Kathy Slattengren

Whose Responsibility Is It?



Posted: Friday, October 03, 2008

by Kathy Slattengren
Priceless Parenting

Children are often capable of more responsibility than we give them.  When parents take on responsibilities which their children really should be handling, they are likely to feel overwhelmed and underappreciated.  One mom complained about all the extra work she was doing now that her 3rd and 6th graders were back in school.  In just one day, she did all these extra tasks:



  • Tried to pick daughter up early from school to take her to her piano lesson but daughter forgot and took the bus home.  Lectured daughter on the importance of remembering her piano lessons.
  • Dumped out kid's backpacks and sorted through school papers.
  • Worked on making dinner while be interrupted numerous times to help with homework.
  • Reviewed graded schoolwork with children.
  • Ran to the store to buy purple shirts after children announced that they need to wear purple tomorrow for Spirit Day.
  • Read note from teacher that some school supplies are missing and due tomorrow.  Ran out and bought the missing supplies.   She also had the cashier give her lots of change so her daughter could use it for her math homework.
  • Attended the school open house.  Guiltily signed up to help with various activities. 
  • Packed forms, supplies and planners into each child's backpack.
  • Asked kids if they needed to return books to the school library and then spent 10 minutes looking for the books.
  • Packed lunches for the next day.
  • Did a load of laundry after one child reported having no clean socks.
  • Told kids to GO TO BED NOW!  
  • Got youngest a drink of water.
Mom then collapsed into bed.  Anyone would be exhausted after a day like that!

It is very easy for parents to take on responsibilities that their children could be handling.  What tasks do you think this mom could let her children handle?  Are there tasks you're doing for your children that they could be doing?  When we stop doing something for our children, they learn to do it for themselves.  They will probably not show great appreciation for their new responsibilities; however, it's essential to their growth and our sanity! 

Kathy Slattengren is an internationally recognized parenting educator and founder of Priceless Parenting, http://www.PricelessParenting.com. Priceless Parenting provides an online parenting class, parenting presentations and parent coaching.

While raising her own two children, she learned many wonderful parenting techniques from classes, seminars and books. Through studying research, she discovered a universal body of knowledge about how effective parents do their job. Her Masters of Education degree from the University of Washington combined with her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Computer Science from the University of Minnesota has enabled her to pull together parenting research into a course that is easy to understand and apply.

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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)
» left by sue thom
from nj 3 years 220 days ago.
hi kathy,
 
this was a well written, interesting and relatable article. i was the mom who made the kids do everything they could, and now that 2 of my kids are on their own, i'm glad i did. it is hard out there in the world, and I don't believe we are doing our kids any good by not instilling the responsibility in them that it will take to make it.
 
thanks for sharing, and i hope you keep writing,
 
best regards,
 
sue thom
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