You’ll Be Sorry – Children and Apologies
Parenting can be a humbling and embarrassing experience, especially when we find ourselves at the mercy of our children’s guilelessness. Young children say and do what they feel. While this instinct is endearing, even admirable, it can also be a bit awkward in the moment when, for example, our daughter spots a topless man in the market and shouts, “He’s so hairy!” (Of course, he may have deserved that, and we do hope he’ll wear a shirt next time.)
The most dreaded embarrassment parents face is when their child, purposely or accidentally, hurts another child. Naturally, we are mortified, and our children pick up on our intense dismay before they even have the chance to feel their own response. Then we become desperate for our child to say, “I’m sorry.” We rely on those two words to resolve the situation and help us save face with the other parent.
But our child is bewildered. How did moving that boy out of the way make him fall?
Children do not instantly absorb a situation or respond automatically as adults do. They take a little longer to digest an experience and process it. Our child is just beginning to put together what has happened, when suddenly she is enveloped in the enormous pressure emanating from her mom. “Tell the boy you’re sorry,” Mom says in a tone that makes the girl most uncomfortable. She wants to please, but forcing the words would feel completely false, and faking emotion does not come naturally to a child. It is learned.
Over the years I have heard many of these forced apologies. I understand the parent’s need for them, but I have to admit they always make me squirm. To truly apologize requires empathy, and empathy develops in its own way and time, at a different pace for each child. So, often the child is not developmentally ready to understand, much less own the words she’s saying.
What worries me most is the child who, because his caregiver has pushed him to always say ‘sorry,’ receives the message that apologizing fixes everything. He punches another child, but as long as he says, “I’m sorry,“ he’s excused and can move on, or even do it again. We are wrong to believe we teach empathy by forcing an insincere apology.
So, what do we do when our child hurts someone?
If a child has a tendency to act out with other children when he is tired or frustrated, we should be close by to intervene before another child is hurt. We might say firmly, “I won’t let you hit,“ then create a physical boundary between the children with our hand. Or we may have to restrain our child to stop him. If we are too late and a child is hurt, we should apologize profusely to the injured child and his parents and then remove our child immediately from the situation – it’s time to go home. Generally, when young children deliberately misbehave, they are signaling that they feel ‘out of control’ and need intervention. They cannot be expected to turn on a dime, compose themselves and express regret.
If our child is old enough to understand apologies and hurts another by accident, it is still best not to direct the child to respond. Better to acknowledge the situation, wait, and then model the behavior we want our child to emulate, as the mother did in this example from my Comments section:
…I went to the little boy, and his mom said he just had stitches removed where he got kicked. I said to him, “Ouch, I’m sorry that Hope dropped her shoe on your scar. I can understand that is a super sensitive spot. ” Meanwhile, he is showing me the spot and I say that “I see it”. My daughter dries her tears and walks over to him and finally says her honest, quiet and beautiful “I’m sorry”.
In some instances, there are better ways to make amends than apologizing, and when trusted to respond naturally, children will come up with these sincere gestures on their own. The boy who pats his opponent on the back when they collide on the soccer field, the toddler who offers a toy to a crying child, and the daughter who reaches for a towel to wipe up the spilled juice are all acting out of authentic empathy.
If we want our child to express an honest apology, we must be patient and not push. ‘Hi’, ‘goodbye’, ‘share!’ and ‘thank you’ are all loaded words for toddlers when parents demand them, but ‘I’m sorry’ takes the cake when it comes to parental expectations. Since our goal is for our child to make amends for his misdeeds because he genuinely regrets them, we must trust him to find the words in time.
We are powerful examples for our children of all that is human. We teach “I’m sorry” best by modeling it. Children need to hear us apologize to others, and also to them. They need to know that human beings are not perfect. When we say to our child, “I’m sorry, I made a mistake,” we give the child permission to make mistakes too.
While we are modeling apologies, our children will teach us again and again about forgiveness. Implicitly understanding the errors of their peers, children usually forgive immediately and return to playing together. We must grant our children that same compassion. By trusting our children to develop authentic social responses, we give them the self-confidence to be the sensitive and deeply caring human beings we hope they will become.
“Respect the child. Be not too much his parent, but also his pupil…” –Ralph Waldo Emerson
For more about children and social learning, please read Hi, Bye and Thank You, and The S Word.
