Parents need to teach that responsibility isn’t about getting things done. It’s about developing our gifts, our desires to do good, and to do things well. So, what do you do when a child refuses to do an assignment?
Timestamps:
00:00 Son refuses to do his assigned chore of washing the dishes.
01:34 Mother turns off his video game to get his attention for a conversation about responsibility.
06:30 He gets a day to think of another plan.
08:30 Teaching responsibility is essential.
10:45 Son's response to mother's gratitude.
11:48 Children enjoy being useful.
Transcript:
Miriam had read Real Love in Parenting and watched The Ridiculously Effective Parenting Training, so she realized that being responsible was essential to her children’s happiness. One way she taught them this quality was to assign each of them tasks to do around the house—dishes, vacuuming, cleaning rooms, and so on—each according to their age and ability.
Son Refuses the Responsibility of Washing the Dishes
Her son Trey, age eleven, was assigned to wash the dishes after dinner. One evening, about twenty minutes after the conclusion of the meal, Miriam noticed that all the dishes were piled in the sink, but none of them had been washed. She found Trey playing a video game, and although he did see her enter the room, he acted as though she were invisible.
Mom smiled, knowing this particular trick well, and said, “What are you doing?”
Trey, with a defiant look of disgust—and without looking away from the screen—said, “I don’t like doing the dishes.”
All parents have heard variations of this response from a child who doesn’t want to complete an assignment:
“I don’t like it.”
“I don’t want to do it.”
“Why do I have to do it?”
Or perhaps just a huge sigh and stomping of their feet on the way to do the task.
Calm Talk About Responsibility
As calmly as she would scratch a mosquito bite, Miriam turned off the video game and waited for Trey to look her directly in the eye, which didn’t take long.
“Why did you do that?” Trey demanded. (Self-righteousness can be quite satisfying for a moment.)
“That would be changing the subject,” Miriam said cleverly, knowing that Trey was simply trying to avoid the real subject: the dishes. “When I came in the room,” she said, “what did I say first? I’ll give you a clue. I asked you a question.”
Predictably, Trey said, “I don’t know.” (It’s kind of a tradition that when an unhappy child wants something, they become brilliant and articulate; when you want something, they act as though they’ve had a stroke.)
Miriam smiled and said, “You know what I said. I will sit here and wait for as long as it takes for you to remember.”
Trey knew from experience that Mom would sit there until he fully participated in the conversation, so almost immediately he hung his head and said, “You asked me what I was doing.”
“Yes,” Mom said, “and you told me you didn’t LIKE doing the dishes. What were you doing instead?”
“Playing a video game.”
“I completely understand why you would prefer a video game over washing dishes. Sometimes I would rather play video games—or read a book, or whatever—than get up early to get everybody’s day going, or run all over town to get you to the places you need to go, and on and on. But I don’t play the video game, do I? I do what I agreed to do. I do what needs to be done.
"Sometimes Dad would rather stay home and play than go to work every day, but what does he do? He goes to work, because it’s just necessary. It takes a lot to make this entire household run well: earning money, driving the car all over, preparing meals, washing clothes, and—one of the things you do—wash dishes. Everybody has a part to play. Do you agree that the dishes need to be washed?”
Trey was visibly squirming and said, “Yeah, but I hate doing it.”\
“We established that. But they still have to be washed, and as one of your contributions to this household, you agreed to wash them. Now, if you can come up with another way for the dishes to be washed––which simply has to be done—without YOU having to do them, I’d be happy to listen.”
“Somebody else could do them.”
“Who?”
Trey named his older sister, and Miriam said, “She washes the clothes for the entire family, which is a considerably bigger job than washing dishes—as you know. So are you willing to trade jobs with her? Or are you proposing that she do both dishes and clothes while you play video games?”
A Plan for Responsibility
Trey could see where this was going, and he was feeling a little trapped. Mom suggested that he think about a SOLUTION, a plan to successfully accomplish everything, that he might like better than the present one. She gave him a day to work on it.
Mom had participated from the beginning in helping everybody to share in a carefully calculated and balanced set of responsibilities, and she was helping Trey to realize that he couldn’t just fail to execute his part of the system. Before she left she added, “If you have a plan, let’s talk, but ‘I don’t like it’ is not a plan.”
Trey came up with plan where he would trade the dishes job for two jobs done by another child every other week. The other child didn’t mind, the dishes got washed, and everything worked out.
Trey came up with a plan, rather than simply not liking the way things were.
Teaching Children Responsibility
There is an important lesson here for us as parents. NEVER listen to whining and complaining. Instead ask for a plan that will work and not create unfair responsibilities for everybody but the person complaining. Make it work.
Teaching children responsibility is an essential part of our job to offer them the three elements required for any child to be happy: to feel loved, to be loving, and to be responsible. Teaching responsibility has at least three components:
- Teach them the need TO be responsible.
- Teach them HOW to be responsible.
- Teach them the BENEFITS of being responsible.
Let’s look at that last one. Sometimes we’re quick to point out when other people make mistakes, and to illustrate the consequences of them, but we’re not as quick to point out when they do well, and to help them see the consequences of those choices.
Teaching the Benefits of Responsibility
One day Miriam—the mother we’ve been talking about—was standing at the glass door to the backyard, enjoying the sunshine and the beauty of all the flowers, bushes, and trees that contributed to the view. Trey was passing through the room, and she called him over to her. She put her arm around him and said, “Look at that.”
Trey was responsible for much of the work in the yard, and immediately he asked what was wrong—a testament to Miriam’s tendency to highlight mistakes more than successes. But not this time. She said, “Look at how beautiful it all is. The trees are trimmed, with no dead branches hanging off. The bushes are full and lovely. The flower beds are tended and weeded. It all combines to create a scene that just brings peace to my soul. I love looking out this door. Trey, you did that. Sometimes several times a day I get to rest and enjoy a beautiful moment because of what you did. Thank you.”
Miriam was not complimenting Trey. She was demonstrating how his being responsible contributed to the benefits of living in their family. He felt different about his work in the yard after that. On other occasions she would remark on something he had done well and ask him how it felt for him. He would respond with answers like this:
“I like feeling responsible.”
“I like the feeling of doing something well.”
“I like using my gifts to figure things out. I feel stronger and more complete.”
As we teach our children to be responsible, eventually they learn to LIKE doing what they’re assigned to do. They learn to enjoy being useful. They learn that being responsible does NOT make them more lovable, just more useful, more fulfilled, and more connected to everybody who is working together to make our home—even the world—an inviting and happy place.
They feel increasingly confident. And that’s the point. Responsibility isn’t about getting THINGS DONE. It’s about developing our gifts, our desires to do good, our desire to do things well, our confidence—and all that contributes to our happiness.
We can teach our children far more than not to complain—”I don’t like it” being an example. We can teach them to figure things out, to discover and exercise their gifts, and to more fully enjoy being who they are as they are responsible and loving.
