Text Box: Raising Responsible Children Raising a child means more than helping him or her grow up healthy and happy.  It’s important that, by the time they’re ready to leave home, children have learned to be self-sufficient and responsible.  Those kinds of lessons take an entire childhood to learn, but they’re among the most important legacies you can pass on to your children.  Here are some ways to start:   ·   Make them Calendar Girls (and Boys).  Give your child his or her own calendar.  Have children mark with when a test or project is due, or when a sports or group activity is scheduled.  Each child’s calendar should be posted in a visible spot, and get them in the habit of checking it every day.   ·   Keeping Track.  As tempting as it is to bail out your children if they forget their lunch or homework or put off an assignment until too late, those mistakes can be excellent tools to teach responsibility.  If a project is due the next day, fight the urge to step in and help get it done.  Children only need a few such lessons, and some serious follow-up discussions from their families and teachers, to realize that it’s not worth it to be irresponsible.   ·   Helping Others.  No matter what your child’s situation in life, there always are others in greater need.  Get your child involved in helping those less fortunate.   ·   Pet smarts.  Taking care of the family pet is an excellent way to learn responsibility.   ·   Get to work.  Assign weekly chores to everyone in the house, rotating them so that, eventually, everyone has a turn.  Divide the jobs by age, with older children ding the harder jobs, and make sure to never list anything as a “girl” job or “boy” job.   ·   Save for the future.  Financial responsibility is easy to teach if you start when your children are young.  From their very first birthday money, teach them to set aside a certain amount for the future.  A good rule of thumb is to put half away for savings and save half for spending, either on things they want right away or things they’d like to buy in the future.   SOURCE: Adapted from NAESP’s Report to Parents newsletter.