Accountability and Integrity...

I'm not sure when things changed in the world, maybe they didn't, but it sure seems like there is far less personal accountability in the world these days.

I appreciate when a basketball player fouls someone and raises his/her hand in the air to say, "it was me" instead of the drama queen John McEnroe "YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS" move. :)

All of us make mistakes...I make them every single day.

No one is perfect.

I'm FAR from it! :)

But when I mess up (and that happens a lot), I admit it...

and I apologize for it and try to make it right.

My friends do the same, and the vast majority of people I meet in this big old world do as well...

But there are exceptions.

The people who always look for someone else to blame for their reactions and circumstances. 

It's never their fault!  It was always because someone else did "x" so I had no choice but to do "y".

And there are the people who simply walk away and pretend something didn't happen.

I did that once when I was in preschool (or so the story goes, I don't remember it but my mom loved to tell it)! :)

I broke the arm off one of my mom's little figurines on her dresser and I set it back up so it looked okay from a distance and walked away.  Then when she found it when she was dusting, she asked me what had happened.

I lied.  I told her I had no idea. My mom didn't buy it and I ended up crying my eyes out and confessing.

I got in way more trouble for the deception and lie than I did for the figurine. 

And...

that's how it should be! 

We mess up...we are imperfect people and we sometimes make mistakes.

Last night, I witnessed a little guy do something wrong.  And it was a pretty big something. He told his dad what he had done (kudos to him) and the dad...

the dad simply moved away from the scene with the little boy and continued about his business pretending like nothing had happened.

So I became the tattle-tale and told the person in charge what had happened.

What kind of example does that set for the child? He was trying to do the right thing and he told what he had done.

He now knows that instead he should do what I did with the figurine and walk away and pretend it didn't happen next time. ??????

I'm still perplexed!

Isn't that doing the exact opposite of what we should be doing as parents?

I'm NOT the perfect parent...I mess up a lot there too,

but it sure seems like that is not the message you want to send your child.

I'm pretty sure no one was going to hand the child over to the police for his mistake...he was a little guy who did something wrong because he was unsupervised and curious.  Oops. Understandable!

But a parent not accepting responsibility and then teaching his child to hide from the truth...

I just don't get it.

I hope that when my son's do something like that, I will explain to them that it's not okay and why and then I march them down to the person in charge to explain what they did and apologize. (and there will be consequences for those actions)

And I'm pretty sure I would be apologizing as the parent as well....profusely!!

Another story from when I was little...my best friend's parents owned a grocery store and each time we were in there together, we got to take one piece of bubble gum each.

One day, I was with my mom and not my with my friend, and I took a piece of bubble gum.

(hmmm...seems like I did a lot of bad stuff when I was little)! :)

and my mom made me take it back in and hand it to my friend's mom and tell her what I had done.

It was humiliating and horrible...and I never did anything like that again!! And my mom hugged me when we walked out of the store and told me she loved me.

I want to be a parent like mine were.  I messed up, they still loved me, and we faced it together.

Thanks Mom and Dad...I didn't always thank you when I was growing up, but I get it now.

Everytime you said, "someday when you are a parent, you will understand" and I rolled my eyes and sighed while complaining that you were "being COMPLETELY unfair"...

well...you were right....and I was wrong!!

I get it!! :) 

I feel blessed to have had the parents I had even though they were by far the "strictest parents in the entire world"!! LOL!

I guess that means I only have like 40 more years before my boys "get it" too!! ;)

Sighhhhhh... :)