Most often, the habit of not taking responsibility, but shifting it onto others, begins to form in early childhood. Many have heard such phrases from children more than once: “He was the first to start”, “It’s not me, it’s the cat that knocked over the cup” and something like that. Where do these habits and beliefs come from that it is not me who is to blame, but someone else?
Small children - up to about five years old - live in their fantasies, which become reality for them, and they are unable to separate one from the other.
Children's fantasies
For example, when a child is keen on playing and imagines himself in the role of some kind of animal, more often a cat or a dog, he begins to perform some actions and deeds characteristic of this animal, completely without separating himself from his image. And when one of the parents enters the room and sees scattered things, torn paper or scattered books, then most often to the question: "Who did this?", The baby replies: "It's not me, it's a cat."
What should parents do in this case? First of all, do not panic and think that the child is lying to you. If this happened for the first time, then the child's further behavior will depend on the reaction of the parents following his act. If mom or dad accuses the child of lying, then the next time the parents cannot wait for the truth from him, and gradually the child will begin to shift responsibility for all his not very good deeds onto someone whom he imagines at that moment.
To prevent this from happening, it is enough to listen carefully to the child, sometimes even assenting to him or nodding your head as a sign that you are carefully and seriously listening to his story, and then say that his story is very interesting, but now you need to put things in order together.
Thus, the parents will show the baby that he does not need to be afraid to tell the truth, and no one is going to punish him for his fantasies, but he needs to take responsibility for his act and put things in order, and the people closest to him are ready to help him in this.
Observing the words and actions of parents
A child's unwillingness or inability to take responsibility is also formed on the basis of observations of the actions of adults: especially parents, grandmothers, grandfathers or older sisters and brothers.
If a child hears from mom or dad the phrases: “It’s not me who work badly, this is our boss’s abnormal” or: “I didn’t forget to buy groceries in the store, you didn’t remind me of that,” then he remembers such attitudes: you can not take responsibility for yourself, and blame someone else for some kind of failure. There are many more similar examples that are familiar to almost any person.
Hyper-care
Another option is overprotection of the child. When a baby stumbles and falls, he very often hears the following words: "This pebble is to blame, let's punish him so that he does not fall under your feet any more." If a dog suddenly barked at the child, this does not mean at all that it is she who is to blame, perhaps the child teased her or waved his hand, and after the emerging aggression from the animal, he cried, got scared and ran to complain that the dog barked at him. And instead of first finding out if he is the reason for this behavior of the animal, most often the parents take the side of the child and begin to lament: "Oh, what a bad dog, let's chase her away." A child develops a model of behavior when he can easily shift the blame for his own actions onto someone else.
Avoiding responsibility
Gradually, growing up, the child begins to understand more and more that if you blame someone for his failures, bad grades at school, for the inability to be friends, then you can easily get away from responsibility and not try to fix what was done, which means you can do everything whatever you like.
To prevent this from happening, it is important for parents to carefully monitor what they say to each other or how they speak about their friends, relatives, work colleagues, how they react to the child's actions, whether they always find out the reason for what happened and how often they encourage stories invented by the baby. After all, the child does not have his own life experience and fully adopts what he sees and hears around.
