Saying Sorry

[ailbhe]

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.

Comments

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

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.

[ailbhe]

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.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

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. :)