My wife has an annoying habit which has rubbed onto to my 7 year old. She will never accept responsibility for anything and always comes out with an excuse. I'll give an extreme example to show the kind of thing:
Me: "You left the gas on"
Her: "Yeah well I was in a rush"
So now my son is doing it eg he hits his little sister, then when I tell him off says eg "yesh well she didn't share the toy". In his mind, as long as he has some one liner excuse, all is ok. I suppose its like a mad adult that punches someone in the street and says 'he looked at me funny", as if that makes it ok.
The wife wont change, this trait is one of the reasons I'm divorcing her. The question is how to teach my son this is a bad quality and "excuses" are not a free pass to do bad things, when his mum, who he obviously looks up to, does it? How to teach this without bad mouthing her. Is it possible?