Tag responsibility
One of Our Biggest Parenting Mistakes…
One of our biggest parenting mistakes is to try to get kids to behave right for the wrong reasons. It’s a good thing to want our kids to behave responsibly and to internalize the value of responsibility, but parents tend…
Do Warnings Teach Kids to Be Less Responsible?
When dealing with a misbehaving child, many parents follow this pattern: instruction, warning, warning, last warning, really strong last warning, angry explosion!! When we stretch out our instructions into multiple warnings and don’t follow through, it teaches our children to…
Building the Family Team: A Solution to Chore Wars
7-year-old Bryce was a master “chore evader.” When asked to help with chores, this distractable drama king would slump over and whine, “But I wanted to play!” His parents, Sandy and Jeff, had run out of ideas and came to…
Your Child Is Not Your Report Card
As the school year begins, here are a few brief reminders about responsibility and report cards.
When Kids Bug Us for Money
Early Job Training Produces More Than Money. Former CF staff member Brian Houts shared this story with us of teaching responsibility through mowing lawns. It’s ugly. It’s a gray lawnmower with a 5 horsepower Tecumseh engine and a 20 inch…
Helping Kids Learn Independence from Tots to Teens
Our teen-aged son had been working on a variety of “extra-credit” home projects for us as a way to earn money. (For younger parents, don’t miss Tips for Tots application below.) I definitely noticed some strengths and weaknesses in…