Parent's responsible for children?

KYLady says:

There’s never a dull moment in our house – we have twin daughters soon turning 16 years old. Fortunately, we learned a lot from raising their older sisters. I like your metaphor of walking the tightrope – that’s exactly what it’s like. Too far one way and we are tyrants, too far the other way and we’re accused of being uncaring. For sure, what works with one does not work with the other. I believe parents are responsible for their teens, but if they haven’t parented with clear expectations and firm guidelines in their childrens’ earlier years, it’s going to be a lot harder to influence them as they become more independent. Parenting teens is not easy, not even with good kids!
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I would agree with your point that what happened in the parenting of the child effects what happens in the parenting of a teenager. Also that parenting styles with teenagers vary from one to another. This would also be true in childhood but I think it is more pronounced in adolescence.

I find your comment

I believe parents are responsible for their teens

an interesting one.

I know what you are saying but I don’t agree with it, sort of.



I don’t see myself or other parents as responsible for their teenagers. I provide a boundary for teenagers such that they are allowed to do A & B but not C & D. However I would not see myself as responsible for their actions nor their internal emotions. As I write this I am not too sure what I am saying.

I have a belief system in my head that I assume is communicated to my children that they are responsible for their behaviour and emotions and thoughts. I also know that when they are children they do not understand the world enough in order to survive or just operate successfully. That is where I come in and provide boundaries, make suggestions and make decisions for them.



I decide for them that eating a large block of chocolate all at once is a very bad idea and so I stop them but that does not make me responsible for them. All I am doing is controlling a piece of behaviour.

I retreat to my dictionary and discover that responsibility is defined as:

The state or fact of having control over someone

It appears that I am incorrect in my understanding of the term because I do have control over their eating of the chocolate. So according to this definition I am responsible for my children as KYLady originally proposed.

So what am I trying to say here?

As I think here I discover I have a belief and an expectation about my children. You are responsible for yourself and what happens to you in life. There are going to be plenty of times when I am not around and then you are responsible and even when I am around you are also still responsible for what you say and do, etc.

As I write this I am thinking, “OMG, I hope this is an OK thing!!”. I was not aware of this expectation I had of them until now.



Whilst I cannot recall myself saying such things often and openly I am sure this belief was communicated subliminally to them.

I will do all the appropriate things to control their behaviour, such as with the chocolate but at the same time there is this expectation or belief about responsibility that is communicated to them as well.

This is a little bit of a light globe turning on moment as I write this. I rarely if ever said the belief I had about responsibility to them instead it was an unstated expectation of them.

So back to KYLady’s comment about parents being responsible for their children. With the dictionary saying what it said I have to agree in one way but I disagree in another way.

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