The following is a selection from the book Raising Children Who Think For Themselves by Dr. Eisa Medhus. From the chapter titled "Specific Child Rearing Challenges - How to Handle Them to Encourage Self-Direction", the following introduction is offered.

"The best way to make children good is to make them happy." - Oscar Wilde

Here are some inner-directed suggestions that will help with some of the most trying child-rearing difficulties we may stumble upon. All of these approaches are designed to preserve your children's ability to rely on internal dialogue instead of external influences to assess and correct their behavior. Using this section as a ready reference will help you raise a self-directed child, even if it means carrying the book, tattered and tear-stained, to the market, in the car, or at home. There are some challenges that, I hope you will never have to face, but others will be as inevitable as a pimple on prom night.

To get to self-direction, there are a few universal caveats for every one of the situations that follow. First, our children need to understand and agree with both the need for the furl and the consequence for breaking it. Only when they come to agree with our rules, through their own internal dialogue, will they become self-directed. Second, look to your own parenting strategy as the possible source of some of the problem. Are you over-controlling or over-protective? Either trait can elicit an externally directed response, as your children react to an unhealthy situation. Third, remember for all these parenting challenges how important it is for you as parents, to model the right behavior. If you're expecting your children to act one way and you act another, the double standard will throw a monkey wrench into their whole internal dialogue machinery.

And lastly, don't forget to laugh.

Why they do it

Although all children occasionally forget or get distracted, many dawdle or procrastinate to get attention, to shun failure, to avoid making choices, to gain control back from over-controlling parents, or to get revenge. It's a passive-aggressive tactic that allows them to get away with their bad choices in an underhanded way.

Logical consequences

Let your children suffer the natural consequences that are sure to bite them in the behind when they procrastinate. Don't bail them out of the "incomplete" they get on their school assignments. Don't drive them to school when they miss the bus.

If their dawdling inconveniences you, have them pay you back in time. "You didn't take the garbage out in time, so I had to rush out with it when I heard the garbage truck in front of the house. That took fifteen minutes of my time. You owe me fifteen minutes of hard labor."

Solutions toward self-direction

Show complete disinterest in their many excuses for falling behind or failing to finish something. Delegating such problems to others allows your children to wash their hands of it and, therefore, avoid contemplating the task internally,

Follow up on the requests you make to your children. For instance, suppose you ask them ten times to carry out the trash, which is met with "Later, Dad" each time. Then, you forget all about it, and Mom winds up hauling it out instead. You've just proved to them that procrastination is an effective way to get what they want!

Use impartial descriptions: "You haven't completed your book report, and it's due tomorrow. I'm sure Mrs. Withers gives zeroes for incomplete work."

Give choices: "When you've done your homework, then you can go outside and play."

Use questioning, "What makes it so hard for you to get your work done?" "Do you have a hard time beginning the work or finishing it?"