A Sincere Apology

All of the neighbor kids were over to our house this morning...there is no sleeping in allowed here :) My daughter had spent the night at one of the neighbor girl's house, so she was feeling a little ornery from lack of sleep.

After playing for a while, my husband and I heard crying coming from my daughter's room. When we went in there, we found a little neighbor boy crying, a neighbor girl comforting him and our daughter hiding in the corner. Oh boy. This is not what a parent wants to find.

So, we asked the little boy and our daughter what had happened to assess the situation. Wonderful...our daughter had kicked the little boy out of frustration. We told the other kids that she wouldn't be able to play for a bit. After the kids left, we told our daughter that she would have to go to time-out for 6 minutes (our kids get 1 minute of timeout for each year of their age).

When her time was up, she came downstairs and we talked about the problem and how we should handle problems. Oh goodness, the tears were streaming :) She had thought about the situation while she was in time out and knew what questions she would be asked in our discussion.

"Mommy, um.....sniff sniff (little boy) was touching my wand that I got from the Princess Ice Capades sniff sniff even though I asked him not to. Then, sniff sniff (neighbor girl) told him that I didn't want him to touch it and he still touched it! So, I kicked him."

"Ok. So, do you think that was the right choice to make?"

"No."

"How else could you have handled that situation?"

"I need to use my words....but mommy I asked him not to touch it and he still did!"

This discussion went on for a few minutes. But, in the end she decided that next time she would come and get myself or daddy when she felt that frustrated.

I went on with my studying and she disappeared upstairs. A few minutes later, she came down and told me she had called (little boy) and told him she was sorry. So, could she go and play with the other kids now? Wow...this is such a proud moment for a parent. I didn't coerce her into making this apology...she had regretted what she had done and decided to do something about this by making a sincere apology to her friend. It's moments like these that remind us that we're doing something right :)

This situation made me think about what makes an apology a sincere apology. If someone demands that you apologize or forces someone to apologize, can it really be sincere? I don't think so. To me, a sincere apology would require a couple of things.

1) The person must regret what they did that caused the other person pain.

2) This regret would inspire the person to apologize to the other person.

If one of these does not exist, I don't think an apology can be sincere. In the first requirement, the absence of regret would indicate that the person would not apologize other than to appease someone else. In the second requirement, coercion from another individual takes away the sincerity even if regret is present. Also, I should note that regret may be present but it may not be for the action that one is being demanded to apolgize for. For example, one may regret that they caused another person pain, but it is being demanded that they apologize for the words they said or actions they took. That person may not regret the words that were said or actions that were taken. Therefore, an apology would not be sincere.

Then the question comes up...should an apology be made if it isn't sincere? I don't think so. An insincere apology does nothing to solve the underlying problem. It is a passive way of dealing with an issue. It would be better to talk about misunderstandings than to bury problems with disingenuous apologies. If I had forced my daughter to apologize rather than let her come to that decision on her own, she wouldn't have understood the purpose of an apology. We don't apologize to make other people happy...we apologize when we truly are distressed about something we have done.