My daughter sent me a “heads up” text the other day. She warned me that my youngest son had been caught cheating in one of his classes and would be receiving a detention.

Heavy sigh.

In my head, I could already “hear” the discussion we were going to have later that night. First, there would be the excuses; he didn’t have time to read the book or the book was boring or he fell asleep before he could finish.

Then he was probably going to blame other people including his father and me for having him in the first place and then actually insisting he get decent grades, the teacher who “doesn’t like him”, and the other kids who were doing it, too.

Finally, he’d likely wrap it up with the classic, “It was a mistake.”

Mistake. It’s a word that’s been in the news a lot lately.

When people say they made a “mistake”, it’s implied that they were absent-minded or they misunderstood the facts or they didn’t know any better or they were swept away with emotion. It’s a word that lessens their responsibility and, since a mistake isn’t intentional, hopefully lessens the consequences.

In reality, most of the time people aren’t making true mistakes; they’re making poor decisions. The decision may have been based on faulty thinking, incorrect information, ignorance, or even emotional stress, but it was still a decision.

As spring turns to summer and our kids join athletic teams, one of the great things to keep in mind about sports is they help teach kids how to make quick decisions under both emotional and physical stress. If a child makes a bad decision in a game, a whistle blows and someone on the field points at them, tells them what they did wrong, and then issues a consequence. Nobody asks why they did it and nobody gives them a free pass. It’s simple, if you do something wrong, mistake or not, you deal with the consequences.

The hard part is taking these lessons from the field and the gym and applying them to the other parts of our life.

American journalist, author, professor, and world peace advocate Norman Cousins once said, “Wisdom consists of the anticipation of consequences.”

When we believe we can avoid consequences by fact stacking, faulty reasoning, poor judgment, or uncontrolled emotions, we never truly learn how to make good decisions. It’s only by the constant and consistent implementation of consequences that we begin to learn that thoughts turn into actions, actions turn into decisions, decisions turn into habits, habits turn into character, and your character is your destiny.

The discussion with my son went better then I thought. We spent time reviewing each small decision he made that led to his final decision to cheat on the quiz. He certainly had lots of excuses but he never once said the words “I made a mistake”. He owned his decision and he accepted the consequences.

I’m hoping the wisdom isn’t too far behind.