According to Laura Markham, child psychologist and the writer of the book Peaceful Parent, Happy Siblings: How to Stop Fighting and Raise Friends For Life, as forced apologies are doing more harm than good. Because, if you ask your children what they think of the practice, they will be the 1st to tell you it’s meaningless:
“When I’m mad, I hate apologizing. It just makes me madder.”
“I don’t like it when my brother apologizes to me when my parents make him do it because he acts like he doesn’t even mean it. It makes me mad all over again.”
“It’s lying to apologize when you don’t mean it.”
Because the word “I am sorry” is not enough until it doesn’t feel sorry from your heart. When you force the kid to say sorry, he will tell sorry without knowing they actual importance of this word.
1.Focus your kid on helping children communicate rather than on the ritual of apology.
Markham wrote in her book.”If you follow the practices of helping children express their wants and needs, listen to each other, and restate what they heard their sibling say, children will begin to heal their conflicts at a deeper level, so that apologies often become almost superfluous, just as with adults,”
2.Wait until his anger has subsided.
Anger is the biggest enemy of the man anger effects on the senses, so first you should wait until the anger subsides then start talking your kid and make his mind feel sorry from inside. Then you can tell him that if he thinks that he is wrong, and he want to say sorry then he must do it. But with kid’s own wish.
3.Empower your children to “repair things” on their own.
Sorry doesn’t enough most of the time, for example if a kid breaks the toy of his sibling or friend. Instead of forcing him to say sorry it’s a better idea to tell him to repair this toy. While repairing the toy, he will get a lesson that it’s easy to break the things but there repairing is not as easy.
4.Lead by example with all future interactions.
Markham wrote in her book “Children learn from us how to repair relationship ruptures,” so it is up to you be sure your apologies are sincere that you aren’t mindlessly, and thus meaninglessly, blurt out those two important words yourselves.
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