Holding Kids Accountable

After seeing again on the news this morning about the story of kids beating another kid, it got more thoughts rolling.

Accountability. Consequences. Empathy. Do kids know what these two words mean? Even more than knowing the definition, are the concepts applied in your home with your children?

Definitions as taken from Dictionary.com:

• Accountability ~ the state of being accountable, liable, or answerable.
• Consequences ~ something that logically or naturally follows from an action or condition.
• Empathy ~ the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.

When a child is not held accountable for their actions with no consequences for bad, aggressive behavior for years and excuses are offered while the child was let off the hook for every misbehavior and harm caused to other children, it can result in innocent children requiring medical and mental health care. When the mental health providers feel that without being taught empathy, a child like this would grow up to be a criminal yet a parent changes nothing, and does nothing and helps with nothing, what does that say about their ability to parent responsibly? Is it any wonder society is seeing an increase in crimes by children? Will these children grow up to be supported by the taxpayers in prison?

It is very frustrating to know this and be able to do nothing. It is heartbreaking when the victim of the behavior is your own child.

In a stepfamily situation, you not only are dealing with the wrong behavior, but trying to navigate the minefield that is working with the other parent to modify the behavior and teach right from wrong. In a lot of cases, this isn't possible unfortunately and quite sadly. It is very sad when an adult's ego or anger get in the way of helping their child, when it is easier for the other parent to butt heads with the other parent rather than work together to change the situation for the misbehaving child, to help the child learn right and wrong.

When did it become wrong to discipline a child? When did it become wrong to give your child rules and expectations? When did it become wrong to give your child consequences for misbehaving? When did it become wrong to act like a parent?

It seems to me that kids are given everything but a lot of them don't have any expectations placed on them for earning these things in the first place, or expectations on behavior in order to keep them. For instance, how many kids are walking around with video game systems, mp3 players, and cell phones? Now how many kids did anything to earn those privileges or keep those privileges?

It seems to me that "privileges" are taken for granted as necessities anymore by children. They don't "want" these things; they EXPECT them. As far as I am concerned, these things, and a lot more, are privileges. To receive them, you earn them and when misbehaving they are easily removed from the child as consequences.

Let's talk about empathy for a minute. Why is it that children are not being taught empathy anymore? How can children harm other people without feeling any remorse? Why aren't children being taught that other people have feelings and needs? How scary is that?!? I've watched a child harm other children and show no emotion or feel no regret. I've seen the dead look in the eyes that appears to show no conscience. It is very scary to experience this firsthand. These children who don't feel empathy may grow up to be adults who don't feel empathy. Isn't that a criminal in the making?

Let's look at a few more definitions:

• Sociopath ~ a person, as a psychopathic personality, whose behavior is antisocial and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience.
• Psychopath ~ A person with an antisocial personality disorder, manifested in aggressive, perverted, criminal, or amoral behavior without empathy or remorse.

Take note of words in these two definitions: "lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience" and "amoral behavior without empathy or remorse." It looks like we as a society are breeding a whole slew of sociopaths and psychopaths right now. I hope that's not true. I really do. I have little faith of that though.

With the rate of divorce and stepfamily situations, with the state of the family court where the non-custodial parent is basically stripped of some of their basic rights to parent their children while the custodial parent holds most of the cards, and then add into that the level of anger and bitterness that infuse a lot of these divorce/stepfamily situations, it's a ticking time bomb for a lot of people.

I'm not saying "all" because there are some divorced or separated parents that work well together for their children or parent responsibly when the other parent isn't available for whatever reason. It's just not the norm and in these situations, the kids are stuck in the middle of a no-win situation for anybody. One parent may be getting what he or she wants with their anger or bitterness and think they have to one-up the other parent or stick it to them whenever they can, but they aren't winning anything. They are crippling their children emotionally. Everybody loses eventually. The child loses. The other parent loses. The "winning" parent loses by parenting ineffectively. Society loses when these children grow up to repeat the cycle.

I know crime happens in all types of families regardless of race or income, however, I would like to see statistics in kids of divorce or separated parents and kids who grow up without a parent. I really would.