If you hurt your children, they deserve an apology. Maybe this will fix the relationship, maybe it won’t. But we don’t judge the morality of an action by its consequences. We don’t say we can’t end slavery because society will have no way to produce food and cotton. Do the right thing, though the skies fall!

After you apologize, you make restitution, as best you can. Then you do everything – absolutely everything – in your power to show you will never do evil again. Go to therapy, study moral philosophy, take anger management courses, reject and abandon evil people in your life. Do everything necessary to prevent the return of evil into your heart and hands.

Use workbooks by psychologists to get to the root of your motivations. Talk to your parents, examine your childhood, trace the growth of your immorality, confront yourself, challenging the devils that live in in each of us. Weep, wail, gnash your teeth, confront the heart you blackened with badness, overthrow the devil you grew, and throw your broken soul into the arms of the angels.

Surrender your twisted will, excuses, manipulations, and hypocrisies to the shining standards of universal virtue. Obey what is good and right, not your base animal hedonism. Serve righteousness, morality, virtue – God. Stop making excuses, and start making progress. Stop lying for immediate benefit, and start telling the truth for long-term happiness. Give your children freedom by taking responsibility for everything you have done – and everything you failed to do. Find your soul – and save it. Graduate from self-righteousness to righteousness, the service of virtue, rather than your own ego and vanity. Drop the need to feel right, and pursue the glory of being good.

Perhaps you make it, perhaps you don’t. Perhaps it’s too late – perhaps it isn’t. But if you finally and honorably live the values you have always claimed – that you would do anything for your children – the world will become inestimably better.

Think of all the great souls who have dragged humanity up the thorny cliff-sides of virtue. Think of all the freedoms and opportunities you possess because of their sacrifices. It is better to add to the honor of the species than to exploit the sacrifices of your ancestors. We will all be gone soon enough – the purpose is to be good before we go! Add to the truth of the world, not the hypocrisy that serves only your vanity. Talk to your children – apologize, make restitution – and be better. Morality is empirical, not verbal. Virtue is for living, not talking. If you are not doing good, you are not good.

Stop reading, go act.

https://peacefulparenting.com/