Underground Journal

Responsibility an Essential Aspect of Homeschooling

Responsibility is a wonderful thing and when taught to your homeschool student it can make your life much easier. One of the fabulous things about homeschooling is the flexibility and the freedom but with the two benefits comes responsibility. Not only on the part of the parent but also on the part of the student.

You have to be able to trust your students to do independent work and do it well. You have to be able to trust your children to take care of their property and respect the property of others. Home school allows you to integrate the teaching of responsibility into your everyday lessons.

Here are a couple of ways to teach responsibility to your children:

• Give them space. If you clamp down too hard they will rebel and we all know what happens when you do this. I like to macro manage instead of micro manage my children. Starting when they are young I give them a general idea of what I expect from them during a particular day and guide them as the reach their daily goals. I eventually step back and let them manage much of their day.
• Outline expectations and let them go to it. As before I like to let them be successful. I model what I expect and let them follow. Rewards always follow success.
• Give your homeschoolers property. My children have laptops that are their responsibility. I teach them how to use the laptops and they are expected to take good care of them and maintain them. They are expected to use these laptops for many different things and if they take good care of them they can use them for fun too.
• Have them teach each other. Most homeschoolers have siblings and these siblings are excellent students for the older kids. Teaching is an important tool in learning the material fully yourself as well as for teaching responsibility.

This is just a couple of easy ways to teach responsibility in the homeschool house hold. Get your children to a certain level of responsibility and your job becomes much easier.

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