Anonymous
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This is a good question, but I'm not a big believer in lessons. Parents who were raised well themselves (a group that seems to be dwindling) have an instinctive knowledge of what works. The other way to be better parents is to go about this the right way. If a teen and her bf get pregnant at 19, this is isn't the right.
On teaching responsibility, this automatically kicks in if parents hold their kids accountable for bad choices. To use a minor type example, my parents were very strict on curfew. If it was 11 pm, 11:01 was a failure. I didn't see it at the time, but she was preparing me for adulthood. When you get to college, if you're told to be at an exam by 10 am, and you get there at 10:02, in some classes the doors are locked and you fail the course. I never struggled with this, but there were people in my dorm who never even had a curfew. They did struggle.
Janet
No. It is too late by the time they are teenagers.
The child's character is pretty-well set by the time they are 10.
Parents should start taking lessons before the baby is born. Of course, that would be expensive for either parents OR for the government, and in a free-country, it is difficult to make rules.
Yet, I suppose they could make it like getting a driver's license, where you have to pass a test.
Pearl
depends on the parent
?
I think that teaching responsibility needs to start way before a child becomes a teenager. That's what parenting actually is. You're raising a child into a functional, responsible adult. Part of that is leading by example and including your child in discussions, and part of that is giving your child actual responsibilities. That's really hard and it's something that needs to start immediately.
If the first time you give you kid chores is when they're sixteen, guess what? They're going to be assholes about it. If you raise them doing chores because that's what everyone in the house does and they have a responsibility to pitch in, they're more likely to stick with it. So, rather than waiting until a kid is nearly out of the house, parents need to parent from start to finish. For all eighteen years and even then some.
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Those said parents probably had just as garbage an upbringing as they're giving THEIR children. That's the problem with it. It's just a never ending loop of stupidity that hasn't been eradicated yet.