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| Responsibility Teaching | Ok then, let’s take a simpler, but very common problem – that of getting your teenager to take responsibility for keeping his room clean and tidy.
For many parents the solution to this problem is to take away privileges until the room is cleaned. For instance, when your teenage son comes back from schools, drops his bag and is about to ran out to join his friends at the mall; you step in and stop him from going out until he has cleaned up his room. This more often than not sparks an argument in which the words 'not fair' feature prominently as he heads for his room and slams the door behind him.
In this situation the problem is often the following – teen can’t find the connection between his actions in simply dumping his clothes in the corner of his room and the hassle that this causes you to act in such manner.
In such a way you restrict his freedom. But in reality this simply is not fair for the reason that at the end of the day he is the one who are going to stay in the room and he doesn't see that it should concern you what condition it is in.
In order to solve this problem you have to teach him to make the connection for himself between the condition of his room and the inconvenience that an untidy room causes you. When you manage this, withdrawing his privileges and inconveniencing him when he fails to keep his room tidy will swiftly be seen as quite fair.
Educating children to connect their deeds with their natural results is surely the key to imbuing a sense of responsibility in them. You should remember that the child must understand the connection between his actions and the consequences. Although it is often easy for an adult to see the connection, a child may not always have enough knowledge or experience to make the connection. Due to this it is significant to begin to teach your child responsibility at an early age so that, when problems of understanding do come up, the child will have learnt to trust you when you tell him that he really doesn't want the consequences of whatever it is he is about to do.
There is one more point to remember – like adults, children have an extent of their own free will and, like it or not, the power that you can apply over your children is restricted. The best thing you can often do is to set sensible expectation and, where needed, to take a firm, but not overly authoritative, stance.
Giving a good example and pointing your children the road to follow is as much as any parent can do. At the end of the day your children will make a decision for themselves whether or not they want to follow the path which you have spread out for them.
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