Teaching Your Kids to Be More Responsible

Children who are responsible are more likely to succeed in life. They will understand their obligations and take them seriously and they will be better citizens, better employees and better people, as a result. 

But how exactly do you teach your kids to be more responsible? By making it seem like a positive part of their life rather than a negative. Here are some ways you can do that.

Give them responsibilities early on

If you want your kids to be fine with responsibility, then you need to give them responsibilities from early on in life. Even preschool children can be taught they need to put their toys away after playing with them, although they may need your help with it, for example. You set a good example and set up expectations by putting your values into action.

Praise them

When your child acts in a responsible manner, maybe they clean up after themselves or they help a friend who is in trouble to speak to the teacher, then you should praise them for doing so. Positive reinforcement around responsible actions will only help to reinforce how important it is to act responsibly to your children.

Make tasks fun

One thing you can learn from the best co ed schools in the country is that making responsibilities fun makes it more likely that the children will engage and do what they are supposed to Just like good schools make teaching fun, you need to make responsibilities like chores fun too.

There are a number of ways you can do this from turning on some music the kids love and having a dance party while you clean to taking them out for ice cream once their rooms are spotlessly clean. When they are young, they just aren’t going to naturally enjoy many of their responsibilities, so you need to make it fun for them.

Let them think for themselves

Instead o ordering your child to do everything from brushing their teeth to cleaning their bedroom, try to get them to do it for themselves. If you can gently ask them what they need to do right now, and allow them to answer that they need to brush their teeth or take a shower, for example, then it will feel like they have more power over their own lives.

This can make the idea of having responsibilities far more exciting than simply having orders barked at them, although as a parent, we all know too well how sometimes barking orders is the only way to get things done!

Don’t solve their problems

In a similar vein, letting your children try to solve their own problems without immediately rushing in to “save” them, unless leaving them to it would be dangerous, of course, will help them to work out some stuff about responsibility too.

Teaching your children to be more responsible may take time and effort, but if you make it fun and you ensure that any responsibilities they have are age-appropriate, you will get there sooner than you think.