Responsibility for and Benefits of Right Choices

It's easy to always blame someone else for your faults or wrong doings. By the same token, if you give someone else the blame for things done wrong, rewards for things done right will need to go to that person also. Because of this we have tried to teach our children that they will indeed find greater happiness when they make the right choices. It's a simple but consistent and true concept we call "Choose The Right", or CTR. It is thematic in the religious training they all receive in our home. As their parents, it is a principle we have made inherent in our characters, so that it is always a visible and unquestionable part of us and how they know we will always conduct ourselves. If we fail to do so somehow, it gives us a foundation to return to and make amends. Choosing the right enables us to have fewer negative things in life, and more greatly value the positives. What positives are there you may ask? Self esteem is built and enhanced by right choices. If you are on the right track and honest with everyone, including yourself, you naturally feel better about yourself. You don't have to worry about which story you told who. This is the essence of freedom. To be able to obey laws and choose things that are not only acceptable in society but also decisions of higher import, which follow God's laws too. The laws of the land are not always the right things (sometimes it only fills someone's agenda) but the laws of God are always true, if read and followed correctly. Fortunately, God's laws are in effect whether a person "believes" in Him or not.

The learning of responsibility by children is like "tough love", sometimes it would be much easier to do the thing yourself but you know that the struggle in the task is growth your child, old or young, must go through themselves. Parents are there to help with all that the child cannot do for themselves. Of course when a child is very young, the child has fewer responsibilities but they are also limited in what they can do. You wouldn't allow your 4 year old to "drive" a car, that would be irresponsible. They are unable to make the kinds of decisions that would keep themselves and others around them safe. By the age of 16 years, a child is considered capable enough to take on that responsibility. Having been through the experience of raising ten 16-year olds and having one presently and one to go, I know that sometimes the 16 year old may act more like a 4 year old. My husband says that the President of the United States should be 16, because then he'll know everything. I'm happy that they learn and grow up past that point of "all knowing" (in their opinion only, may I add).

Unless they go through and take the negative or positive results of their actions, they cannot see the true effects of their choices. As an example, there was one case in the past that I found out my 16 year old boy had been having his 14 year old sister wake him up in the mornings so they could both catch a ride to get to the same school at the same time. This had gone on all that school year. The 16 year old had an alarm clock, but he just didn't hear it, or so he was convinced. He didn't hear it because he knew that his sister would wake him and life would be "fine". I told her to not wake him. If he slept in, he would then get the honor of walking to school, an honor that he didn't appreciate. Imagine his surprise when he discovered that it didn't kill him or even injure him a little. I knew that if he walked to school once, he'd never miss hearing the alarm again. We've had similar circumstances with our older children when they were his age and it worked with them. As I look at the oldest kids, I am, for the most part, proud of the kind of people that they are....kind, hardworking, very responsible individuals. They are very much prepared for the challenges of life and have demonstrated that they can make wise choices.

Choice and individual responsibility are essential for freedom. The choices we make always affect more than just ourselves, if not directly, then indirectly. No matter what we're doing, we are an example to someone. If that someone is a child, the behavior is learned and passed on. Always look at the BIG picture when considering what you do. Sometimes in a particular instance I may be angry or tired. If I step back and think, I can overcome this moment of weakness and come out alright. 

A most disturbing story was on the news some years ago now, about how three small children beat, kicked and hit a 1 month old baby to near death. The baby may indeed have died. The 6 year old was found to be the person who inflicted the injuries. Having lost one of my own children in infancy (see "Alison" stories elsewhere on this site) this incident has made me very upset. If you have ever lost a child you know the extreme anguish. I felt anguish also for the parents of all the little boys. I hope, and I'm quite certain that they didn't teach these boys to do this, but they obviously didn't teach these boys not to do this. I do not know the final outcome of this terrible happening, as the participants were so young, and were prosecuted by juvenile law, which is not public record. These boys will now have to suffer the consequences of their actions, the 6 year old for performing the act and the 8 year old twins for being in the situation in the first place. This will change their whole lives. Where they could have made a positive contribution to society, they may now possibly become statistics. Tragically, their families will also pay the price to a big extent and their lives will never return to the same place as they were before this incident. The parents of the baby are affected forever by this thoughtless act of selfish, stupid, deliberate destruction or near destruction of a life.

Had the boys been taught in their home the basic laws of God and seen those things practiced by people around them, I feel this situation wouldn't have existed. This is exactly why responsibility for ones actions needs to be taught to children from the time that they are toddlers.

We will continue to teach our children that they have choices and they have to then live by the consequences that come from those choices, good or bad. I hope you will also. Our society, our states and nation, and our families need to improve, with personal accountability for the making of right choices being a starting place.

With much love,

MoM