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Personal Accountability
Are You Teaching Your Teen the Blame Game? By Tamekia Reece
Think for a minute. When your relationship with your spouse hits a rocky patch, do you say he's to blame? If you have a bad day at work, is it because you have a "crappy boss" or your coworkers are "slackers"? If everything that happens in your life is someone else's fault, John Miller, personal accountability expert and author of QBQ! The Question Behind the Question (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2004), says you may be teaching your teen to play the blame game. Here's why you don't want to do that and how you can stop.
Think about it. Could you have made it to work on time if you'd gotten up a little earlier? Or is it possible you didn't get the promotion because you're always late for work? Before you blame someone else, you need to first look in the mirror. Consider what effect your own actions (or inactions) may have had on the situation. Chances are, you'll find some, if not all, of the blame lays on one person – you.
Paula Jackson, a mother of two in Atlanta, Ga., says she's always found a way to get out of things by blaming other people. She's found that often times the blame falls on her children. "Even if it's something I know I'm responsible for, I'll find myself saying, 'Oh my kids did this' or 'They didn't do that,'" she says. By doing this, Jackson is not only making things harder for herself, she's making it hard for her children as well. If a child's parents always blame him for everything, it's likely he'll feel like he can't do anything right and give up before he even tries.
Miller says when parents don't accept responsibility, it causes them to lose their effectiveness as facilitators and role models for their teens. "As the primary role models for our teens, when we behave poorly by blaming and whining, we are missing the chance to have a positive and powerful impact on our kids," he says. "When we don't accept responsibility and our kids see that, then they don't have to accept responsibility."
Not only do parents lose out; the teens do too. They are robbed of realizing their full potential. If for most of his life your teen has watched and listened as you blamed others for things that did or didn't happen, he may have learned that it's up to the people around him to make things happen in his life. Therefore, instead of trying to accomplish things, he just sits back and waits for others to do it for him, while asking questions like, "Who's going to give me a break? When will others support me more?" or "Why won't they give me what I want?" You've got to help him realize that he's got to make those things happen himself; he can't depend on others. But that's hard to do if you're asking the same questions.
