Giving your child a sense of Responsibility and Reliability

Deconstructing The Effect of Developing Leadership Skills
I truly believe teaching leadership skills from a young age is an incredibly powerful tool for Character Development. I’m going to discuss 10 of the key areas learning leadership skills improves a young person’s Character at a vital time of their development, prior to adulthood.
NO 1: Giving your child a sense of Responsibility and Reliability
A tough one to crack for many parents is instilling a sense of responsibility in their children. When we have a strong sense of responsibility and a proven track record of being responsible, we become reliable. Reliability is an incredibly important value as we grow older and the outcome of our tasks and duties becomes more important or has a bigger effect on a much wider group of people. From work life to home life, reliability and responsibility are vital.
When considering how responsibility is created or taught, we can often notice other children performing tasks to help at home without lots of reminding; but why are they able to do this?
“Ingraining responsibility in children is not a trick, but is simply teaching them life skills,…Kids who do not have responsibilities feel entitled and think the world will always do for them.”
Explains Karen Ruskin, Psy.D., author of “The 9 Key Techniques for Raising Respectful Children Who Make Responsible Choices.”
It’s important to remember that responsibility isn’t just completing a task.
“It’s also about an attitude, the idea of taking action and being proud of doing it, not just always having your mom and dad do it for you,”
Says Alex Barzvi, Ph.D., co-host of the talk show “About Our Kids” on Sirius Doctor Radio.
An excellent benefit of developing leadership skills in a young person is the development of responsibility. From the perspective of a leader, the end result of a task or challenge becomes their responsibility. This pressure on a result or outcome provides the ‘leader’ with a huge sense of responsibility.
A leader is directly responsible for how the team works and performs and this added pressure improves performance as there is a large amount of accountability. If framed correctly, young people will feel immensely positive and motivated about their experience as a leader and enjoy the competitiveness and responsibility of aiming for the desired outcome.
Starting young is vital. Throwing responsibility as a teenager will be a tough transition, it’s a skill set and quality that needs to be nurtured from a young age and teaching leadership skills will provide an excellent structure to teaching responsibility before students become teenagers and before they move on into adult life where it’s so vital to their success and happiness.
The development of Responsibility is present in a martial arts context as students are expected to work on their individual techniques and exercises to meet regular targets, and through a leadership perspective where students are given teaching roles where they must achieve the desired outcome.