How To Teach Responsibility To A Child

Hi, I'm Nicoleen Peck, and I teach all over the world about parenting, good communications, and how to build strong family bonds. And in this video, we're going to be talking about how to teach responsibility to a child. In this video, we're gonna talk about what responsibility is for a child. So what does that accountability actually look like? And then, where it goes wrong, and what skills parents can teach children to improve the child's responsibility. So what is responsibility? Responsibility is essentially accountability. It is when a person feels a sense of accountableness for something, they have to return and report to somebody about something because they have ownership over whatever action it is that they were supposed to accomplish. Or maybe it's an item that they feel responsibility for or accountability for. Oftentimes, people have children take care of pets and things like that to teach them responsibility. Sometimes people want their children to have money so that they can learn responsibility in money. So these are different ways that people teach responsibility to children. Oh, chores, I can't forget chores because everybody wants their children to usually learn how to work and do chores so that the child can learn some personal responsibility on just a day-to-day level, on the maintenance for themselves and in the environment they live in. So as they grow, they learn more responsibility, but there's always this time where the children are maybe not wanting to take on the responsibility, and that's when parents find that it's very difficult. In fact, some parents will end up having arguments or power struggles with children to try to get a child to take responsibility when they don't want to. So what I'd like to focus on most in this video is what we can do, what type of an environment that we can set up that helps the child want to take an active role in what's going on at home to make an investment in themselves and in the other people around them by taking responsibility for themselves and maybe even for others. I don't believe in babying my children. I've raised them all now to adulthood. They're very mature. They've all launched off really quick. Honestly, for my mother heart, it might've even been too quick, right? So they hit 18, and okay, mom, I'm gonna go serve a mission for our church, and boom, and then I'm gonna come back and go to school, or oh, mom, now I'm gonna go off to school and do this thing and then go do a mission for our church. You know, all the different things, but they're out there, and they're going. And I have four children of my own. Three of the four are married, and one is serving a mission for our church. So they're off, gone, boom, empty nest that quick, and it's a little bit to get used to as a mom. I'm not gonna lie. I love having my children around, but I also cannot deny that I am so happy because it's like mission accomplished. Check, check, check, check. They did it. They launched into adulthood. They took on all the responsibilities. They're having jobs. They're leading out in different organizations in their church congregations where they are. They're taking on leadership roles. They are teaching and training other people. They are serving in their communities. They are doing all of the things that a person does who is a very responsible, mature person, and that's what I wanted them to be. So I didn't want my children to be babied by me or by anybody else. I didn't want them to feel entitled. I wanted them to feel mature, and this sense of I can solve my problems. So how did I do that? I decided to raise them what I call the self-government way. I based my home on the principle of self-government and used that principle in all of the teaching and correcting and communicating with my children so that they would learn to take personal or self-responsibility over themselves, that they would learn it wasn't up to me to make them happy. It wasn't up to me to solve all of their problems for them. Sure, I would be there to help, but really they had to learn how to do it. This matured them very quickly. It also helped them find a lot of happiness and success in all of their relationships in the family and with their friends and neighbors. So what is self-government? Self-government is being able to determine the cause and effect of any given situation and possessing a knowledge of your own behaviors so that you can control them. So that means a person analyzes themselves regularly and they decide what actions or thoughts they want to have in order to become the best version of themselves and to have the greatest impact on the people around them for good, hopefully. So when a person is self-governing, they're analyzing cause and effect and themselves at the same time. This is a very mature thing to do, but you know what? Even babies can start to learn how to do it. My daughter, who I'm so proud of, she has our first grandbaby, a granddaughter. Her name's Clara, she's darling. And even at the age of 15 months, she knows how to take deep breaths and she knows how to disagree appropriately with an appropriate voice tone with her mother. She taught her daughter how to take deep breaths to get calm when she was three months old. I didn't even know that was possible. I trained my children to be calm and to learn how to take deep breaths and calm down, but I never thought of doing it when they were three months old. My daughter did, and you know what? It worked, I'm amazed. So she is now teaching her children even how to be calm. What an amazing thing for me to witness that she's teaching them how to take responsibility for themselves even at such young ages. Now that doesn't mean they're gonna be completely responsible. Clara still needs to be fed with a spoon, but she knows some things and she feels pretty powerful because of it. She's a happy, calm little baby. So I've got some tips for you, some kind of what to dos, what not to dos as far as teaching responsibility goes. And then I've also got a formula for you that you can use to help your children develop good responsibility. But before we get to that, you see that little button that says subscribe? That button is for you. When you click that button, then you will see more content like this. So click subscribe now. When you're teaching your children responsibility, don't teach them responsibility so that life's easier for you. Teach them responsibility so that life is easier and better for them. So often, parents want their children to learn responsibility because, well, then the parent has to do less. That's not why I decided to teach my children self-government and to have personal responsibility. It was because I wanted them to be empowered. I wanted them to be strong. I wanted them to know how to solve their problems, how to communicate with people. I wanted them to actually be mature. So do it for them. If you're doing it to make your life easier, you might not actually engage in the activity of teaching them that responsibility because initially, it takes more work to teach a child self-government at the beginning. And then later, it's