Learn how to make a fun, trendy pup pop-up card with materials from your Trendy Pro Kids Fitness Tracker box! This step-by-step guide walks you through assembling the puppy, gluing it to the card, and decorating with glow-in-the-dark stickers. Perfect for a creative gift or thank-you card. Challenge yourself by making the pup on the box come to life and enter a giveaway! Stay tuned for more creative craft tutorials.
When asked what traits parents would like their children to have now and as adults, one of the most common responses is “to be responsible.” This is a broad term which means many different things, including:
Being responsible is a key to children’s success both in school and in the larger world when they grow up.
Parents often confuse obedience with responsibility.
Most parents would love their children to do what the parent asks, to follow directions and to not question their authority – understandable and important goals when raising children. However, this is not responsibility!! These behaviors would be classified as obedience.
Over time, most parents want children to accept ownership for a task or chore – the children do it because it needs to be done and accept that it is their obligation to do it. Over time, they may even initiate doing a task “because it needs to be done” – not because they are being told to do it. This attitude would be called responsibility.
Considering the shift from obedience to responsibility raises the issue of how involved you should be in helping your children to meet their commitments and complete tasks.
Finding the balance between over-managing and under-parenting is an art.
Deciding when it is appropriate to step in and when it is more effective to let go and give the child space to do it his way will depend on the child’s maturity, past behavior with responsibility in general and with this task in particular, the developmental task the child is working on, the child’s temperament, and many other considerations.
Instilling the attitudes and traits that make children responsible occurs over years and involves many different pieces that make up the parenting puzzle.
If you have ever wondered if you are being either too strict or too lenient, or if you are giving your children enough love, then you have stumbled upon considerations about the two important roles that parents have. Each has a part in helping your children become responsible.
When you are carrying out the Nurturing/Caring Role, you are being kind and loving to your children. It is in this role that you listen to your children, support them, spend time with them, and are affectionate with them.
As the Nurturing Parent, you communicate unconditional love – no matter what happens, you love your children just because they exist and are yours. This allows your children to take risks, to make mistakes, knowing that they have their parents’ unconditional support and love.
When you are fulfilling the responsibilities of the Structure/Executive Role, you are setting limits and boundaries, imposing discipline, teaching your children how they should behave, passing on your values, and giving guidance.
By not meeting their needs immediately and not giving them everything they want, you provide an opportunity for your children to tolerate some frustration, delay gratification, become less impulsive and less self-centered.
You set standards of behavior that you expect your children to meet. You establish consequences for breaking rules and you follow through on those consequences. You teach your children to be appreciative for what they have.
It is through the Executive Role that you hold your children accountable for their behavior, and that in turn, fosters the development of a sense of responsibility.
Children need their parents to carry out both roles. Children are more likely to accept the limits you set and are more likely to want to meet your expectations (i.e. be responsible) when you provide a warm, caring and supportive relationship that underlies the discipline you impose.
It has been shown that children with high self-esteem tend to be more responsible. They are better at:
How can parents instill a high sense of self-esteem in their children? One way is by providing messages that build each of the two essential components of self-esteem, feeling lovable and feeling capable.
To tell your children that you love them unconditionally, you can send “Being” Messages.
For example:
“I will always love you.”
“I am so glad you are my son/daughter.”
“I love spending time with you.”
“Welcome Home!”
It is the capable part of Self-esteem that most ties into the Executive Role of parents and that fosters responsibility.
When children feel capable, they are more likely to meet their obligations, sign on for new tasks, try their hardest and feel good about what they do. All of these things will increase a child’s responsibility.
You can increase your child’s sense of responsibility by helping them to feel that they are capable by sending “Doing” Messages. These messages refer to all the things your children can do, their special areas of talent, and also to their potential and their growth.
For example, you can tell your child:
“You were so thorough in doing your research paper – you did a great job of planning in advance how you were going to tackle the project.”
“Thank you so much for setting the table – it helped me a lot, and I see you put everything exactly in the right spot.”
“I know you can do this.”
“You are practicing your backhand so persistently. I bet you will really improve by the class next week.”
“I really appreciate that you took out the trash without my having to ask you. That’s what I call being responsible.”
“I can see that you really are concerned about Grandma – you sent her the get-well card and even called her yesterday. I’m sure that made her feel better.”
Raising a happy, healthy child is one of the most challenging jobs a parent can have -- and also one of the most rewarding. Yet many of us don't approach parenting with the same focus we would use for a job. We may act on our gut reactions or just use the same parenting techniques our own parents used, whether or not these were effective parenting skills.
