For everyone who has a son or daughter, a crucial component of the parenting process is teaching responsibility to your child. As adults, we all know that our responsibilities – to our jobs, to our families, and to our society – are some of the most important elements in shaping our identities, our career and social success, and our sense of self-worth. Many parents try to instill this responsibility into their kids at a young age. This is a worthy and necessary cause, but for many children this concept of responsibility can be hard to grasp.

If your child struggles with acting responsibly towards others, an appropriate first step may be to teach him self-responsibility – a responsibility that focuses more on caring for oneself. Understanding your responsibilities to yourself can be you less dependent and more likely to take the next step and act responsibly towards society at large. This sounds good in theory, you may say, but how should one go about accomplishing this? Well, here are some ideas:

Instill Healthy Eating Habits

We all want our children to eat their vegetables. And, even with food-testing companies out there like Huntingdon Life Sciences, we’d like them to eat less processed foods, too. Rather than shove some broccoli in their direction every evening and implore them to eat, make them take more responsibility over their eating habits. Take them grocery shopping with you and let them pick out whatever they want, but with rules: they need a certain number of fruits and vegetables, a minimum amount of protein and carbs, and a maximum amounts of fat and sugar. If they play by the rules the first time and then follow-up by eating all the food, you can start a cycle whereby your kids have more ownership – albeit a responsible ownership – over their eating. Moreover, taking them to produce stands and farmers’ markets and seeing what they like is a good way to similarly bring unprocessed foods responsibly into their diets.

Let Their Room Be a Private Domain

The stereotypical parent on a television sitcom is always chastising their children for keeping a messy room, a situation that may not be dissimilar from what occurs in your own house. While it annoys and pains us to see our children living with clothes, books, and papers piled up on the floor, a messy room is a long way off from being a health hazard. A child’s room is also a forum for teaching him self-responsibility, since you can let a room get messy without being a bad parent. In this sense, try letting your son or daughter have complete control over their room (to a point). Sure, you still have every right to walk on the door and walk in, but giving them control over a 10 by 12 space where they also must sleep is a good prerequisite towards greater responsibilities.

Let Them Fail, Sometimes

Similarly, a parent can often help their child by occasionally being hands off in other areas, as well. Instead of forcing them to do homework every night, let them miss a couple assignments and then face the disappointment of the teacher, yourself, and your spouse. Rather than dragging them to soccer practice every day, let them learn what happens when they let their coach and team down. Part of personal responsibility involves answering to others when you don’t perform to their expectations, and “others” does not always mean “parents.” Sometimes it’s good to learn this at an earlier age.

These are just a few ideas for how to instill self-responsibility in your kids. Of course, as your children grow and mature, this sense of responsibility is pretty sure to follow. But it will manifest best if the seeds are planted while they’re still young.