A Dose of Responsibility

Somchai was a 17 year-old male student. He finished junior high in his local school. Then he moved up to a prestigious provincial high school where he majored in business studies, for which there was only one class.

At the start of the first semester, Somchai had perfect attendance. But into his third month, he started coming in late almost daily. When I asked him about this, he blamed it on the village minibus which didn’t reach the school on time. At first, I believed him but decided to have a teacher check with the driver and found out he was lying. The bus was always on time. I followed up on him daily and asked his friends and teachers to keep an eye on his attendance too. It transpired that Somchai attended morning classes but left school in the afternoon.

One morning I was waiting for Somchai at the main gate. It was almost 10.00 a.m. when he arrived for classes that start at 8.30. Wanting to talk to him, I asked his teacher to excuse him from the current lesson. From our chat, I learned he was an only son and did want to stay in the school because of its prestige but didn’t like his major. And that caused his lateness. I asked where he took off to in the afternoon. He said he went to hang out with male friends from the nearby vocational school and headed home when school was over.

Our talk lasted about an hour and then I let him attend his next class. For more follow-up, I met with his adviser and teachers. Their daily reports provided invaluable input. I also prepared to alert his parents of their son’s behavior. Informing Somchai in advance, I got the adviser and student affairs teacher to join me on a home visit one weekend.

We were five??? persons knocking at Somchai’s door. We met his mother and married elder sister, who was still living with the parents. Neither Somchai nor his father was present. The mother told me they were attending a village athletic event. We waited until both returned home about 10 minutes later.

All welcomed us graciously and stressed how special their only male offspring was to them. His father seemed the most attached by far. His family took detailed care of Somchai, who needed lift no finger or even wash his clothes. Everyone did everything for him. So he could concentrate on his studies. Free of any responsibilities, Somchai helped no one with any task but did and roamed as he pleased. When I mentioned their son’s poor attendance, his family became very upset. After I told them about his absence, they were very upset. Somchai tried to explain. I needed him convince himself and his parents of the existence problem.

When Somchai’s explanation was over, his father was angry and his mother, crying. Silent and motionless, I let these feelings run their course. Once they became calm, I told them not to worry too much – their son hadn’t gone all too wrong – and that Somchai’s performance could recover to previous, satisfactory levels if we kept in touch. I did add however, that if he wasn’t supervised more closely, he could go very wrong and preventative measures were needed.

The parents then asked us for advice. We let Somchai sit in on the discussion. Our conclusion was that the family had to assign him some household tasks. He needed to learn to become a useful family member. That would teach him to help others and give him practice in behaving responsibly towards both others and himself, especially in society. I also outlined the school’s rules on attendance and behavior: if there were any extracurricular activities scheduled outside of classroom hours, then the school would always send them a parental authorization request, which would confirm to parents that their child would indeed be at school. And then I also wanted the parents to visit the school and see their son in class. This would be an extra way of monitoring his behavior. Finally, I told Somchai that we all cared about him and sincerely wanted to see him to the right thing but good change could only come from inside himself, and this is where he had to find that improvement. He should know how say ‘NO’ to his friends when they urged him doing something improper. I pointed him to get the loveliness from his family and if he tried to act as the responsibly boy, knowing how to love himself, looking after himself and he learnt how to love the others , finally, he would not harm none by his actions.

In this case, we could see that Somchai was not established to have the responsibility. His parents over loved him until they didn’t want him to do anything. They didn’t concern that part of our habbit came from being taught by that family. This is the most important thing for the parents , bringing them up with good care, teaching them good things , being good model . These will become their personality of the children. If Somchai had the good responsibility, he would have the disciplined man.
If ONE takes responsibilities, he will take response in everything, which would give him the very nice results in the end.

Somchai was not the stubborn boy, so he could improve himself quickly. If he couldn’t find the way to solve the problem, he asked for some help from the teachers; especially the denying to his friends. I helped him by asking his friends to meet and all of us shared and discussed what the best way to be together as the very nice friends. The solutions came from their thoughts, so they would be happy to do it.

Somchai and his friends turned to be the lovely activists in school. They joined almost of the activities in school . At the end of the year, all are given to be the best activists and they got the certificate from school.