Parenting is one of the most researched areas in the field of social science. No matter what your parenting style or what your parenting questions or concerns may be, from helping your child avoid becoming part of America's child obesity epidemic to dealing with behavior problems, experts can help.
In his book, The Ten Basic Principles of Good Parenting, Laurence Steinberg, PhD, provides tips and guidelines based on some 75 years of social science research. Follow them and you can avert all sorts of child behaviour problems, he says.
Good parenting helps foster empathy, honesty, self-reliance, self-control, kindness, cooperation, and cheerfulness, says Steinberg, a distinguished professor of psychology at Temple University in Philadelphia. It also promotes intellectual curiosity, motivation, and encourages a desire to achieve. Good parenting also helps protect children from developing anxiety, depression, eating disorder, antisocial behaviour, and alcohol and drug abuse.
Whether it's your own health behaviours or the way you treat other people, your children are learning from what you do. "This is one of the most important principles," Steinberg explains. "What you do makes a difference...Don't just react on the spur of the moment. Ask yourself, What do I want to accomplish, and is this likely to produce that result?"
"It is simply not possible to spoil a child with love," Steinberg writes. "What we often think of as the product of spoiling a child is never the result of showing a child too much love. It is usually the consequence of giving a child things in place of love -- things like leniency, lowered expectations, or material possessions."
"Being an involved parent takes time and is hard work, and it often means rethinking and rearranging your priorities. It frequently means sacrificing what you want to do for what your child needs to do. Be there mentally as well as physically."
Being involved does not mean doing a child's homework -- or correcting it. "Homework is a tool for teachers to know whether the child is learning or not," Steinberg says. "If you do the homework, you're not letting the teacher know what the child is learning."
Keep pace with your child's development. Your child is growing up. Consider how age is affecting the child's behaviour.
"The same drive for independence that is making your 3-year-old say 'no' all the time is what's motivating him to be toilet trained," writes Steinberg. "The same intellectual growth spurt that is making your 13-year-old curious and inquisitive in the classroom also is making her argumentative at the dinner table."
"If you don't manage your child's behaviour when he is young, he will have a hard time learning how to manage himself when he is older and you aren't around. Any time of the day or night, you should always be able to answer these three questions: Where is my child? Who is with my child? What is my child doing? The rules your child has learned from you are going to shape the rules he applies to himself.
"But you can't micromanage your child," Steinberg notes. "Once they're in middle school, you need to let the child do their own homework, make their own choices and not intervene."
"Setting limits helps your child develop a sense of self-control. Encouraging independence helps her develop a sense of self-direction. To be successful in life, she's going to need both."
It's normal for children to push for autonomy, says Steinberg. "Many parents mistakenly equate their child's independence with rebelliousness or disobedience. Children push for independence because it is part of human nature to want to feel in control rather than to feel controlled by someone else."
"If your rules vary from day to day in an unpredictable fashion or if you enforce them only intermittently, your child's misbehaviour is your fault, not his. Your most important disciplinary tool is consistency. Identify your non-negotiables. The more your authority is based on wisdom and not on power, the less your child will challenge it."
Parents should never hit a child, under any circumstances, Steinberg says. "Children who are spanked, hit, or slapped are more prone to fighting with other children," he writes. "They are more likely to be bullies and more likely to use aggression to solve disputes with others."
"There are many other ways to discipline a child -- including 'time out' -- which work better and do not involve aggression."
"Good parents have expectations they want their child to live up to," he writes. "Generally, parents overexplain to young children and underexplain to adolescents. What is obvious to you may not be evident to a 12-year-old. He doesn't have the priorities, judgment, or experience that you have."
"The best way to get respectful treatment from your child is to treat him respectfully," Steinberg writes. "You should give your child the same courtesies you would give to anyone else. Speak to him politely. Respect his opinion. Pay attention when he is speaking to you. Treat him kindly. Try to please him when you can. Children treat others the way their parents treat them. Your relationship with your child is the foundation for her relationships with others."
For example, if your child is a picky eater: "I personally don't think parents should make a big deal about eating," Steinberg says. "Children develop food preferences. They often go through them in stages. You don't want to turn mealtimes into unpleasant occasions. Just don't make the mistake of substituting unhealthy foods. If you don't keep junk food in the house, they won't eat it."
Still, there are some gentle ways parents can nudge their kids toward more healthful eating habits. Here are a few thoughts from nationally known nutrition experts on how to get kids to go from being picky eaters to people with sound, varied diets:
So, your first step toward encouraging a healthy level of physical exercise should be to limit your children's TV and screen time. Beyond that, here are some tips from the experts on how to help your children (and yourself) stay active:
