ailbhe | Saying Sorry

Saying Sorry

Before I had children - and until Linnea was walking, even - I thought that insisting that children say "sorry" was pointless, at best, and completely devaluing the concept of apology, at worst. I've changed my mind.

I really, really value an apology. Which is not to be confused with the attempts they make to get out of jail free by doing something dreadful and chirping "I sorry now!" with a beaming smile.

So now I make my kids say sorry.

It started with me apologising to them, and on their behalf, a lot. Then I started instructing them to say sorry (I don't ask them unless I'm willing to cheerfully accept a "No," it's bad for my blood pressure to shoot myself in the foot that way). At some point I started adding a sorry-for-what? which means they don't just say Sorry, they say "Sorry, Name, for doing the whatever it was."

If they're not ready to say sorry, they have to go somewhere else until they are ready. Sometimes, they are not ready to accept each others' apologies. That's ok. Saying sorry doesn't make everything better, and it's not supposed to. It's just a first step.

I think arming them with the ability to make a prompt and sincere apology (which is often a difficult thing to do) is a good thing for the rest of their lives. And it makes it much, much easier to live with them. We all apologise a lot. I like that.

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I think arming them with the ability to make a prompt and sincere apology (which is often a difficult thing to do) is a good thing for the rest of their lives.

Even being able to figure out what it is others are asking you to apologize for is a useful skill. (Even if you're not sorry for it, or don't think you should be, acknowledging the issue sometime helps.)

I have developed a deep and abiding loathing for the phrase "love means never having to say you're sorry".

Love means saying you're sorry ALL THE TIME. And meaning it. I learned that lesson late in life, but I've been applying it with a vengeance.

In my family nobody ever says sorry at all, ever. I think it would have been better if someone had taught me the importance of a sincere apology when I was little.

Excuse me, that phrase made my head spin off my neck with rage. I just have to go pick it up again now.

(FUCK. THAT. SHIT.)

OMG yes-o-rama with knobs on!

Thanks for this. I really value apologies too. That became more clear to me the day that my newish stepdaughter, aged about 8, accidentally closed a car hatchback door on my head, and immediately said "It wasn't my fault!" I held my tongue long enough to think it through and calm down, then pointed out that if she had said something like "Oh, I'm sorry! It got away from me!" I would have said "That's okay, it was an accident" and I wouldn't have been angry at all. I did wonder about why she hadn't already learned this from her other parents.

It definitely takes my children longer to apologise after something they've done on purpose, because, well, often, they are not actually sorry. It's easier to apologise for an accident.

And it's good practice.

Yes - it's easier to apologise if you do it a lot. Doesn't affect the sincerity, though.

Hear, hear

We are human and therefore at times we make mistakes and at other times we hurt each other deliberately - both need an "I'm sorry" and it's really difficult for some people to do.

And agreed with the rage about "love means never having to say you're sorry". It means saying it and MEANING it.

Sincerity isn't a limited resource, I find. (The more I give to thee the more I have, etc).

Yes! Saying sorry is important, and takes practice.

Oisín regularly says sorry to me if he does something mean or thoughtless to Fiachra. Generally, I insist he say it to Fiachra (who is often not ready to accept the apology - "Oisín a-push a-meeee!").

Then, today: "Why do footballers not say sorry when they knock each other over?" (No idea where this is coming from; I haven't seen any football with him.) "Is it because they're not going to not do it again?"

Oh, what fun!

I think he's right though.

Apology acceptance isn't something I enforce at all; the wronged party gets wound-licking time. I am sometimes quite explicit when I do this - I say "Thank you for saying sorry, but I am still a bit cross, so I will go and [do this thing] until I feel better and then I will come back and say thank you properly," or similar. Usually I come back and apologise for being cross, then.

I find adults apologise to me for wrongs to my children a lot; Oisín, being five, has a far better excuse! I think Emer does it, too, but I don't take much note of it in a child; sometimes Emer asks me to forward her apology to the intended recipient, and I do that, too. Like asking for things, sometimes the cost is too high and she needs a deputy...

We don't require apology acceptance, but we do require that our kids avoid acting rudely to someone who has sincerely apologized for their actions. If Grace does something to JJ for which she has to apologize, and JJ isn't ready to accept it yet, he may say nothing in reply and hang out with her anyway, or he may go into his own room and play by himself if he doesn't want to be around her at all yet, but he may not stand there and complain about what she did that he didn't like in the first place. More often than not, he's quite happy to accept an apology when it's made, and hug and make up; Grace almost always is.

