Your Children Are Listening: Nine Messages They Need to Hear from You

good deeds and successes unless they’re willing to accept responsibility for their mistakes and failures. Plus, if they don’t accept responsibility for their lives, they are unable to do anything to change their lives, so they are true victims, at the mercy of parents, teachers, coaches, popular culture, and other random forces in their lives.
    You want to raise your children to take responsibility for themselves. Sure, they’ll experience the downsides of responsibility—disappointment, frustration, and sadness—that’s just a part of life. But they will also experience all of the upsides—excitement, pride, and joy—because their successes and failures are truly their own. Your challenge is to communicate messages about responsibility that show your children its fundamental value in their lives. Much of your parenting should be devoted to helping your children develop this sense of responsibility, to make the connection that they have control of their lives. This ownership means that you must reject our culture’s messages of entitlement and victimization and send your children messages to take responsibility for their lives.
EVERYONE HAS A JOB TO DO
     
    Popular culture communicates unhealthy messages about responsibility to your children. Through its focus on the pampered lifestyles of the rich and famous and advertising that suggests that life should always be a party, popular culture tells your children that if it’s not fun, easy, or interesting, or if it’s tiring, boring, or uncomfortable, they shouldn’t have to do it. The messages of rebellion in pop and hip-hop music, the sense of entitlement shown by professional athletes, and the disdain spoiled movie stars express toward what most people would see as normal responsibilities tell your children that being responsible is just not cool.
    Sooner or later, though, your children are going to learn that life for most people just doesn’t work that way. To prepare your children for the real world, perhaps the most basic message of responsibility you must convey to them is that everyone in your family has a job to do, and everyone must do their job; that’s what makes a family a family and what makes families work. Part of being a responsible person is accepting that there are a lot of things in life that we don’t care to do, but we do them anyway because we have to. How often do you do things for your children that you would really rather not do? I’ll bet there are plenty of days when you don’t feel like preparing dinner, doing the laundry, or putting your children to bed. But you do because that was in the job description that you accepted when you became a parent. Your children need to learn that they, too, have a job to do and that life, now and in adulthood, often involves doing things that they don’t want to do.
    The obvious benefits of having your children get your messages of responsibility are readily apparent in a family and home that functions well. Additionally, your children will receive several important meta-messages related to responsibility. First, they will get powerful messages about gaining specific competence in useful tasks that will serve them well later in life (e.g., cooking, cleaning,laundry) and a broader sense of competence in their general capabilities that will pay dividends into their self-esteem. Second, by having family responsibilities, your children will feel like needed and valued members of your family. Because they fulfill necessary family functions, they perceive themselves as being important to the operation of family life. This sense of being necessary to the family makes them feel like they are an integral and vital part of it.
FIRM, BUT FLEXIBLE
     
    As you send messages of responsibility to your children, you will walk a fine line between imposing those responsibilities on them when they often do not want to accept them and allowing them to take ownership of those responsibilities and to fulfill them for their own sake. This balancing act will require that you be firm but flexible as you increase the responsibilities you place on your children as they mature.
    You must be firm and consistent in ensuring that your children carry out their responsibilities. They must understand that they have no choice but to do their “jobs.” When you take this stand, you must be prepared for battles of will. For any number of reasons, being too tired, wishing to assert their independence, not feeling like it,