A Lesson in Responsibility

By Kimberly Hicken

            I remember when my oldest son went to school wearing sandals. I was horrified. I kept thinking the school would call at any moment to inform me that I was a horrible parent. You might be thinking that wearing sandals isn’t that big of a deal. Did I mention that it was January and snow covered on the ground?

            The dreaded phone call never came. I think his teacher understood when he explained the situation. I doubt I’m the only mother in the world whose child misplaces his shoes. I was late for work, and the shoes were nowhere to be found. Finally, in desperation, I had my son wear his summer sandals to school. What choice did I have? I had to go to work. He had to go to school. Sandals seemed preferable to going barefoot in January.

            My kids have been known to go to school in their pajamas or show up for class without their hair combed. I have sent them to school with the wrong backpack, a haphazard lunch, or mismatched socks. (Although my 14-year-old daughter makes it a point to wear mismatched socks, so maybe that’s not so bad.)

            Sometimes I look at other families, and I feel just a little bit jealous. It seems like everyone else’s kids have perfectly combed hair, freshly ironed shirts, and pants that don’t have holes in the knees (even if the holey ones are the child’s favorites.) I find myself wondering how they do it. How do they keep everything together? That’s when I need to remind myself of two very important things:

First of all, I’m a busy mom who also works full-time. I can’t do everything for my kids. And even if it were possible, I don’t want to. My kids will grow up someday. I won’t be there to find their shoes and comb their hair. They need to learn to take some responsibility for themselves. It’s my job to help them learn that responsibility, to give them tools to help make that responsibility a little easier. For example, we have a designated area for the kids to put their shoes when they take them off in the evenings. It’s not my fault if my second grader doesn’t do that. We later discovered his shoes in his brother’s bedroom under the bed. He had kicked them off there the day before.

I don’t need to follow my son around picking up his belongings, and indeed, I shouldn’t. If I don’t let him take responsibility for himself and for his own personal items, I’m robbing him of valuable learning opportunities. In his case, he never wore sandals to school again. (He didn’t like them because he couldn’t go out and play in the snow.) After that, he did better at keeping track of his shoes.

The second thing I try to remember is that those other moms aren’t perfect either. Maybe they had time to comb their children’s hair today, but that doesn’t mean they will have time tomorrow. None of us are perfect, and it’s dangerous to compare ourselves to others. When we do someone always winds up falling short. Instead, we just need to remember that we are all doing the best we can with what we have.

My “best” means having my kids help take responsibility for themselves and hopefully learn from those mistakes. I’m not trying to be mean or punitive when shoes are lost. I’m just trying to let them experience the same natural consequences I experience if I misplace my own shoes. So, if you happen to see a kid at the park in July wearing a heavy pair of snow boots, that just might be my child getting another lesson in responsibility.