Every parent dreams of having kids that are trustworthy, conscientious, and willing to take accountability for their actions.

Unfortunately, kids aren’t born knowing how to be responsible – they must be taught. Children who don’t learn to be accountable for their actions grow up to become irresponsible adults and blame others for their shortcomings. Listed below are some things mums and dads can do to raise responsible kids.

1. Give Children Chores to Accomplish

For a child to learn responsibility, he has to be given responsibilities. From an early age, you can give your child age-appropriate chores to accomplish. For example, children at 3 and 4 can be taught to make their beds in the morning. Chores teach children to plan and follow through and provide them with a sense of achievement. Make sure you praise responsible behavior. Positive reinforcement is a powerful motivator, particularly for children in grade school.

When assigning chores, let your child have a say in what task he performs and to make sure he agrees to any consequences that will be imposed for shirking. This also teaches responsibility, because it makes your child feel like he is part of the decision-making process, and it reinforces that he must live up to what he agreed to do. Consequences should be designed to fit the offense. For example, if your child doesn’t do his chores by the deadline, he will not be able to play until it is done. This teaches another lesson about responsibility–that work comes before play.

2. Don’t use rewards with your kids

If you want your kids to develop an intrinsic sense of responsibility, they need to learn the “big picture” value of the things they do. They won’t learn that if they’re focused on what they’re going to “get.”

3. Caring

A nice way to teach kids responsibility is through caring for a pet or plant. By getting them the pet, you teach them that this living creature depends on them to stay alive. You will get the food, supplies and other necessities. The children will be the ones to use these supplies to maintain and to take care of the pet. By successfully administering to their pets’ needs, they will learn to become responsible, which in turn, will enable them to tackle more difficult forms of responsibility in the future. Depending on the age of the child, one may want to start out with smaller pets, such as goldfish. If the children show responsibility with the smaller pets, then larger ones can be purchased as they mature. If pets are out of the question, then caring for a houseplant may be another solution.

4. Set a Responsible Example

As with most things in life, children learn responsibility partially from the example of their parents. If you want your child to act responsibly, you have to demonstrate that behavior in your own life. That means that you have to do your own chores when you are supposed to, put things back when you use them and live up to your word. You can’t expect your child to do these things if you don’t do them yourself.

As a parent, you also can model responsibility to your community by volunteering. For example, sign up to help build a home for a needy family or deliver meals to the sick. Take your child along to age-appropriate activities to teach her to think of people other than herself.

5. Leave the Nagging

Before a child can become responsible, he has to be allowed to take responsibility and accept the consequences. Nagging reminders to get chores finished or to do a homework project are counterproductive to raising a responsible and independent child. Your child should learn how to manage time and to follow through without constant prodding. A few gentle reminders are fine, but you shouldn’t badger your child to live up to his responsibilities. While it may be hard for you to do, let your child face the consequences if he fails to act responsibly.

6. Talk often about responsibility with your kids

Make responsibility a family value, let them know it’s important.

7. Using Literature and Stories

Children learn about responsibility through many activities, including reading stories. They learn by identifying with individual characters or because the message from a favorite story strikes a particular chord. Children can be touched deeply by good literature, and they may ask to have things read to them again and again.

Children can learn all sorts of lessons from stories. They might learn about courage by reading about David standing up to Goliath. When our children grow up they often remember stories that were told to them by family members when they were young.

8. Have a strong, unfailing belief that your kids are responsible

They’ll pick up on this belief and they’ll tend to rise to the level of expectation. And keep believing this even when they mess up!

9. Allowance

Give them an allowance at an early age and let them make decisions on how they spend it. Do not give them extra money if they run out.

10. Teach them how to save

When receiving monetary gifts, teach them to save half of it. Allow them to spend the other half any way they’d like.

11. Don’t Let Kids Back Out on Their Commitments

If your child agreed to spend her Saturday raking leaves for Mrs. Winters, she should not be allowed to change her mind just because her “best friend forever” invited her to the mall. Backing out of commitments may seem harmless at first, but as a child matures, this behavior can easily evolve and interfere with her ability to hold down a job or maintain valuable friendships.

Source: Edutask.com