If, during an argument, you impulsively say or do something that hurts your child, it is important to apologize immediately. Do you know how to apologize and make amends? Being human, we all make emotional mistakes and hurt others. But we must learn to recognize what we have done wrong and fix it. To do this, we have to take responsibility, ask for forgiveness, and make amends. This can involve changing our behavior if it hurts someone. These tasks aren’t easy, but if we don’t carry them out, our unacknowledged mistakes will permanently poison our relationships.
Suppose your 15-year-old son grabs the remote control from his six-year-old sister, who is crying because he switched her favorite TV show to his. When you tell him to give it back and let her watch her show, he throws the remote down and storms out of the room, but not before adding insult to injury: “Oh, let the baby have her bottle!”
Now he is angry and so are you. You want him to apologize and call after him, “And don’t you come out of your room until you’re ready to say you’re sorry to your sister!” You want him to express remorse for behaving badly, although you know a forced apology will not mean much. Oh, he’s sorry all right, but not for making his sister cry. So how are you going to mend the relationship if any apology he makes will be insincere? The answer is simple: Don’t go for an apology, go for an actual mend.
Let your son know that before he gets to do anything else that requires your permission, the mending must take place, and it must take place in conversation with you. It is a three-step process. Step one is sensitization. You want him to be emotionally sensitive to how his behavior may have hurt his sister, so you pose a role reversal question. “Suppose you are six and your older brother grabs the remote and changes the channel to the show he wants to watch, and then calls you a hurtful name for acting upset. I want you to tell me three ways you might feel in that situation.”
The goal of sensitization is to create a sense of empathy. Step two is evaluation. You want him to place his behavior in an ethical context, so you pose an examination question. “In your judgment, setting your anger aside, do you believe that the way you treated your sister is okay? If you believe it is okay, give me three reasons why. If you believe it was wrong, give me three reasons why. Then let’s talk about it.” The goal of evaluation is to create a moral framework for his actions.
Step three is reparation. You want to place his behavior in the context of injury given, so you pose a recovery question. “What special act of amends could you make to your sister?” The goal of reparation is atonement. If, as part of the amends, he wants to apologize, that is up to him. But it must be in addition to whatever act of atonement he makes.
Parents often prefer a forced apology to an actual mending because the mending process takes attention and effort that a token apology does not. I believe mending is worth the time it takes because it can teach a valuable lesson about how to recover normal caring after some hurt is given or received, as inevitably happens in all significant relationships. Remember that a child is just an adult in training, and as parents we are preparing that young person to manage later relationships.
Do you want to send a young person out into the world without preparing him to manage the inevitable mistakes he will make in his significant attachments? Parents who neglect this education are often those who expect apologies from others but are constitutionally incapable of making apologies themselves. I am referring here to those parents who can’t admit to or make up for wronging others because they can’t bear being in the wrong.
Parents who are best at teaching children how to mend relationships are those who accept responsibility for their behavior. They can admit that they hurt their child, offer a meaningful apology, expressing authentic sorrow for what they did, and take steps to repair whatever damage has been done. More important, they resolve never to act that way again and they keep that resolution. These are parents who are modeling mending.