Do you want to know how to make a child take responsibility? I'm Nicholeen Peck and I teach
self-government and that's what your child needs, if they are going to learn to choose to take
responsibility for themselves. So we're going to be talking about responsibility in this video.
In this video, we're going to talk about what we can and can't make our children do and we're
going to talk about the skills that a child needs to learn to take responsibility for themselves.
Now, the things I'm going to be talking about in this video are not just for one particular age
of child. In fact, everything I'm talking about is going to be for all ages. In fact, it's kind of for
all ages of well, everyone all people. Because we all need the skills for how to take responsibility
for ourselves. But the question I have is can we actually make someone take responsibility
for themselves? Well, no we can't. We can't make a person take responsibility. We can enforce,
we can encourage, but we can't make. Why is that? Well, when a person chooses to take responsibility
it's an inner thing. They decide that they want to have that power over themselves.They decide that
they want the responsibility. But as long as they don't want it, they will start to push it off on you.
Well, you made me. Well, you won't let me. So the words that we use in our home are very important.
When my child earns a negative consequence I don't say, "I'm giving you... You will now have to."
I don't say anything like that. I say, "It looks like you have chosen to earn." Oh, now it's all them.
They chose, they earn, it's their decision, it's their self-government. Many people say, "I'm going
to give you this negative consequence. I will take this away from you", and so that immediately creates
a boundary between parents and children and when we do that, the children think that we're doing
everything to them. That they don't get any choice of their own and we mistakenly think
sometimes that we can make them choose to take responsibility for themselves. Like making their
bed without being asked or told to and choosing to do their chore without any prodding or
nagging. All those things are possible but it's not us making them do any of it. It's them deciding
that it's a good idea. In fact, it even feels good slightly liberating even to master themselves
and to do certain skills. So, how do you create that environment? Let's talk about that. We're talking
about self-government here. All of the skills and suggestions that I'm giving you relate back to the
principle of self-government or self-mastery. Meaning that a person can determine this is
how I would like to behave. This is the outcome I would like to have. This is how I want to feel in a
certain situation and so, I'm going to make a plan to do that. That's what it means to self-govern
yourself and when a child understands that they too can self-govern them. That it's not about you
taking and giving and making. Then, they start doing surprising things. So, one of those things that we
do when a person is learning self-government at the very beginning is we start at the vision stage.
What do they want for their life? What do they want for their future? Now many people ask, how do I help
my child take responsibility and that child is 17 years old. Well, this is a really good time to say,
"What do I want my future life to be like? What do I want adulthood to look like for me? What
do I want to know I've done for myself with myself?". So, those children need to be looking ahead start
with five years and say, who do I want to be five years from now? Now, if my child was younger then I
would suggest looking ahead even further. I might suggest looking ahead 20 years and saying, "What
type of skills do I want to have? What do I want my happiness to look like? What type of relationships
do I want to have with other people?", and those adult skills and those relationships feel big, they
feel empowering to a young child. So, start these relationships young. But if you haven't started
yet and your child is a lot older, that's okay too. Because I did start doing all of this that
I teach on this channel, when I was doing foster care. Treatment foster care for troubled youth
ages 12 to 18 and we helped them get a vision of their lives and it made a big difference. We're
going to get to some skills that you can use but before I do that. Go ahead and subscribe to this
channel. I put out videos like this every single day and you're not going to want to miss them. They
will help you help your children take more and more responsibility all the time. Click subscribe now.
Speaking of skills, one of the key skills that your child must know or they can't ever learn
self-government. In fact, it is the basic of all of the skills of self-government is how to follow an
instruction. If they can't follow an instruction or won't follow an instruction from you. Then they
won't follow an instruction from themselves later and ultimately self-government means,
that you are giving yourself your own instructions, your own "no" answers, your own consequences.
You're telling yourself what you've earned for a negative consequence. You're praising yourself.
You're parenting yourself and when things go wrong you're disagreeing appropriately with yourself too.
So I just listed all of the four basic skills. But the most basic of all of those basic skills
is following an instruction. Now, if you have children that are maybe under the age of 12.
This book is such a great book this, "Londyn Larae Says Okay", is actually a book written by me
and it teaches the skill for how to follow instructions to the children in a fun way.
The story rhymes and you see the consequences of not following instructions and the consequences of
following instructions. The children really enjoy it. So, what is that skill following instructions?
Because it's vital. If a person can learn to follow instructions from you then they'll learn to follow
instructions from themselves later as well. Which is what is required to take full responsibility
for yourself. So, the steps are you look at the person or maybe it's the situation at hand,
and you keep a calm, face, voice, and body. Then you say okay like, this is what I have to deal with,
or you disagree appropriately about it. Meaning you think about it a little bit more and decide
if this is really the important thing to do or if you need to talk to somebody about it. Then you
do the task immediately and then you check back. Which means you come back to the person who
gave you the instruction and you told them that you did it. Now if we're talking about ourselves here.
Then we would tell ourselves, "Hey, I did it", and maybe even take a minute in a journal or even
verbally to give ourselves a little bit of praise. That check back is important because it teaches us
that good equals good. It teaches us cause and effect and a person can't learn self-mastery.
Which is really what you're asking for if you want responsibility. Unless they learn cause and effect
too. The teaching needs to be done in a way where they are absolutely choosing it though. Which means
that you teach these skills I'm talking about and then you provide consistency. So what does
consistency look like for a person who is teaching another child. It looks like praising when things
go right and it looks like correcting when things go wrong. Now the corrections need to be positive.
They need to be optimistic but firm at the same time and there are certain steps to a correction
that I teach in my parenting course. The teaching self-government parenting course and you can find
more about that at teachingselfgovernment.com. But the key things I want to share with you here are
the consistency matters. That if you are going to teach your child to take responsibility and have
them decide on their own that that's a good idea which is a really maturing process. The
process of taking responsibility is a process of maturity. So you know when a person does take full
responsibility, they've got good maturity and they probably have some good character development as
well that has happened. So you need to be focusing on helping the child grow up which means, they need
more responsibilities through instructions and they also need to be held accountable for those
responsibilities with more corrections. Now I know that takes a little bit more work but
it's worth it and in the long run they need it in order to be fully successful and happy
in their adult lives. Hopefully, this has been helpful with how to help your children take
responsibility. If you've enjoyed this video, I know you'll probably enjoy the next one too
which is, how to know if you have a strong-willed child. Do you think you might have one of those?
Many people do nowadays. So click on the link below and find out if you have a strong-willed child too.