Developing Responsibility and Character in Your Teenage Child

Developing Responsibility and Character in Your Teenage Child

• One of the many ironies of parenting includes how parents need to give their children the freedom to try and fail in order to enable them to learn and grow up. If parents indulge in over-parenting their teenage children, their actions are only shouting to the kids that they don’t have enough faith to succeed by themselves. Parents need to release control over their teenage kids so that they are able to move toward more responsibility. One who never learns to take up full responsibility of their own lives and actions would never ever have the opportunity to develop a healthy character, or live happily and fully.

The Four Steps to Responsibility • Here are the four steps to responsibility as suggested by the teachers at the international schools in Mumbai: Give your teen full responsibility • Trust in your child that they would carry it out • When they do blow it, simply stand back and thereby allow the consequences to take place while expressing empathy • Now, give them the same responsibility over again as it sends some powerful implied messages, such as: “You are so smart and capable of learning from your mistakes.”

Offer Your Kids Empathy for Their Mistakes • For instance, when your child’s grades are suffering, your appropriate response should be something like this: “You will figure out a way to do better in the future, I know this!”

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Part of teaching character and responsibility is holding your children accountable for their own actions, suggests the student’s counsellor at the IB schools near me. That is why it is so important that parents express their expectations. It is better to give them fewer surprises.

Again, parents need to remember that the most valuable lessons, often, in life do come from consequences of one’s mistakes. Let the reality be your child’s teachers.

Expectations and Family Contract • There are some families where the teenage kid would live with some clear expectations as well as consequences but they still choose the path of misbehavior and unhealthy rebellion.

• If consistent and healthy discipline isn’t working for your child, it is time that you put together something that can be called a family contract. Family contracts involve writing a set of plans with clear expectations that parents have from their kids, and it should include the consequences for their behavior too. It would be best if the whole family creates the family contract together. A family contract shouldn’t be ever created in a heat of battle. When you are putting together a family contract, try to keep it really simple. Here’s a simple outline that you could follow while creating a family contract:

Bottom

Line

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Bottom line here in building responsibility and character is that there’s hope. Even when your child is going through adolescent hormones, rebellion, and drama, suggests the teachers at the international schools in Mumbai, just remember that most of the teenagers successfully make it through their teenage stage and they do just fine.

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Issues Expectations The family member’s accountability Negative consequences Positive consequences

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