Listen and learn as Greg talks about a man who successfully taught his son to be responsible.
Timestamps:
00:00 Father talks about teaching his son responsibility.
01:01 What a parent can do to improve everything: Loveandteach without fear and consistently. 02:02 Responsibility = the ability to respond
03:00 How a dad uses this with his son.
Transcript:
Teaching Responsibility
A father wrote me and said,
I’ve been working with my son—14-year-old—for a few years now around being more responsible, doing jobs around the house, cleaning up after himself if he makes a mess. By using what I learned in the Parenting Training—loving him, teaching him, and consequences he has become highly motivated to do these things.
Greg: (I know this man well) You are a model in doing this. You found it difficult at first, but you persisted in LOVING him first, then teaching with words, then consequences if words didn’t work. Very important to get this order right, and you DID. And you did it for HIS benefit, not for yours, AND you were not AFRAID of his disapproval as you loved and taught him.
To all: I just summarized briefly what a parent can do to improve everything: Loveandteach without fear, and consistently. Not complicated, but if you attempt to skip any of those few important ingredients, you’re doomed. You’ll fail. And if you fail, get off the floor and try again.
Dad: This week I wanted to reinforce the reason why responsibility is so important and asked him to do some work on it. To look at WHY it's important. I did some research on my own, and I discovered that if you break the word “responsibility” down, it has two parts: response and ability. So responsibility is the ability to RESPOND to things, presumably in the right way. Helps me understand why responsibility is important.
Greg: What a beautiful realization. Not often that a word itself tells you that much about it’s meaning. As you communicate that to your son, it EMPOWERS him. He realizes that “doing things” promptly and well increases his ability to choose to RESPOND well. He’s not helpless anymore, a feeling that most people deal with all the time. They’re helpless mostly because they’ve been irresponsible. They did NOT practice responding to life, so their ability to do that is weak.
Dad: So now when he comes to me with a problem, or something he's not sure about, I say, "How can you use your ABILITY to RESPOND?"
Greg: PERFECT.
Dad: So I remind him of what responsibility is, and then his ability to respond grows—which is real responsibility.
Greg: You should write a book.
Responding with Responsibility
Dad: For example, we had a holiday, so the garbage men didn’t empty the big containers at the street. So the garbage and the recycling have built up. When my son asked me what he should do, I asked him to use his ability to respond to that situation. He came up with his own solution, and it worked beautifully.
Greg: Perfect loving and teaching.
Dad: I’ve used this approach a few times now, and it reminds me not to dive in with my ideas and save him but instead to let him first try to come up with his answers.
Greg: You're a genius. This was great teaching.
Our children don’t need to be saved. That approach cripples them. They’ll demand to be saved all their lives. No exaggeration.
They don’t need us to solve their problems.
They need us to love them, teach them principles, and have faith that they can solve their own problems and grow in their ability to respond—real responsibility, as this father pointed out.
So fun to see a parent just DO what he learns in the training. If we do that, consistently and without fear, our children WILL learn.