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Wonderful article Janet, and I am a steadfast believer that a child, of any age, must understand his or her transgressions before he or she can take responsibility for them. Many years ago when my son was about twelve or so, four of us were walking back to my house after having pizza. Along with he and I, was my girlfriend and her four year old girl. I put my son in charge of caring for the little girl during the walk back. When the little girl made an abrupt gesture toward the street, I jumped in and grabbed her. My son wasn’t happy that I took over, but I explained to him that the little girl depended on him to keep her safe, and his hesitation risked her safety. After some dialogue he understood, and I don’t regret having put him in charge. Today at twenty-four, he is incredible with watching out for others, young or old. He has developed and continuing to develop his sense of awareness and foresight. All too often as you point out, we take for granted children should have our knowledge, but they don’t. It is up to us, the parents and other role models to “teach” not just expect.
If I thought I could make it happen, I would love to send a young mother to you for education. Perhaps sometime in future, but I think she would take away a fresh understanding of parenting. I think your opinions, style and delivery are exceptional, as I’m sure all your students agree.
Wishing you well and continued success,
Ed
This is a really great article. Your advice about dealing with a child who hurts another sounds wonderfully sympathetic to all concerned. I received similar advice when my son was pushing kids around and it was extremely effective – he doesn’t do it at all now.
joanna and Ed, thank you both for your thoughtful comments! And Ed, thank you for sharing your lovely story…and for your wonderful support!
i love this.g
I squirm, too, upon witnessing a forced apology, Janet. Somehow that distorts the meaning of ‘apology’ to the child.
So many mitigating factors as to how to teach a child the concept of apology – with the child’s age being primary. What a parent models for a 3-yr-old is not best for a 6-year-old.
Barbara, I would love to hear more of your thoughts about modeling apologies in an age appropriate way.
since i work in a class setting i work on teaching empathy by comforting the injuried party and by having the child who did the hurting listen to us talk about how it felt and pointing out the tears and sad face, it seems to be working i do have an empathic little group in our room. i have had people come into the room who have attempted to force an “I’m sorry” but see do not see it serving any purpose when the child isn’t really sorry that it hurt the other child because they had “their” bike. i do model an “i am sorry” when it is an accidental incident.
Kimberly, great advice! I work in a group setting as well, and I explain to the children that when we hurt someone (accidental or not), it is our responsibility to try to make them feel better. So I encourage the child involved to ask the injured child, “What can I do to make you feel better?” Sometimes the injured child will request a hug, a soft touch, or may even just want to be left alone. We never force an apology, but often times the children will spontaneously offer up an “I’m sorry” as a genuine show of regret or an attempt to make the other child feel better.
Lovely. Thanks!
I just found your website and I love it! I love your incredibly balanced approach and the reminders that our kids are people too, that that they have opinions need to be treated as such!
I have a question along these lines, and perhaps you’ve already covered it in another place (I’m sorry if you have!). What about thanking people for things? You know the prompt “what do you say?”. Is this kind of prompting OK? My wife and I are gracious and thankful people, so I’m not concerned about our ability to role model this kind of behaviour for our kids.
I’ve noticed that kids often WON’T say thank you, because they don’t think of it, and often need to be prompted. I was prompted *a lot* as a kid, and I think it made me stop and think about why I was saying “thank you”.
I’m curious of your opinion on this! Thanks!
Beautiful, Janet- thank you.
Thanks, Aunt Annie!
I use the Responsive Classroom model in my kindergarten classroom and something I use very effectively is called an Apology of Action.
Here’s how it works in a nutshell. Saying “I’m sorry” is just the start. It really isn’t enough. You have to DO something to SHOW you are sorry. Say something mean – do something nice – draw a picture, offer to play a game, etc. Break my Legos – help me fix them. You get the idea. The apology STARTS with saying “I’m sorry” but ends with the offender fixing it.
I am curious what happens if the child isn’t sorry. Normally, I don’t push apologies but one day I was caught out and felt embarrassed so I pushed. My 4 year old looked at me bewildered and said, “But I am NOT sorry.” She wasn’t. She had not developed empathy to show the “proper” response in that situation. I thought she had a valid point.
Karen, I’d like to know more about what happened. Do you think it was really a lack of empathy or just a different perception of the situation?
Thank you for this fantastic post and strategies on how to help our babes (mine at least) reach an understanding of an apology that is indeed honest and authentic and not forced. Appreciate the tools to help on this journey…..to enable my babes to be the best they can be with the strategies on board
Loved this post. I agree 100%. I was wondering what your advice would be on how to react if it is your child the other parent is forcing their child to apologize to. (i.e. the victim of a shove or toddler hit).
