Course: Get Help With a Child’s Behavior Issue

The key to teaching accountability is to establish clear, reasonable expectations, and then to hold your child accountable by allowing them to experience the consequences of their actions.

Teaching Accountability

Children learn from their choices, including the poor choices– that is, if their parents will let them learn.

Naturally, it is hard to watch your child make poor choices. It is easy to fear the worst and imagine where these poor choices may lead in the years to come if allowed to continue.

Most parents would love it if their children came with a “manual override” feature that allowed them to take over at times when a child begins making unwise decisions. Unfortunately, no such feature exists–and, in the long run, it would not be beneficial.

As a parent, there are some things you can do to help your child learn to make good choices.

To develop skills in self-governing, children need to:

• Learn that when they choose something, they are also choosing the consequences that go with it. (“When you pick up one end of a stick, you pick up the other end too.”)
• Before making choices, think about the possible consequences
• Recognize that they alone are responsible for their actions.

The goal is to guide them steadily toward inner discipline, not impose rigid outward control. With empathy and support, accountability can help teens develop maturity to make good choices on their own. It teaches important adulthood skills. But patience and wisdom is key–strictness risks backlash and discouragement.

The Importance of Accountability

Take a moment to watch this video that illustrates the importance of providing your child with choices and accountability:

Video: Parenting Principle 4: Choice and accountability invite growth

How “Check-ins” Simplify Accountability

Check-ins provide a simple yet powerful mechanism to build accountability with your child. When used properly, they become an opportunity to facilitate growth and responsibility.

In Trustyy, a check-in is basically just a set of questions that you define for your child and assign them to answer on a regular basis.

Check-ins allow your child to easily report on their progress each day. But you can also add any other type of question you want to ask to their check-in. You can also create multiple check-ins at different intervals. For example, you could have a daily check-in and a weekly check-in that ask different questions. Each time your child answers a check-in question, you’ll receive a notification and can review their response.

This builds accountability for your child and provides visibility for you into their efforts and challenges.

Tips for Teaching Accountability using Check-ins

Here are some tips to keep in mind when establishing check-ins:

• Teach your child the principle of accountability and how it’s important to building responsibility and discipline, and trust. Frame it positively.
• Focus on celebrating wins more than failures. Above all, nurture your relationship and express belief in their abilities, even during difficulties.
• For occasional slip ups, use consequences to teach, not punish. Apply compassion as you reinforce expectations.
• When expectations are unmet, avoid a punitive tone. Use it as a chance to understand challenges and problem solve together.
• Most importantly, continue nurturing your relationship and expressing your belief in them.

The key is using check-ins constructively to facilitate communication, self-awareness and responsibility. Accountability is a process, not an event. Empathy and encouragement are vital.

Create a Check-in for your Child in the Trustyy App

The first time you create a check-in, Trustyy will walk you through how to do it. Be sure to add at least one “Expectation” question type and link it to one or more of the Special Expectations you’ve already added.

Add a Check-in

Checklist

• Watch the video “Principle #4: Choice and accountability invite growth”
• Create a daily check-in for your child in the Trustyy app to establish a process for regular accountability.

Create Checkin

What’s Next:

Once you have finished scheduling a regular check-in for your child, and added at least one question that will follow up on the Special Expectations you have set, you are ready for the next step!