilty
of rescuing your child from the consequences of his/her decisions or
behavior. It is a normal reaction for
parents to want to comply with their child’s request as a means to make him/her
happy and build a closer relationship.
But rescuing your child keeps him/her from facing the consequences of
his/her decisions and/or behavior. In
turn, this makes the problem YOURS and not your child’s. Thus, your child does not learn from his/her
choices but instead becomes more dependent on you to “fix it and make things
better.”
Not allowing children to
face the consequences to their choices also sends the message to them that they
are weak and helpless. Teaching
responsibility is a gradual, life-long process that involves giving children
choices and then allowing them to experience the consequences of those choices,
whether good or bad.
One of the most
memorable consequences that I faced growing up occurred when I was a senior in
high school. I was taking a College
Composition Class through Rockhurst College that was being taught by one of our
high school English teachers. Being my
first college-level class, the teacher had impressed upon us how important it
was that assignments must be turned in on time. Having had the same teacher for a regular high school class, I
felt I knew her expectations of each of her students. Boy was I wrong!
I had been sick
for an entire week and returned to school the day after that we had a research
paper due. My mom had communicated with
the instructor during the course of the week about what I needed to have
prepared when I returned to class…my research paper, which came as no surprise
to my parents nor I. Having had my
paper all typed and saved on a disk, all I needed to do was print it. Our printer at home was on the fritz so I
just thought it would be OK to print it at school. I got to school early the morning that I returned so that I would
have plenty of time to print it. As I
was in the library, my instructor walked in and saw me printing my paper. I didn’t think anything about it because I
wasn’t actually “working” on it.
However, she walked over to me and asked me if I was working on my
paper. I said “No. I am just printing you a copy of it because
our printer at home was not working.”
She shared with me that because the paper was due the day before, the
paper should have been printed before I walked into the building that
morning. “That’s the difference between
a high school and a college class” she explained to me. Needless to say, I got to turn the paper in
but my grade was automatically lowered because it was considered late.
I can definitely say
that that consequence totally opened my eyes to the college world! It made a dramatic impression on me and my
academic progress, which nowadays I can laugh about!
Responsibility comes
from the process of making choices and accepting the consequences of those
actions. The most effective and
satisfied people have learned how to make choices and accept the responsibility
for the consequences as a result of their choices. That is how we all learn and grow to become better individuals.
Beth Ferry
Counselor