In my years working closely with kids and their struggles at school, I have found one big common denominator: Kids, especially teenagers, are always the victim of some kind of metaphysical injustice that gets them constantly in trouble... At least if you listen to them! Have you noticed that, whenever you ask what happened in a situation, it always starts with: "So-and-so did this and someone else did that and I..." I never even let the conversation get there. I want to know what YOU did. Circumstantial evidence is irrelevant at this point. If there was a sanction applied to YOU, it means that YOU did something. That's what I want to know and the rest will be discussed later.
Children, by nature, will do anything they can find to get away with stuff. In any situation, there will be at least two sides of the story and the truth will be somewhere in the middle. But it is important that kids realize their part of responsibility. Why is that important? If your kids don't understand what is wrong with their actions, how will they correct them? Teenagers like to be in denial, it is part of being a teenager. They excel at finding excuses! It doesn't matter if, in an extreme and fictitious example, half of the class was throwing objects at the teacher. They will tell you that it is justified by the number of kids doing it. If your kid was one of them, he/she needs to understand that following a crowd is not necessarily the right thing to do.
With any issue you encounter with your kids, after the storm has passed, take the time to sit quietly for a few minutes with them and go over the situation calmly. Lead them to understand that, if they are feeling bad, it's because they put themselves in this situation, but it's not too late to correct it. Taking responsibility is a very important step towards maturity. Recognizing their part in a situation will enable your kids to face situation in a mature way, on their own, little by little.
If they don't learn to take responsibility, they will always stay with a victim mentality and not be able to cope in challenging situations. Taking responsibility teaches you to focus on the solution, as opposed to the problem. It will start with accepting that a bad grade is not because the teacher gave a very hard test but because they could have studied more. It will move on to recognizing that some of their relationships are dragging them down and that they need to focus on the ones that help them rise above.
It will finally turn them into blooming young adults who can take charge of themselves.
