Every person alive makes mistakes. The question to ask is if we can be depended on to admit when we make a mistake or do we make excuses and blame others. When you are a parent, it is not unusual to hear from a child, “It’s not my fault,” or “he made me do it.” Unfortunately, the adult version of this is not that different. Adults are heard saying, “It’s not my job,” “no one told me,” and “I couldn’t help it.” Really? Does anyone buy either the child’s excuses or the adults?
Most adults are willing to forgive mistakes, have compassion for the misstep, or at least show empathy when someone in their life admits to having been in error. However, we lose our trust of anyone who is constantly blaming others and working to avoid the responsibility of accountability. We deem them as being undependable.
Teaching children dependability begins with naming this life skill as important to our family. We are only able to do that by modeling dependability and defining it for our children. When we see them demonstrate dependability we can acknowledge the behavior that we saw and identify it as dependability. The steps outlined is the process for awakening all gifts of character and life skills in ourselves and our children.