Hi Emily! I’d take your cues from your child’s reaction, which might mean comforting your child or just acknowledging the situation… Then, during the “apology”, I’d just stay quiet and allow your child to absorb the situation. Maybe reflect about it later when you are alone together. Children sense falseness a mile away, so I wouldn’t worry about your child being influenced by that.
Thank you!
Am I the only one that strongly disagrees? Admittedly, my child is still too young for apologies (13 mos old), but he has been deliberately hit (with a glass bottle on his head!) by an older child who was not forced to apologize by his parents and I was absolutely horrified! I’m sorry, but children are children – it is our responsibility to teach them, not to simply “model” behavior and hope they discover things for themselves (as important as being a good role model is!) As an attachment parent myself, I understand wanting a gentle approach to parenting, but I honestly think this is a step too far. I certainly don’t want undisciplined children with no manners playing with (and hitting) my child with no consequences whatsoever. It frightens me that this is the new trend in parenting.
Vanessa, that sounds horrible… and unusual. There are obviously some serious issues going on there. Would a forced, insincere apology have made you or your child feel better?
“it is our responsibility to teach them, not to simply “model” behavior and hope they discover things for themselves (as important as being a good role model is!)”
We can certainly teach children to mimic our responses, but the only way we can teach true empathy, compassion and regret is through modeling…and trust in the innate goodness of our children. The child who hit your baby is not being respected and trusted, I can assure you. If you have other ideas about how to teach children these things, I’m totally open to hearing them!
I agree. I’ve noticed a trend in the parenting in my community that really lets the children lead the way a little too much. Incidents like the one Vanessa mentioned are actually very common. Sometimes children just don’t feel empathy- but that doesn’t mean they don’t need to be encouraged and educated on how to respond after making a mistake (hurting another child or loosing their temper). I have been around several children whose parents just model and don’t give their children the words to use and some of these kids are very hard for anyone, including other children, to want to be around. A half hearted apology can be better than nothing.
You are totally right that kids need to learn and develop empathy. My kids all have great empathy but i find other kids are often aggressive, often not properly supervised and have poor levels of empathy. The perpetrator is often not bad, just lacking in understanding of their impact on others. I think i went so far in building empathy and sensitivity in my children that now they dont understand when others dont behave the same. So I have started teaching my kids basic assertiveness. Saying things like
NO don’t hit me/ STOP don’t chase me I don’t like it. It’s been amazing to watch my 5 year old go from being terrified of the school bully to teaching her friends to stand up for themselves, and now they are good friends! And the child has learnt not to scare littler children.
Claire, that sounds wonderful! I believe in offering words to toddlers (like, “you can say “no, I’m using that’) and other tools (like, “you can move away”). It’s especially helpful to give them this support during the exchange with the other child, or right after.
I’m not sure that empathy is the right term here. Empathy is about being able to identify with others’ feelings and having compassion for them – like a child who sees a family on the news that lost their home in a fire and collects toys, food, or clothing to send to them. An apology is more about remorse than about empathy. You don’t have to be able to empathize in order to apologize – my husband has apologized dozens of times for hurting my feelings (he was genuinely sorry I was hurt!) without having a clue why they were hurt. My husband sees the world differently. He will never truly understand and empathize with many of my feelings or reactions to things in life, but that doesn’t prevent him from being capable of apology. (although, yes, to a certain degree, he has to be capable of understanding what it is to have hurt feelings, so that is empathy, in part..)
With children, I do think it is a bit different, though. I don’t believe that children are inherently good. If people were inherently good, there would be no evil in the world. Children, like all people, have both good and bad traits, desires, thoughts, impulses. Our job as parents is to encourage the good and teach them to refrain from the bad. There has to be both positive reinforcement AND correction of negative behavior in order for children to grow up to be productive adults capable of self-discipline.
Children need boundaries. They need to understand that certain behaviors will result in corrective discipline and that there are ways to act in society that are right (being polite, saying please, thank you, I’m sorry) and that are wrong (throwing temper tantrums, lashing out, biting, hitting, etc.). A child is not on a path of self-discovery that ends up in flowers, and rainbows, and happiness, and good behavior. These things don’t just happen naturally by themselves. I most definitely advocate positive, gentle, nurturing, encouraging parenting – but never to the point of complete absence of some rules, boundaries, discipline, and correction.
