Right Way to Teach Your Child the Accountability

There are two things that parents can do. They can either hold their children accountable for their actions or they can teach them to take responsibilities of those actions. There is a lot of difference between both of these scenarios. In the first scenario, you are actually bringing your child into a defensive mode in which he would deny any kind of responsibility for the wrongdoing he would commit. It can be dangerous in the long term because it will teach your child to justify everything that would go wrong because of him/her.

What we are talking about is raising a kid who would actually want to hate the bad things and want to the right things. Most of the people think that only punishment can teach them the way to pick what’s right. That’s actually wrong. Although, you should get punitive in some situations, doing this every time will actually make your kid go for the bad things, and it will also get the fear of high authority out of his mind and heart. So, you need to keep following points in your mind if you want to teach your child the accountability.

• If you are only focusing on punishment, your child would focus on how to avoid punishment rather than focusing on the consequences which others can suffer due to his/her actions. You would want to raise such self-centered children because this is the typical mindset that of the criminals.
• Negative impact of excessive punishment is that your child will start believing he is a bad person. This self-prophecy usually gets fulfilled.
• Another thing that can come as a result of punishment is that child learns to lie in order to evade punishment. In other words, punishing your child too often can foster dishonestly in the child.
• Another lesson that punishment can teach to the kid is that the kid considers it okay to abuse the power and authority while being less flexible. In other words, it would not be the moral choices that your child would make in the future.
• The immediate effect of punishment is that your child will feel safe when you are not around. That will make the relationship between you two ineffective. Hence, it is never good for child to develop good behavior if he/she is disconnected from the parents.
• Another major drawback of punishment is that it makes them look for themselves only. We can make environment around us better only if we take care of other along with ourselves. If this mindset is not being created in the children, they can prove to be misfit in the community they live in.
• Finally, punishment only emphasizes that parents are the only in-charge in the children’s lives. They would soon start blaming parents for their wrongdoings.

With all that said, it is essential for the parents to not get punitive unless it is highly necessary. They should be kind and caring for the children. Furthermore, the parents should look to create opportunities for the children to make their own choices in different matters. That would help them distinguish the wrong and right choices.