What Happens When Children Are Made Overly Responsible?

Stressed Out

• Children who take on other family member's responsibilities often experience feelings of stress. "Taylor̵7;s Law of Family Responsibilities states that if family members fulfill their own responsibilities and do not assume others̵7;, then children develop into healthy, mature, and successful people, and everyone is happy," according to psychologist, professor and family consultant Jim Taylor. Children must learn to be responsible for their own household chores, academic requirements and extracurricular activities, but taking on other people's tasks can be overwhelming, stressful and mentally exhausting.

Frequent Mistakes

• Children who take on excessive amounts of responsibility often make mistakes. They might forget to feed family pets, neglect to put laundry in the dryer, forget to turn the off the stove or neglect to watch a younger sibling closely enough. They might struggle to keep up their grades or miss important sports practices or music lessons. Even kids who have a fair and reasonable amount of responsibility make mistakes, but when parents expect them to carry too much weight, mistakes often increase.

Physically Exhausted

• Kids who frequently care for younger siblings, take on adult-oriented home responsibilities or have too-high academic or athletic expectations are often physically exhausted. Even though an appropriate amount of responsibility leads to healthy decision-making skills and strong problem-solving skills, too much responsibility will wear a kid out. According to Sleep Foundation.org, children ages 5 to 12 need an average of 10 to 11 hours of sleep every night. When they have too much responsibility, they might not be able to get the necessary amount of sleep, making them feel grumpy, tired, unhappy, depressed and overworked.

Peer Interactions

• Children with too much responsibility aren't able to invest time and energy into making and maintaining peer relationships. They might not be able to have sleepovers, hang out at the mall or go to the movies because they have too many home, school or extracurricular responsibilities. Kids without any responsibilities often become lazy and expect their parents to do everything for them. However, children with too many responsibilities don't get to enjoy the pleasures of being a kid, such as socializing with friends, playing video games, surfing the Internet, playing outdoors and watching TV.