And yes, a forced, insincere apology would have made me feel better, because it would have shown me that at least the parent was trying to teach their child proper ways to interact with others. What happened was “do you want to apologize?” “NO!!!!!” “ok, then. Well, next time we shouldn’t hit, ok?”. What exactly was learned from this exchange? That the child can do whatever he wants and there are no consequences..
I definitely don’t have all the answers – I am also just figuring things out as I go. It I feel like everywhere I turn, we are being told to give kids so much freedom in discovering everything for themselves and playing a role in their own development and discipline (by discussing and deciding “together” consequences for things, etc), that I feel it is completely undermining our role and responsibility as parents to raise and train our children. I think that if you don’t want to force your child to apologize, then at least take some form of action – a time-out, a toy taken away, a firm reprimand..
I think that eventually, children will learn how to be appreciative and remorseful. Until then, they should practice saying thank you and I’m sorry…!
You are so right!
Vanessa, I agree wholeheartedly about children needing boundaries (and have written many posts about that, like this one: http://www.janetlansbury.com/2010/04/no-bad-kids-toddler-discipline-without-shame-9-guidelines/ ). The boy in the situation you describe is clearly lacking boundaries, feels an uncomfortable, scary amount of power with his mother and is practically begging for help from her by acting violently. Whether he says “sorry” or not is the least of his worries, in my opinion. This is a sad situation. (Why is he allowed to wander around with a glass bottle?!) You don’t say how old the boy is, so it’s difficult to gauge how much empathy he might be capable of…but I definitely don’t agree with the way the mother handled this. Assuming he was 2 to 4 years old, I would have apologized profusely to you and your daughter, expressed concern for her and done anything I could to help, told my child that it was definitely not okay for him to do that and probably taken him home. I’d feel extreme concern about my son’s behavior and seek guidance.
Empathy begins when children understand that others feel the things they feel. They learn to act with compassion, remorse, etc., when those feelings and responses are modeled for them. Your husband may not completely understand, or share your feelings about a particular situation, but he does understand that you are hurt or angry and he knows what hurt and angry feel like, so he feels sincere regret and apologizes. If he was just parroting empty words to you, I doubt it would make you feel better. Well, that wouldn’t make me feel better.
The key is understanding what our parenting goals are… If our hope is to raise children who are genuinely kind, well-mannered, sincere and authentic, I can 100% guarantee you that commanding a toddler to mimic words is not the way to do that. Neither are time-outs, punishments, physical or verbal abuse. One of the big problems with doing those things is that they erode the relationship of trust between the child and parent, which makes children feel less secure, less competent and therefore less inclined to act with compassion.
I guess that if we can’t view our children as inherently good, we aren’t ever going to be able to trust them to do what’s right. That is a shame, because without feeling trusted our children can’t gain true self-confidence. (I know that Attachment Parenting encompasses a variety of things and is widely interpretated, but not believing children inherently good is the last thing I would expect that philosophy to be about.) YES, children need us to prevent them from doing wrong things and be clear and consistent about our expectations. But without basic trust in them as people, they don’t have much chance of genuinely internalizing our values and getting beyond the parroting stage.
As a man, which I see there are not a lot that frequent this site, I agree with Vanessa – “I’m not sure that empathy is the right term here. Empathy is about being able to identify with others’ feelings and having compassion for them – like a child who sees a family on the news that lost their home in a fire and collects toys, food, or clothing to send to them. *An apology is more about remorse than about empathy.*”
You can easily “create” remorse simply by taking your child to a private area and spanking them (age dependent), explaining to them why an apology is necessary in these situations and that they must do so AND ask for forgiveness. Asking for forgiveness is a separate act. Apology = remorse; Asking forgiveness = empathy
Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.
Also, it frustrating that you are just posturing. You are simply stating your point of view as fact and hoping we’ll agree with you and swallow it whole. You offer no research, no field study of any kind to back up your assertions. When dealing with deep psychological arenas, like how adult empathy is developed in children, or how long it takes children to “absorb” a situation, you should offer up some professional references for your claims that would give us any reason to believe you.
I could just as easily say: Most children absorb situations much faster than their adult counterparts, because their brains are newer, so forcing them to apologize teaches them the best form of empathy.
See how that works? Just saying what I feel, no reason for anyone to believe anything I say.
Again, Vanessa really hits the nail on the head with most of her post, so I won’t repeat the whole thing. But children really aren’t inherently good. Bad behavior MUST be corrected. The only thing Vanessa left out was the spanking.
Wow. I’ll pray for you, sir.