We grownups always accept the children's apologies because, well, they're children. Accepting grownup apologies or not seems to be, as you say, a matter for when one has healed a bit. We usually distinguish between "Apology accepted," which means "I'm no longer cross and we can be done with this issue," vs. "Thank you for your apology," which is a recognition that it was a good thing to do but not an acceptance yet. I like your very explicit version.

We don't seem to get the stand-around-and-complain thing, though we do of course get the can't-stop-crying-yet thing.

I like explicit social interaction because I can clearly remember finding the unspoken rules frighteningly incomprehensible.

I was raised in New York City. We believe in being explicit there. I never had occasion to find unspoken rules frighteningly incomprehensible, I never saw any. :)

Oh - the other thing I can't stand, as well as not saying sorry when you knock someone down, is saying sorry just because someone is upset and *expecting that to fix things* without understanding the cause or actually making an effort to determine and/or remedy the whatever-it-is. Just the word "Sorry," itself. Yuck. Ow. I hate that. Bandaid.

Especially with exasperated emphasis on the first syllable. Or worse, on each syllable, separately.

I make my kids say sorry because if they are able to focus on not-arguing about what they did enough to apologize for it, I know they've calmed down and are thinking. Grace, especially, takes saying sorry very seriously; she does it when instructed to and sometimes of her own initiative, but always with wide-eyed attentiveness when she does. So if I've got her to the stage of apologizing, I know there will be no further argument, tantrum, etc.; she's actually aware that she shouldn't have done that. Besides, both kids like it when the other apologizes to them, and so it probably saves there from being a lot of fights between them that might otherwise have started.

cflute and I apologize a lot too... to both the children and each other. So they're used to seeing the concept in action that when you've misbehaved to somebody, you say sorry and do so seriously and with meaning.

That's a side-benefit to apologising I hadn't considered, but you're right, once the sincere apology is voiced, there's no more uncontrolled emotions for a bit.

Both of my parents think that I am making a "rod for my own back" because I apologise to my kids if I have shouted, or been otherwise over the top angry with them and it hasn't been their fault. (I don't always apologise if I haven't been over the top and I think that they deserve it.) My parents don't see the difference, I think they are of the opinion that if you admit that you have been wrong, your kids/acquaintances/enemies will take from that that you are always wrong.
Hah. I have more faith in my children's intelligence.

Er, yeah, because your children will be much better off if they believe you are infallible in ways they can never attain. Er.

My little one just randomly started copying me one day. When I accidently walk infront of folks out and about shopping etc, I say sorry, and noticed him doing the same thing a few months back. Since then I've been attempting to encourage him to say sorry, rather than instructing, he does and it's lovely, but I do sometimes wonder if he thinks it's a quick fix.

That worked well for me for the first one, until the second one came along, because the inter-child dynamics were... different.

Having to say we're sorry ourselves quickly became a big part of Jason's and my child-rearing - how can we expect behavior we don't exhibit? (We still talk to Henry often about how it isn't always easy for us, either, to apologise, but still necessary.)

I didn't realise how little we said "Please" and "Thanks you" until Linnea started talking; it wasn't part of Rob's normal conversation at all, and I'd sort of dropped it in sympathy, or something. We put it back in pronto!

Makes perfect sense to me! It's often hard to say sorry and therefore it's good to practise when young as we all do things wrong and sincere apologies make the world go round - and, from a selfish point of view, it makes your life a lot easier if you know when to chip in with a loud and sincere "I messed up".

Oops - - forgot to say, that was me, Daphne, who always forgets that your website doesn't know who I am! (makes me sound like the Queen! "Don't you know who I am?")

Sounds like a good plan!

I think you're right - right that saying sorry is important and right to place the emphasis on the how and the why and the what for instead of just the word.

I think adults are actually very bad at saying "sorry" and also "my fault". Perhaps human beings just don't want to be wrong. But it puzzles me why we're not better at understanding that admitting our mistakes makes us more right than not.

I think adults are bad at saying sorry because traditionally children are made to say sorry and adults don't apologise to them. I remember both teachers from my 14 years in the school system who apologised to me. They were unusual creatures, those. Some parents don't apologise to their children much, either. Bosses don't apologise to minions. It's a power thing.

Power means never having to say you're sorry.

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Saying Sorry

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Saying Sorry

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