The Harmful Parenting Excuses You Need To Stop Making Today

There were times in my parenting where I thought I was teaching and training my kids but really my aim was high but I was achieving nothing.  I convinced myself that I was on track, and that I was busy doing parenting, but I was really procrastinating: putting off the hard things.

One day I heard myself making an excuse for one of my kid’s choices.  Once I heard myself give one excuse I started hearing the other excuses that were coming out of my mouth. These excuses sounded legit at the time.  

Excuses make us feel like we are doing okay, and they make it seem like our child is doing okay.  They justify our poor choices – to ourselves and to anyone listening.  Now before we get into this we have to understand that sometimes there is a reason for our child’s poor choices – we have to be aware, and empathetic and very proactive in helping them in that moment.  These are not the excuses I’m talking about.  I’m talking about the excuses we give when we know our child is able to do better and we know we should step up and talk about it with them, but we don’t – instead, we make an excuse.

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Stop making Excuses as a Parent

Excuse #1  –  It is just childishness

We say things like:

“It is just childishness” 

“He didn’t mean to do it” 

“He doesn’t know any better at the moment”

A heart-focused response is that unchecked childishness leads to foolishness.  What happens today, becomes a habit of tomorrow.  

Yes, the child is acting out of childishness  –  he hasn’t yet been taught anything different. But the parenting question is – what am I going to do about it? We shouldn’t just excuse the child –  their behaviour is MY responsibility. When you decide to not deal with childishness, the behaviour gets firmly established in their life, leading to foolishness later on (when they do know better but choose unwisely anyway).

If a child is old enough to do something naughty he is old enough to be taught to do the same thing in the right way.

If a child is old enough to do something naughty he is old enough to be taught to do the same thing in the right way. He may not get it right away, but the training needs to begin.  When we begin training our children when they are young, we establish habits of action – they learn what to do, and the understanding of why that is the right thing to do comes later. When a young child has good habits it is easier to speak to their heart, that is it is easier to talk about beliefs, values, thinking patterns, and choices – mainly because they are listening to you and they have already seen what you are talking about in action! 

So don’t let their childishness be a reason why you don’t deal with their behaviour – show them the right way today, and they’ll be able to walk in it tomorrow.

Excuse #2  –  Ignorance or no skills

We say things like:

“He doesn’t know how to do that yet” 

“I don’t think he understands my instruction”

“I’ve told him but he still doesn’t get it”

A heart-focused response is parents need to train their children. This is their responsibility.

It may be true, it probably is true – they don’t know how to do it yet.  But that is something we can work on. Teaching our children is hard work – it interrupts our other activities and it is repetitive.  It is easy to slip into just telling our kids what to do, instead of teaching them how to do it.  Big difference.  Another way this excuse works out is that we do it for them and when we do that – they never learn.

I’ve done a podcast on the 4 stages of teaching our kids anything –  link here

When we make excuses we try to cover up the truth that we haven’t actually been training – we may have been telling, but not training.  Our child’s ignorance, or lack of skill (when they are old enough to know or do better) is not something we want to excuse – instead, when we hear that excuse, or when we see their ignorance or lack of skill we need to take that as a prompt to remind us to up our training efforts.

Excuse #3  –  Ignoring a bad attitude because of a good action

We say things like:

“Hope the wind doesn’t change on that face!” 

“At least he is doing it” 

“Too bad about the attitude” 

A heart-focused response is God looks at the heart, and so should we!

Proverbs is clear that the heart drives each of us. And our attitudes are an external expression of what is going on in our heart.  We must reach our children’s attitudes as much as we train their actions. 

So often one bad attitude in our child’s life can be the cause for many bad actions (or choices) which makes going straight to the heart of the matter very effective parenting.

One bad attitude can be the cause of many bad actions.

Bad attitudes come in different sizes.  We tend to ignore the small ones – but they fester into big ones.  But even while they are little attitudes they impact our child’s choices.  Having a bad attitude is not acceptable; it is an alarm bell that something needs to be changed in the heart of the child.  You can’t make a child change their attitude – but you can give them a reminder of what is right, how their choices are impacting others and then the space to make that heart-adjustment for themselves.

Excuse #4  –  circumstances and personality

We say things like:

“He’s tired” 

“He is teething” 

“He is a Choleric, and Cholerics are bossy!”

A heart-focused response is God’s word is true, no matter who we are, or what circumstances we are in.

If we hold the Bible to be true, if we believe it tells us how we are to live our life – it is to be true for all people, not just those for whom it appears to be easy to obey! The godly principles we live our life by are to be the standard for all our children – regardless of their personality or their struggles.

It never ceases to amaze me how different each of my children are.  The thought that gave me perspective as they were growing up was: that the destination is the same, but the journey is different.  I wanted each of my kids (regardless of their uniqueness) to be self-governed, moral, skillful people. But because they were all different, the teaching and training journey we went on was different for each of them.

The destination was the same – the journey to that destination was different. 

