Whose Responsibility
Whose Responsibility?
As a Challenging Behaviour Therapist I am often asked if there is anything parents can do to help their children to grow up well adjusted and well behaved. There are lots of causes of challenging behaviour such as emotional distress, loss or change and developmental delay, but the most common thread running through the lives of children I meet through work is a lack of meaningful participation in normal everyday life. It is not always easy to see which comes first, the challenging behaviour or the lack of participation, but it is a very destructive combination. The child with high levels of choice and freedom becomes bored, demanding and challenging and the challenging child becomes defiant, uncooperative and inflexible. This creates a vicious circle, whereby the child runs the show and the parents run around trying to please the child.
Years ago most children had ‘jobs’ to do within the home – indeed just over a century ago children earned their living from a very young age. I remember the many strategies I used, as a child, to avoid helping around the house. It is natural for humans to resist restrictions on our fun and freedom and necessary for us to have restrictions to resist. I visit many family homes in the course of my work and I NEVER encounter families where children have reasonable, regular responsibilities within the household. Now I am not recommending that you send your three year old up the chimney to clean it, or that you order your four year old to make a three course meal, but there are ‘jobs’ that even very young children can easily do. A toddler can help to set the table every day, a two year old can get a great kick out of polishing the furniture and children of all ages can put away their toys, wipe the table or help with the laundry.
There are very important lessons to be learned from taking part in daily living activities. As the young brain develops it requires regular repeated sequences of experience in order to lay down the neural connections which support learning. Everyday life activities have this simple sequencing e.g. folding laundry, washing up, sweeping, polishing, mopping. The very repetition which drives parents mad with boredom is perfect for enabling children to regulate and manage their nervous systems. Children need to play in order to learn through imagination and social interaction, but the lessons of starting something and seeing it through to the end, recognising the steps of a task, and doing something as it’s meant to be done, are all learned best through involvement in every day life chores. Skills like hand-eye coordination, balance, gross and fine motor movement are also developed through ordinary daily living tasks. It is in the nature of most play activity that it is free, open ended and highly creative. Children do of course learn about making and keeping rules within games, but ultimately the joy of play is that the children are in control of the process until the adults say that play time is over. This is very valuable for children but it needs to be balanced by the rhythm and boundaries of responsibility of household ‘jobs’. For it is within these tasks that the child learns that life is not toally on his terms, that the home requires care in order to function, that parents need a little help too and that meals, clean clothes and a tidy home do not occur by magic.
Children with special needs need this experience even more than other children as their nervous systems are slower to develop. These children usually need extra support in order to learn new tasks and the nature of their problems may make participation more difficult. However I have found that if I carefully adapt the teaching style and adjust the actual activities, children with disorders like Autism, AD/HD and Dyspraxia will often improve in the way they relate, focus and organise their sensory processing and physical movements. Indeed participation in household activities and in structured play is one of my main intervention strategies for children with challenging behaviour, including children with special needs. Children with challenging behaviour and special needs respond very well to a having a schedule of daily involvement around the house. Rather than waiting for a child to be good in order to give praise, we can create frequent chances for the child to help and to be acknowledged and praised as we go about our normal domestic lives. For children, who often receive correction or criticism, it a pleasure to be noticed for helping and for being capable (to the best of their ability) rather than for bad behaviour. The sense of pride a child experiences when he does something helpful or useful is amazing to behold and beats getting to the next level at Play Station – though he’ll never admit that to you!!
Many parents tell me that it is quicker for them to do things themselves or that the children don’t do things to the right standard. That is very true and it will still be true when they are teenagers who can’t operate the washing machine or load the dishwasher. It is only by watching, helping and practising that children learn to a level of competence. I also realise that many parents work long hours. It is even more important for working parents to involve their children in household ‘jobs’. Children who spend most of their waking hours at a crèche do not experience, to the same extent, the rhythm and flow of everyday domestic life. They get huge benefits from the educational and social life of a crèche but are somewhat distanced from the home experience (as are their hard-working parents!). It is tempting to rush around doing housework when they are asleep or for one parent to take them out for a treat while the other one crams all the housework into Saturday afternoon. This turns the home into a hotel for little ones. As a working lone-parent I appreciate the challenges of fitting it all in, but over the years I have developed a routine whereby the children help to tidy the kitchen and do the washing up most nights, which takes about twenty minutes, and we all do a BIG clean together at the weekend, which takes about an hour. My house is less tidy than the houses tidied by parents alone but my children are generally (though by no means always) cooperative, very capable, and quite independent. They sometimes complain and sometimes try to wriggle out of their ‘jobs’ ,but it is very clear that they have ‘jobs’ that belong to them.
The children I meet at work often have huge levels of freedom, lots of expensive toys and elaborate trips out, but without the balance of responsibility they become bored, frustrated, stubborn and unhappy. When this is combined with other factors like change or developmental delay, then the door to challenging behaviour is wide open.
We owe it to our children to teach them life-skills and we owe to ourselves to put our feet up as they get older and to be able to watch T.V. while they are doing the dishes. The child who has responsibilities within the home learn learns naturally that life has boundaries as well as choices, that there are causes and effects. She can see with her own eyes how life operates. She develops an appropriate level of independence and a high level of confidence.
Every now and then I surprise my children by doing their jobs for them. The look of pleasure and chorus of ‘Thanks Mam, you’re so good’ tells me we have the balance right. We share our home, we share the mess, and we share a little of the responsibility. As adults we know that we must squeeze a lot into our lives and that certain things have to be done. Childhood has so much more freedom and that is as it should be - but mature freedom comes from knowing we belong within our families and our homes. The sharing of responsibility for family life brings its own richness and its own freedom.
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