Handling the Dilemmas of Instilling a Sense of Responsibility in Teenagers

For any parent one of the most difficult tasks is that of teaching responsibility and this is especially problematic when we are looking at parenting teenagers. In many instances you find that you are faced with the problem of trying to instill habits into your teenagers which will lead to appropriate behavior while at the same time not stifling the need for them to make individual choices.

Being 'responsible' for something simply means being the agent for some action which produces an effect which can be either good or bad. Teaching responsibility is accordingly very much a matter of getting your child to understand that his actions have consequences and that these may affect not merely his own life but the lives of other people.

If you are able to get your child to make the link between his actions and their natural consequences then you will be a long way down the road towards teaching responsibility. This method is also a lot better than following one of the time honored, but usually totally unproductive, parenting tips of simply resorting to telling your child that he can or cannot do something 'because I say so'.

Now this is all very well but, in practice, it is often much easier said than done. Take, for instance, the teenager who is tempted to begin, or has in fact already started, experimenting with drugs. The obvious consequences of this action are that he is quite likely to graduate from 'soft' to 'hard' drugs, will find himself addicted and almost certainly begin to lie and steal, or worse, to feed his habit. School work will start to suffer, as will his state of health, and at some point he will come up against the law and might well land up in jail. But, you try explaining this to a sixteen year old who feels that he is totally in control of his own life and more than capable of ensuring that this does not happen to him.

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

At this stage however let us examine simpler, but very common problem - that of teaching your teenage boy to take responsibility for keeping his room clean.

For probably the majority of parents the answer here is to simply withdraw privileges until the room is cleaned up. As an example, when your teenage boy comes home from school, dumps his bag and is about to rush out to join his friends at the mall, you stop him from going out until he has cleaned his room. This usually starts an argument in which the words 'not fair' feature prominently as he heads off to his bedroom and slams the door behind him.

The difficulty here is often that the teenager has yet to make the connection between his actions in simply dumping his clothes in the corner of his room and the inconvenience which this creates for you in having to go up to his room and sort out the mess when it comes time to do the laundry. Similarly he has yet to make the connection between the fact that you have just spent a a considerable sum of money having the wiring in the house sorted out because mice, attracted in part by food left lying around in his room, 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 individual who has to live in the room and he cannot see that it should matter to you what state it is in.

The secret is simply to educate him by helping him to make the connection for himself between the state of his bedroom and the inconvenience that a dirty room causes you. As soon as you do this, taking away his privileges and inconveniencing him when he does not keep his room tidy will suddenly be seen as quite fair.

Although teaching teenagers to connect their actions with their natural consequences is obviously the secret to instilling a sense of responsibility in them, you should not forget that the child has to be in a position to see the link between his actions and their consequences.

Despite the fact that it is generally all too easy for adults to see the connection, your child may not always have sufficient knowledge or experience to spot the link. It is important therefore to begin teaching your child responsibility at an early age so that, when problems of understanding do appear, the child will come to trust you when you say that he does not want the consequences of whatever it is he is contemplating.

A last point to think about is that, like adults, teenagers have some degree of their own free will and, whether you like it or not, the influence that you are able to exert upon your children is limited. Often the best that you can do is to set reasonable expectation and, whenever necessary, to adopt a firm but not overly authoritative position. At the end of the day you are after all rearing an individual with the capacity to think for himself and to stand on his own two feet and demonstrate self-responsibility.

Setting a good example and showing your teenager the path which he should follow is as much as any parent can do. In the end your child will decide for himself whether or not he is going to follow the path which you have shown him. Teaching responsibility is not too difficult and is a piece of cake compared to the subject of teen sex advice.