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Key points
- “Go apologize to your brother! Right now!” is a poor template for teaching kids about accountability.
- Kids love it when their parents apologize because it is often one of few acts of genuine grace and respect.
- When we apologize graciously for our mistakes, we invite others into a different relational world.
I hear this all the time from my adolescent therapy clients: “My dad has never apologized for anything. He believes he’s never wrong.”
They’ve given examples that make me scratch my head because the dads look more ridiculous in their insistence than they ever would have simply saying they were wrong.
Not that anyone actually looks ridiculous just because they’re wrong about something. Why would anyone hold themselves to a standard of recall that requires them to have encoded every bit of information ever received? (“Your seventh-grade math teacher’s name was Ms. Blunt. I remember!” “Mom, it was Ms. Blayne. It says it right here…” “Oh, well, I’m sure you had a teacher named Ms. Blunt somewhere in middle school” rather than “Omigod, you’re right!”)
And then, to complicate matters, there’s the issue of perception. Just because a memory is encoded doesn’t mean it’s encoded “correctly.” Each one of us has a bazillion filters that cause us to remember something as better than what might have happened, or worse, or simply differently so that what looked like XYZ to me can look like XZY to you.
Adults will give all kinds of excuses for why they don’t apologize but few will articulate what I believe is the operative dynamic. Apologizing, in theory, is an act of submission. I don’t see it that way, but the Merriam-Webster dictionary does, and so do most people: A person yields to a superior force or the authority of another person. If you are an authoritarian type of parent or personality, or even someone who experiences shame over being wrong or feels that another person will exploit your “surrender” and belittle you (especially if that other person is your 13-year-old son), then apologizing will never feel like the gracious, generous act that it can be.
I think we go about teaching/instructing/coaching kids about apologizing all wrong in this country. “Go apologize to your brother! Right now!” is a poor template for teaching kids about answering for their behavior and being good citizens of the family. Forced apologies also take away the element of choice, and it’s in a person’s choice to apologize that both genuine accountability and remorse are expressed.
But apologizing as a gracious, generous act? Sure. The problem is that people generally equate apologizing with having lost something—their pride maybe, or the contest about who was right and who was wrong. That feels bad.
If you can exit that framework, however, and think of apologizing as a gift you give someone, something of yourself that will make them feel better without taking anything away from you—because it really doesn’t—it becomes something else entirely, something that actually feels good to do.
To wit—apologies that are offered in a spirit of abundance, as in, I feel good enough about who I am and about how I hold myself accountable for the impact of my choices on others that I can afford to extend this gesture of respect at no expense to me. In fact, doing so makes me feel better, bigger. This is worlds apart from the hangdog admission of guilt typically proffered, the kind that leaves some people feeling, somehow, "less than."
Kids love it when their parents apologize to them, and not because they’re thinking that they won and their parents lost. They love it because, frequently, it is often one of too few acts of genuine grace and respect expressed within families. It underscores that hierarchy, age, title, or professional standing have no bearing on whether or not a parent holds herself accountable for her actions; apologies are equal opportunity concessions of error, and no one is above that.
How do we teach this different way of thinking about and experiencing apologies? By being it, modeling it, talking about it wherever and with whomever possible—our kids, our own parents, colleagues, friends, coaches, the guy who repairs your car, the customer service lady on the other end of the phone. When we respond to our own errors of judgment or behavior with generous expressions of regret, we invite others into a different relational world in which the dynamics between people regarding personal strength, credibility, and honor are altered. But before you can be it and model it, you have to believe it—easier said than done in our competitive culture that prizes those who represent everything bigger, faster, louder, and mightier, characteristics that don’t often lend themselves to humbling grace and expressions of care.
Mahatma Gandhi urged us to be the change we want to see in the world. In the abstract, it’s hard to know just how to apply his counsel. But in the smaller details of everyday life, such as offering a heartfelt apology, opportunities present themselves to show up differently. And there, more than anywhere, a little does a lot.
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