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

responsibilities is to be kind, so she has to remember when and to whom she had been kind that day. We don’t expect her to satisfy every responsibility every day (though she takes great pride in “running the table,” a billiards phrase I taught her), but we do impose a consequence, loss of part of her allowance, if she really gets off her game. We also believe that the process of completing her job chart sends Catie messages of responsibility through several conduits: seeing the job chart, thinking about and describing how she fulfilled her responsibilities,placing the magnet on the completed job, and receiving her allowance for doing her jobs well.
    Admittedly, completing the job chart every evening can be pretty tiresome, so we have given Catie the opportunity to earn temporary respites. As a reward for her great efforts at adhering to the job chart, we gave her weekends off. Then, when she ran the table two weeks in a row, we allowed her to take an undefined break from her job chart with the understanding that if she fell off the responsibility wagon, her job chart would be reinstated.
    With four children, Patrick and Denise have to run a tight ship each night and morning to have any chance of getting the kids to bed in the evening and then getting them off to school and getting themselves off to work on time in the morning. They have clearly defined routines for bedtime and wake-up time. Given that they are outnumbered two to one, the only chance they have is to get their kids to take responsibility for their nighttime and morning activities as soon as possible. After age two, all of their children were required as part of their bedtime routine to brush and floss their teeth (with their parents’ help), brush their hair, put away their toys, books, and clothes, and lay out their school clothes for the following day. Patrick and Denise found out the hard way that trying to rush or force their kids usually backfired, so they allow their four children to decide in what order to fulfill their responsibilities. Their morning routine includes getting dressed, making their beds before they head down to breakfast, brushing their teeth after they eat, and having their shoes on by 7:30, when they head out the door. Though there were initial battles with all four of the children, by the time they were all six or older, the family routines ran like well-oiled machines.
    Every morning before leaving for school, Barb’s eight-year-old son Richie is responsible for packing his lunch (which his mom has prepared) in his lunchbox. As they do their best to be environmentally conscious, he is also expected to keep and bring home, rather than throw away, everything he doesn’t eat at lunch. When Richie returns home from school, he is required to wash and dry his lunchcontainers and utensils and place them on the counter for use the next school day.
    Myra and Gene are big believers in “family rhythm,” which they define as the natural flow that a family assumes in its daily life. They use responsibility routines to help shape and maintain the rhythm of their family in the face of an otherwise inconsistent and unpredictable life. They find these routines to be particularly beneficial in helping their family regain a calming rhythm after a hectic day of school, work, and afterschool activities.
    Once everyone has arrived home in the late afternoon, each member of their family knows the jobs they have to do. Myra begins dinner with help from their five-year-old daughter Melanie. Gene and Erik, their seven-year-old, are responsible for getting the house in order and doing daily household chores such as taking out the trash. As dinner approaches, Erik and Melanie set the table, with Erik in charge of dishes and glasses and Melanie responsible for place mats, napkins, and silverware. After dinner, Erik and Melanie clear the table, then put away their toys, Gene washes the dishes and cleans up the kitchen, and Myra prepares the kids’ rooms for bedtime. Their evening concludes with the children’s bedtime routines and reading books.
ACTIVITIES FOR RESPONSIBILITY
     
    Given how the recent economic crisis is still affecting so many people, the powerful messages sent by our culture of “consumption beyond one’s means,” and the profligate spending and debt that is rampant in America, Sarah and I are determined to teach our Catie and Gracie to be fiscally responsible. We agree with Charles Dickens’s well-known adage, “Annual