They refuse to be accountable

They refuse to be accountable

When I was a dean of students, I would end up with reactive, scared kids in my office. Sent out of class for refusing to put down a phone and pick up a pen, for telling a teacher off, being inches away from a fight, or after they threw the first punch.

They knew they had done something wrong, they knew I was going to call their parents, they knew we had to figure out how to make it right.

And many times, the start of that conversation would look like this.

“So, can you help me understand what was happening for you back there? Tell me what happened.” I would always start by just encouraging them to explain their experience in narrative.

And they would lean back, and shrug their shoulders and say “I dunno.” Intentionally, obstinately silent.

Partially because there’s a toughness, a feeling of stoic self-protection in refusing accountability, but mostly because they genuinely didn’t know how to analyze their thoughts and behavior when they were emotionally flooded.

After many exasperated afternoons negotiating with adolescent stone walls, I learned to simply say, “That’s okay, think about it.”

And we waited.

I would answer some emails, and return to the question. They would say "Honestly, Mister, like, I don’t know why.” Slightly softening, genuinely seeking a degree of understanding.

With that slight crack, I would say, “Do you mind if I try to explain what was going on? You can tell me if I’m wrong.”

They would shrug.

And I would narrate a theory for what had happened.

“Well, by that point in class, your brain was probably saying…”

What I was trying to do was make their nervous system a main character in the story. I would narrate the process their thoughts and feelings went through and how that created behavior.

Then secondary characters were invited into the story. The minds, intentions, feelings of other people in the room.

With the story, I was scaffolding accountability through the process of metacognition. To help them think about their thinking, and think about the way others were thinking.

For some adults, this is natural. So when we get to accountability conversations, we demand, “What were you thinking?! How do you think that made them feel?” But that question just creates anger when an emotional kid can’t access metacognition the question demands.

Humans can’t reliably take accountability for their actions, if they have no solid understanding of how their own thinking processes work. And they will certainly fail to understand the experiences of others, if they cannot reliably do it internally.

We did it when they were small. Whether we knew it or not, we scaffolded metacognition when they were learning to share, and organizing socially, “I think you felt angry because you wanted that toy.”

And we do it when they succeed. “Wow! You earned an A! You put in a lot of preparation before writing. What strategies helped?”

But when our adolescents are reactive, confrontational, we remove the metacognitive scaffolding, and label them immature. And the label is all too fitting, metacognition is a complex skill of self-awareness, reflexive questioning, and abstract thinking. They can’t do it well, especially when they’re upset.

Without it, we will continue to struggle to create accountability, because they will struggle to understand how their own actions and thoughts come to be.

This weekend

The next time you need them to take accountability for something. Build them a bridge, it’s not an excuse, or escape hatch, but they’re much more likely to say, “I’m sorry” if they understand how they got there in the first place.