way less work. But you have to put in that loaded front-end work first before the child decides to take on responsibility and learn self-government in all things for themselves. If the parent teaches the child to be responsible because it's easier for the parent, the child actually gets that. They feel it. You don't even have to say it. They know there's a selfish interest behind it. And so then the lesson of responsibility loses its sweetness. It loses its power. The person feels like they're just being controlled by another person. Children sense when you have a selfish desire behind what you're telling them to do. You don't have to say it. We can feel it. There's unspoken language with all of us when we're communicating with each other. So it's important for a child to understand the why of responsibility. Why would they even care about being responsible when somebody else can do it for them? Why wouldn't they just let somebody else do it? Well, because in the end, they lose power. A person who requires everybody else to do something for them is not necessarily the most privileged person. They're actually the person that's in the most bondage. They're not the most free. You've got to explain that to the children. The people who have the greatest influence in the world are the ones who take action and do stuff, and the ones who can control themselves and can self-direct themselves. They can motivate themselves forward. Well, until you are willing to take responsibility for your shoes, you probably won't ever take responsibility for your thoughts. They go together. First, put the shoes away. Then put the backpack away. Clean up your toys when they need to be cleaned up. Those are all personal responsibility things. But then later in life, we think, you know, I'm not feeling very positive right now. Maybe I better change my thoughts and think more positive thoughts instead of these negative ones that are making me feel so bad. That's empowering. To recognize you can change your thoughts, change your outcomes, change your relationships. Change even your bottom line in business if you can change your thoughts and your actions and you know they're up to you to change. It's powerful. There's people that, I mean, people pay big money to hear somebody say something like that to them. You can choose for yourself. You might hear a whole seminar, and at the end, you only get, you can choose for yourself. It is that powerful that people will pay thousands of dollars to hear that little bit of information. Your children can learn that little bit of information from you. So teach them, hey, this is what self-government is. This is why it's so powerful. We don't have to blame the way we feel on somebody else anymore. Now we can just decide that we want to feel a certain way or process something in a certain way. And we can do that. I mean, people pay a lot in therapy to hear that message too, right? You can choose. You can choose happiness. Teach your children, and then teach them the skills that will help them learn that. So if you teach them how to follow instructions, accept no answers and criticism, accept consequences, disagree appropriately, these are all skills that are gonna help them communicate better with themselves later down the road, but initially with you as well. And if you teach them, say, how to follow instructions, then they know that to follow instructions, they do five things. They look at the person. They keep a calm face, voice, and body. They say, okay, or they ask to disagree appropriately. They do the task, whatever it is, and then they check back with you. So if a person learns to follow instructions, and they can do all five of those things, then that right there is the door to taking responsibility. So you say, hey, I'm gonna give you an instruction. Remember to do an instruction. You do these five things. You list them out, and then say, here's your instruction. I need you to shake the front rug and then put it back, okay, and then just come check back with me afterward. Okay, they go do it. They shake their rug. They put it back. They come and return and report to you, and then suddenly they're saying, I did it, to themselves and to you. They know that they were able to follow through on one responsibility right then. How many times a day do we give children the opportunity to learn responsibility? So many. But when they check back from that responsibility, that's when they're telling themselves that they did it. That's the glory moment where they actually internalize, I actually did that skill for me, not necessarily just for somebody else. If a person learns self-government, they actually have a change of heart. It's not just about skills and about behaviors. It's about heart. A person has to want to take responsibility to choose to take it. Otherwise, they'll run from it forever, and there are certain personalities that run from it more than others. But once you decide, you know what? I really do get to control my happiness. I really do get to control and determine my effects, my outcomes of my actions, and so I think I'm gonna take it seriously. That's when a person's being honest with themselves, and when you're honest with yourself, that means you've had a heart shift. There was a time when I made excuses for all kinds of things when I was a young person, when I was in school, because I could get away with all kinds of stuff, especially because I always pulled good grades. So I could tell teachers anything, and they'd be like, oh, she's a good student. She's one of the good ones, no big deal. But I would lie and make excuses all the time, and in the end, I didn't feel very great about myself, and I knew that I wasn't being honest. But when I changed my ways and decided to hold myself accountable, be fully responsible, I also knew I had to be honest too, and it changed my very condition of heart. Explain some of these things to your children, that when they learn responsibility, because you're gonna teach it to them because you care about them so much, that they actually get the opportunity to look themselves in the mirror and be proud of what they see, because they're honest, finally. They're doing their best work, and they're doing it for themselves as well as others. Your children need that kind of a boost, and you could give it to them, but explain to them the why so that they know why you're gonna take this special effort to teach them deliberately. Self-government and responsibility in the first place. There's so much more that I could teach you about self-government and about improving your relationships with your family members. If you would like to have a free class, a free self-government class, there is one on this channel right now. It's the next video that I suggest that you go see. It is called The Not-So-Known Secret for Parenting Success. If you watch that video, you'll get an overview of a lot of the skills and principles of self-government, and it will help you learn more that you can do to improve communication and teaching with your children. So click on The Not-So-Known Secret for Parenting Success right now. I'll see you there.