QUESTION: How do children learn to take responsibility for mistakes?

 ANSWER: As always, parents teach first. Besides making it a priority to keep their children safe and healthy, parents are responsible for teaching the values of the family. Most parents want their children to acknowledge when they do something the family considers wrong and to feel regret and remorse.

First a child needs to understand the concept of mistakes. When my oldest was four he asked me what a mistake was. I responded that a mistake is something that you only do once because it wasn’t a good idea. We needed to have additional conversations about mistakes, because a few days later he came into the kitchen and said, “Mom, I think I’m going to make a mistake.”

Mistakes have negative consequences. A child’s response to making a mistake should be either regret or remorse. A youngster can easily recognize a behavior that is going to cause him problems with others.

After the mistake is made, a child may make excuses for the behavior, but he feels the “darn it” of regret. He feels sorry because he got caught and his life got more difficult or unpleasant, at least temporarily. If parents are doing their job, a child learns to recognize behaviors that are careless, thoughtless or dangerous.

Remorse usually comes with maturity. We are able to recognize that some things cannot be fixed. Remorse over something that is seriously damaged or destroyed or over someone being emotionally wounded because of our actions can cause a behavior change.

We recognize that our behavior caused someone else a lot of hard work, time, money and/or distress. We ask, “What can I do?” We want to make restitution and, if we can’t, we are often motivated to act very differently in the future.

Smart 8-year-olds are capable of talking about the difference between regret and remorse. Every teenager needs to have a conversation about regret and remorse with an adult family member.

No doubt every adult has enough personal examples to get the conversation started.

If you would like to talk about the challenges in raising children, call the toll-free Parent WarmLine at 1-888-584-2204/Linea de Apoyo at 1-877-434-9528. For free emergency child care call Crisis Nursery at 1-877-434-9599. Check out www.familiesandcommunities.org and books, CDs and DVDs at the PRC Specialty Library (105 First Street SE, Austin).