Stop the Blame Game: How to Teach Your Child to Stop Making Excuses and Start Taking Responsibility – 1
Stop the Blame Game: How to Teach Your Child to Stop Making Excuses and Start Taking Responsibility
When parents realize that their child might have either a behavioural or learning problem, the first thing many do is blame themselves. Parents are usually very frightened and worried about their children’s behaviour. This fear often manifests itself in negative ways. One of those ways is blame.
As problems continue, they start to externalise the blame to other people or institutions. They blame therapists and teachers who are ineffective in managing their child. As the child gets older, parents blame his friends or the neighbourhood or the music he listens to.
As the child grows into a young adult, they blame drugs and alcohol, or our culture. One of the real tragedies of dealing with behaviourally disordered children is when you see everybody blaming each other. The parent blames the teacher, the teacher blames the parent, the child blames both the teacher and the parents, and it goes on and on. I’ve seen many parents get stuck in battles that don’t help their children. Don’t get me wrong, parents often have to battle to get their kids the services they need in the school’s economic environment.
But all too often, parents use those issues and others as excuses to justify their child’s lack of behavioural or academic development, and that becomes a habit that’s hard to break. Parents can literally become dependent on blame. After all, it’s easier to fight with the school than it is to fight with behaviourally disordered kids. Again, I’m not minimizing the resistance from schools that parents sometimes experience. But they have to remember to also keep the focus on the child.
The major problem with making excuses and giving explanations is that it doesn’t help the child learn to manage him or herself or to perform. Blame prevents you from seeing your child in an objective light. Let’s face it, parents have every reason to be afraid for kids who have behavioural problems or learning difficulties. Life is very demanding, and those demands start very early.
Blaming and excuse-making go hand-in-hand, and they prevent you from understanding that no matter what the handicapping condition, no matter what the problem, each child has to learn to perform in a socially acceptable manner. Your child has to learn how to solve problems.
They have to learn to interact socially as well as learn how to change and grow. It’s true that there are cases where kids have a harder time learning than others. But that should be no excuse, because your child is going to have to be able to perform when he becomes an adult, no matter what.
Excuses, Excuses: What’s Your Kid’s Excuse? Children shouldn’t be allowed to blame other people, places or things for not meeting expectations or completing tasks. In reality, when a child blames someone else, he’s saying ‘It’s not my responsibility because I’m a victim of that person, label, or thing.’
For instance, in the classic, ‘My dog ate my homework,’ what the child is really saying is ‘I’m a victim of the dog, so I shouldn’t be held to the same standard as the other kids.’ Make no doubt about it: kids who see themselves as victims and are allowed to perpetuate that rationale have a tough time achieving the very difficult milestones that early life development demands. When kids play the victim game with their parents or teachers, they should be told, ‘Blaming the dog doesn’t solve your problem. You need to have your homework done by the end of the day or you’ll get a zero.’
Parents can also utilize that same analogy when dealing with social situations. ‘Blaming your sister for why you hit her doesn’t solve the problem of ‘no violence in our home,’ and you know the consequences for hitting.’ And have your child perform those consequences immediately. Consequences for inappropriate behaviours should be clearly understood by everyone before incidents occur. Remember, consequences are the results of poor choices, and not the punishment for bad behaviour.
On the other hand, when parents make excuses for their children, it’s a way that they minimize the problems their children are having. Often, excuses are simply the explanations. The parent sends a note to school saying, ‘Tommy wasn’t feeling well. Please accept his lateness to school.’ That’s fine. But parents of children with behavioural problems are forced to make explanations every day, and these explanations transform into excuses for the child’s behaviour. They excuse the child’s refusal to do schoolwork at home.
They make excuses for the child fighting and arguing with other kids, both in and out of the house. They make excuses for the child’s rudeness. Some are very understandable: There’s been a divorce. Or there are family problems at home and the parents are having problems, which manifest themselves in the behaviour of the children. Sometimes it’s a learning disability or mental health diagnosis that parents use to try to explain their kid’s unwillingness or inability to perform.
Let me begin by saying I have empathy for those parents who are dealing with kids who have behavioural and social disorders and learning disabilities. I encourage their efforts to get the right services for their children.
Nonetheless, my experience from working with older children is that the validity of these handicapping conditions for explanations of inappropriate behaviour or a lack of functioning skills become less and less meaningful as time goes by. No matter what the diagnosis is in early or middle childhood, these children have to grow up and learn to perform like adults.
It’s my experience that parents put a lot of effort into seeking the right diagnosis, looking to the diagnosis to change the behaviour. I’ve had parents tell me triumphantly that their child has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder or ADHD, as if that changes anything. It doesn’t. The bitter truth in this situation is that that child still needs to learn to perform.