No one is perfect. Everyone has faults and weaknesses. Everyone makes mistakes. One of the most important lessons parents need to teach–and children need to learn–is to apologize humbly and sincerely when they have done something wrong.

Yet, human nature tends to compound the offense by ignoring it, denying it, or blaming it on others–even finding a way to blame one’s own parents! It is the parents who, by word and example, must try to teach their children to take responsibility for their own failures, and to take responsibility in a positive way, i.e. with humility and the intention of repairing the failings of the past while doing what is right for the future. In this way, even their failings can be as the rungs of a ladder enabling them to climb higher.