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A very fine line

There is a remarkably fine line between making excuses and offering explanations. It can be quite challenging to know the difference and that confusion can lead to difficulties. We work hard to help our children learn the difference between making an excuse for behavior versus offering an explanation to help figure out how or why something happened. Sometimes it is helpful to get the background but sometimes it just confuses matters.

The balance between excuse and explain is similar to the one I have been pondering between blame and responsibility. Sometimes when we are trying to assign responsibility we actually end up placing blame.

Both are a bit of a slippery slope that we should only start down with great caution.

Strangely the challenge of excuses versus explanations is more easily addressed with children, which also tells me that it's more commonly understood as opposed to blame versus responsibility. We'd all do better to see the fine line between the two.

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