Teaching Responsibility

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Laura from youngwritersworkshops.com and I'm going to talk about teaching responsibility. One of the most important things that a child needs to have before learning responsibility is some respect. They need to be treated respectfully, and teachers and adults in their lives need to model that respectful approach. They also need a chance to see responsible behavior modeled, so in all...in any opportunity, take responsibility for your own actions. Model doing the right thing, and acting in an adult manner, not shifting blame or acting in a way that doesn't....that is unethical. Now, you can begin to talk about consequences of...what some of the consequences are for not behaving responsibly. How things...all things are influenced. And that helps for kids to get the idea of why it's important to be responsible, because if you're not, then certain things will happen. There'll be consequences. That nothing happens without another person being affected by it. The next step can be to give the child responsibility for something, like a plant. Watering a plant, or taking care of fish or something where they can begin to try having the responsibility and seeing what happens, or, you know, having a real feeling of having an effect on something. In a situation where there needs to be some sort of a consequence for misbehavior or not doing something, be sure that it's logical, because the more you can create that....a setting of logical, you know, circumstances that will happen because of another happening or a failure to take responsibility, that really reinforces that we are responsible for certain things, and we need to accept that responsibility. So those are some ideas about teaching responsibility."