Making her accountable

Carol’s 4-year-old daughter, Daisy, loved to play, typical of most girls her age. However, Carol just couldn’t get Daisy to clean up after her play. Whenever she asked her to put away her toys, Daisy would throw a tantrum and stubbornly refuse to cooperate.

Such situations are not uncommon in our homes, and teaching our children the valuable lesson of accountability can be quite a hurdle to jump over. Let’s explore a few ideas of ensuring our kids grow into adults who can be responsible for their decisions and actions.

Be consistent
Assign various chores to each of your children according to their ages. Ensure they understand the activities they are to perform and the repercussions of non-performance. Stand your ground and punish in case of the latter and praise once your child successfully completes her task. In so doing, you are teaching her that she is accountable for doing her chores, and you are accountable for providing the appropriate feedback.

Engage
Involve your kids in extracurricular activities that they enjoy doing. Ensure they understand that agreeing to undertake a particular activity means that they have to complete it. They can’t stop in the middle just because they don’t feel like it.

Train
Coach your children how to control their feelings all through their lives. Teach them simple anger management lessons like taking in deep breaths or counting to ten over and over. Talk things over with them before they make a rush decision they might regret and ensure they know that it is not okay to act up just because they did not get their way. They must learn to think before they act and more so, they must accept the consequences of their actions.

Be an example
Children learn by observing your behavior. Therefore, ensure that you practice accountability by completing tasks, keeping your emotions in check and accepting the consequences of your decisions and actions.

Take heart
It may get tedious to keep telling your child things that you expect them to do over and over again. Like Carol, you may feel frustrated and wonder whether she will ever learn. Do not despair, but keep on teaching and training. Remember that your child will never learn unless they have a coach and that is your full time job!

END: BL 34 / 5