Everywhere you turn lately, people are saying the same thing: "There's
too much talk about being a victim, and not enough talk about being
responsible for your own actions. At what point do we stop making
excuses for people's behavior and start holding them accountable for
their actions?"

It's almost stereotypic to expect a small child to avoid taking
responsibility for his or her actions. But now we're seeing adults acting in
the same way. They spend their energy trying to get out of something,
blaming everyone and everything (husband, wife, parents, economics,
etc.) but themselves. The best way to stop this trend is to develop
responsible children who will develop into responsible adults.
Responsible - Able to Handle Consequences

Responsibility is defined as: "accountable, able to accept consequences
for one's behavior." If we're going to raise responsible kids, we have to
start with consequences - teaching children the three A's: be aware of
consequences, anticipate them and most importantly, accept them.
Consequences are the key to understanding behavior. They explain why a
behavior happens. Simply stated, if a child experiences a pleasant
consequence after doing something, he's more likely to do it again. If he
experiences an unpleasant consequence, he's less likely to do it again.
If we want to raise responsible kids, our task as parents is to teach
them that there is a connection between behaviors and consequences. We
can do this by establishing a household where there are consistent
pleasant consequences for positive behaviors and unpleasant
consequences for negative behaviors. With this, children learn early on to
think ahead before acting. The more a child is prepared for
consequences, the better he can handle them.

Be Consistent
To teach kids how to handle the consequences as a result of their
actions, parents need to be consistent in how they follow through with
promised rewards or negative consequences. For example, if you promise
to rent a video game after homework is completed, do it consistently.
Likewise, if homework is not completed, no rented game, consistently.
This is how kids learn to connect behaviors with consequences. Mom and
dad, as a team, should be consistent in presenting and discussing
expected behaviors and consequences. Otherwise, kids will play mom
against dad, always siding with the lenient parent. Consistency is very
important and often very difficult to pull off.
Say What You Mean; Mean What You Say

Parents need to say what they mean by spelling out their expectations
ahead of time. This will help when your child not only argues on
technicalities but when he tries to wheel and deal to lessen the negative
consequence. For example, a little boy was told that if he didn't shower
by 7:30 he couldn't watch TV. He did so but didn't use soap so his mom
said no TV. The boy replied, "Mom, you just said to take a shower. You
didn't say I had to use soap!" This is why it's important for us parents to
mean what we say, so that our kids spend less time trying to get us to
change our mind, and more time learning to accept the negative
consequence for their actions. And to an irresponsible child the word no
often means, "let's negotiate." To avoid these scenes, we need to say
what we mean, spelling out our expectations ahead of time.

Don't Rescue
As parents, it's natural to want to rescue our kids from danger. We
don't want them to suffer any pain, but sometimes pain is inevitable and
can often be a valuable teacher. If kids make mistakes, they can learn to
see these as stepping-stones for growth and genuine learning
experiences. But, if we develop a pattern of rescuing our kids, or
becoming blinded to the truth - unwilling to acknowledge that our kids
could actually perform negative behaviors, we run the risk that our kids
will find it increasingly difficult to face negative consequences, as they
become adults. As an example: Mom catches her toddler scribbling on
the living room wall with a crayon. As she is yelling at him grandma
comes and picks him up and says it was "just an accident." The toddler,
basking in the joy of being let off the hook, says to himself, "With
grandmas, you're innocent even when proven guilty!"

Don't Give In
In a cartoon, a psychologist is asking a small child if he goes along with
the current thinking that kids can do as they please, regardless of their
parents' wishes. The child replies, "No sir. I believe in the good old
traditional values: scream your head off until they give in!" If a child
learns that a screaming temper tantrum gets him out of having to eat
broccoli, pretty soon the temper tantrum is used to get out of other
things he doesn't want to do. As parents, once we have spelled out the
expected behaviors and consequences for behaviors, and once we have
set up the rules of the house, we have to make up our minds not to give
in. It's tough, but we have to realize that by giving in, we're perpetuating
the behavior. When we give in to a negative consequence for a negative
behavior, our child's negative behavior will continue in the hopes that we
will give in again.

Look for the Positives
If our goal is to get our kids to connect behaviors with consequences,
there's no better way to develop this connection than through positive
consequences for positive behaviors. Why? Because the earlier kids get
used to receiving and working towards positive consequences, the easier
it is for them to handle negative consequences. How, then, do we get
them to concentrate on positive attention? This can be done by keeping
in mind three simple guidelines about positives:
1) Keep a 4 to 1 ratio of positives to negatives.
2) Praise with lots of animation.
3) Praise specific actions.

The reason for the 4 to 1 ratio is obvious. The more positives a child
hears in contrast to the negatives, the more likely the child will remember
the positives. The reason for animated praise is simple, kids like action,
emotion and commotion. If you want their attention, be animated. If we
don't make a big deal out of the positives, kids get bored and look for
action through negative behaviors. A good rule of thumb: be excited
when you praise, and calm when you correct. The reason our praise
needs to be specific is that kids remember and pay attention to specific
compliments. We can always find some progress, whether a behavior is
happening more often, lasting longer, or is done with more energy. The
more we concentrate on positives, the more likely kids will continue the
pattern of positive behaviors for positive consequence.