Consequences: How to help your child handle responsibility

There are several ways in which a parent's words cease to matter to a child, the most common being a parent not following through on what she says. Threatening children with unrealistic sanctions, such as "I'll kill you if I catch you playing ball on the road", will not be successful with children as they know full well you cannot follow through with such a threat.

When stating a consequence to an irresponsible behaviour, parents need to ensure that the sanction is something they can follow through on, like deprivation of a privilege. Stating specifically the response to a difficult behaviour is crucial, so that when the child does not respond to a reasonable request, you can follow through in action the talked-about sanction. Actions always speak louder than words when parents are attempting to establish boundaries and limitations that provide children with a sense of security.

Parenting methods will not be effective if they are applied inconsistently and haphazardly. Children have no sense of what is required by parents when they do not make their words matter. Children deserve - and require - consistency from their parents and other significant adults in order for them to feel secure. They also learn to be responsible for themselves.

To bring about the desired security, it is important that parents make their words matter in situations such as the following:

• Giving children choice
• Meeting their own needs
• Rising in the morning
• Responsibility for pets

Allowing children to choose is the bedrock of the skill of decision-making that will determine how wisely they make choices on all aspects of living. Children who are told what to do, say, feel and think lack this essential life skill and struggle with adult challenges. Equally, children who are over-protected, with most things done for them, feel helpless in the face of adult responsibilities. Only those children who are given opportunities and encouraged to make choices will cope with the endless decisions that adolescent and adult life entails. Children need to be allowed to make mistakes - they learn mostly through experience, not from parents' sermons or cajoling.

It is important when children are given choice on what to wear, tidying up, friendships, what to do in their free time, etc. that parents do not have a hidden agenda or attempt to persuade them into agreement with them. Consistency and keeping to their word is what matters here.

Giving children a weekly allowance is another way of providing an opportunity for them to practice wise decision-making. It is a familiar experience of parents to endure children's "I want, I want, I want", but "use your allowance money" teaches a child how to value her pocket money more. Giving in to a child's demands or allowing her to borrow against next week's allowance is not recommended.

Provision of an alarm clock is the way of handing over responsibility to children for getting themselves up in the morning. Parents need to desist from the tendency to "make" them get up as this, once again, means that the parent is not following through on her word. This motif of giving responsibility and learning about consequences has to be carried through every day with no leniency, otherwise children have a loophole which they can exploit at will.

Another area of child responsibility that frequently falls back on mother is the care of a pet. Before getting a pet, the parent needs to sit down with the child and discuss the responsibility and what is to be done when these responsibilities are neglected. A good question to ask the child is: "How many times can neglect be permitted?" The parent needs to agree a number and that the pet will be returned if it is reached. Parents have a responsibility to follow through and place the pet elsewhere; they do their children no favour by supporting neglect.

Dr Tony Humphreys is a consultant clinical psychologist