Do You Have To Teach Your Kids To Say They Are Sorry?
Parents need to know that saying “sorry” is part and parcel of teaching our children manners. If we want our children to get along with others we need to help them find ways to make amends for their mistakes and misdeeds.
Children need to learn the art of apology to help them throughout life. Friends can make up when one says they are sorry. If you bump into someone on the street we are socially obligated to say sorry. Apologizing is a way to be courteous, show respect to others, be socially responsible and to demonstrate accountability for our actions.
It sounds so simple. So what is the problem? Many parents force their children to say they are sorry when they really aren’t. Parents can be uncomfortable when their child does something wrong. They may feel social pressure to make their child say they are sorry. Many parenting experts feel strongly about this. They claim forcing children to apologize teaches children to be insincere. Some even consider it teaching children to lie. That is because children are usually not sorry for their behavior. Sometimes they are too angry to care. Often times they do feel bad about what they did. Then parents over react and children are placed in a situation where they act defensively and misbehave even more.
Sometime children will also use the word sorry in manipulative way. Instead of reflecting on their negative behavior and finding ways to improve they use it to get out of trouble. They learn that saying “I’m sorry” works to get parents off their backs.
We want to teach our children the social niceties of saying they are sorry, so they have the skills they need to make it in society. We also want to teach them to be sincere. Sometimes a parent’s embarrassment over their child’s behavior causes them to act more strictly than they should. We should know that better than forcing a sorry we want children to show that they are sorry for what they have done. We want to help them repair the damage they may have inflicted on others. We want them to recognize that saying they are sorry means that they regret what they have done because they have hurt another human being.
