Accepting Responsibility

As your child continues to mature physically, we also want to assist them in developing emotional maturity. One of the main components of maturity that we want to foster in fourth graders is learning to take responsibility for their actions. In primary grades, their emotional "intelligence" is still growing slowly. By fourth grade, students need to accept, and be held accountable for responsibility in their actions.

How can you nurture this quality in your child? Begin by talking to them about how we all experience different emotions and ideas, like anger, joy, and jealousy. But, as we get older, we must learn that other people don't CAUSE these emotions or behaviors - we create them ourselves. For example, often I will see a student doing something unacceptable such as bumping against another student without apologizing. When I talk to the student, their first response is usually, "Well, he did "such and such" to me first". Accepting responsibility means acknowledging your own behaviors in a conflict and taking the first steps to resolve that conflict by talking it out with the other person. I encourage students to use "I-words", such as "I felt angry when you pushed me out of the game". This reduces the hostility and "defuses" the situation. Just as you encourage your child's academic abilities, help them develop the emotional and social skills needed to work out differences with their peers. They'll thank you for it later!