When you hear yourself giving an excuse based on your child’s personality etc, pause and read it as a signal.  Read it as a signal telling you that more training needs to happen for this child in this area – it isn’t necessarily something that all your kids need addressing.

Parenting with Intention instead of Excuses

I’m sure there are many other excuses that we inadvertently give for our children’s misbehaviour but by highlighting these four we can become more aware of what we are saying. More often than not, these excuses just pop out, (pop out of our mouth) without our thinking, and without our actually hearing what we are saying.

If our children are not doing what is right, that is okay, because it is an opportunity for training, for practicing, for passing on responsibility. We must grab that opportunity and not miss it by giving glib excuses.

Mind you, once they have learnt, once we know that they know, then it becomes their responsibility to do the right thing.  When they are able to do the right thing, and we give them the responsibility to do that, our parenting responsibility is then to hold them accountable – not to make excuses for them, and not to keep on teaching them.

The Harm caused by Parenting Excuses

{So what is the problem with us making excuses for how our kids act in the moment?}

The whole reason I raise this issue is because excusing our kids behaviour – especially when we are consistently excusing them  – it does create a few problems. It seems harmless to say – oh he’s just tired – but there are lasting implications.

1. {Obviously the first one is } We ourselves are not being intentional or heart-focused.  Which probably means you are not parenting in ways that are consistent with your values.  That isn’t healthy for you as a person or parent.
2. {Secondly} our children will pick up on our excuses and before long they are making excuses for themselves.  This will start to shape their belief system – their values of what is important and what isn’t.  Basically, they’ll start to live by their emotions rather than by moral convictions – because you’ve showed them that these moral truths are actually variable, it depends. But the morals we want to teach our kids need to be convictions – truths to live by even when hard. 
3. Excuses are one way we are inconsistent – we say something but we accept less than that when we give that excuse.  Though it seems to be beneficial to the child in the moment – they get away with not doing what should otherwise be expected – the reality is they start to internalise your lax attitude as a lack of authority or they still understand your authority but they don’t have very much respect for it.  And to some degree – fair enough – you yourself have handled your authority with little respect by not being consistent, by making these excuses.  
4. When we let our children off with an excuse it means they don’t grow in the self-discipline to do the right thing, and to take responsibility for the consequences of their actions.  

Giving excuses is probably one of the barriers we have, or bad habits that we have as a parent, that stops us parenting with intention. And it certainly stops us from being consistent.  

Chuck Swindoll has said, “Those who achieve excellence are faithful in the tedious, monotonous details of life.” What is more monotonous than constantly repeating instructions to our young children?  We need to be faithful in all that God has put on our hearts when it comes to raising our kids. It may be tedious, and monotonous – it may even be annoying – but it makes an incredible difference in the life of our children when we keep at it.

Heart-focused Parenting Action Step

A final thought I have it written in my notebook as a quote from Chuck Swindoll but I have no idea where I got it from…He says, 

Do it when it comes naturally
and when it is hard to come by.
Do it when you’re up,
do it when you’re down.
Do it when you feel like it, and
do it when you don’t feel like it.
Do it when it’s hot,
do it when it’s cold.
Keep doing it. Don’t give up!

Sounds a bit Dr. Seus to me!  But it is a good reminder to keep on going; keep on going with the repetitious tasks of being a heart-focused parent.  

There’s a quip from the 80’s advertising – and I’m probably aging myself here, because you probably don’t hear this with the same jingle in your head that I do – but it is a good reminder to keep perspective – it won’t happen overnight but it will happen.  When it comes to parenting, you can’t actually guarantee results, but you can decide today to be intentional, to live by your values, and to address the heart whenever your child makes unwise choices.

So obviously, the heart-focused parenting action step this week is to consider the excuses you are making – and how you can turn that into a training opportunity.  I have a bonus resource to help you. It is a quick download – kind of like a mini-parenting-magazine – it has a parenting quiz that will help you see the parenting style you tend to lean into, especially when you are overwhelmed and stressed, some Scriptures to focus on, and the most common triggers that drive us to make excuses.

If you are already a Heart Booster reader then you have received the Bonus Heart-Booster in your emails – but if you haven’t received that you can sign up HERE.

So before we finish up here, let’s just look at a summary of how to stop making excuses:

1. Hear yourself and identify your excuses
2. Pray for wisdom and guidance to do better in your parenting
3. Plan a heart-focused response for when you are in the situations when you usually make excuses.  Be prepared!
4. Talk to your spouse or trusted support friend to hold yourself accountable to let go of making excuses and grow to be intentional in how you engage with your kids.

Aslo, don’t forget to download the Heart Booster Excuse Busting PDF.  

Hi there! I'm Belinda and I'm glad you are here!

I am a family life coach and help parents to raise their kids with faith, values and life skills in a way that is intentional, relational and heart-focused. Read more in my Introduction page

You can learn about heart-focused parenting through my podcast, blog and weekly email (Heart Boosters).

If you need help you can book a coach call or email me here.

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