The Magic Apology

When Parents Make Mistakes: The Power of Apology

Within the emotionally healthy family framework, there are 3 steps to healthy emotion regulation:

🌱 Identify your emotion

🌱 Validate and experience your emotion

🌱 Choose a behavioral response that aligns with your goals and values

Indeed, when we're at our best, and everything is working as it should, we can take those feelings of frustration, acknowledge them, take a deep breath, and calmly ask our child to put their shoes on—again.

However, when we're out of time in the middle of the morning chaos, sometimes those words don't come out calmly with "please" and "thank you". Sometimes we match our actions to our feelings instead of our values. Sometimes we yell. Sometimes our words aren't kind. Sometimes we make mistakes...

Parenting Isn't Perfect

Parenting isn't a zero-sum game. It's not black or white. We're not on the wagon or off the wagon. Yet sometimes we talk to ourselves as if it is. When we do make mistakes, often we'll go to the place of self-blame and criticism:

😣"I'm such a bad mom"

😣"I should be able to get my kids out of the door without yelling"

😣"My kids deserve better than me"

This path can lead to feeling hopeless and defeated. Instead of shame and self-deprecation, I encourage you to find resilience through repair.

What a Good Apology Looks Like

The main aim with an apology is to zero in on the behavior you regret, take accountability for it, and make a plan for the future. Let's look at an example:

Find a calm time, later after the event, and say:

"Hey, I want to talk to you about what happened this morning. How I acted wasn't okay. It wasn't okay for me to raise my voice and yell. I'm sorry that I did that. I'm working on a plan to give us more time in the morning, which will help us not be in this situation again, and if we find ourselves here again, I'm working on keeping my voice calm and quieter."

Often times parents feel conflicted about apologizing because they believe their child's behavior wasn't okay and by apologizing, their child will lose sight of this. This is a key feature of the repair. You can maintain your perspective on the situation while still taking responsibility and accountability for your own behavior. Let's go back to the example:

"Also, it wasn't okay that you didn't put your shoes on when I asked. That's something I need you to work on too. Can we both agree to work on these things together?"

Small Words, Big Lessons

It can be hard to know what to do with hurt feelings. When we've done something that conflicts with our values, the shame and guilt can feel intolerable. Often we don't even want to acknowledge our wrong-doing to ourselves, let alone someone else. It can be tempting to become defensive or avoid talking about it all together and move on like nothing ever happened…

Apologies help our children

✨ They validate our kids' hurt feelings and let them know that we don't think what happened was okay. If we pretend that nothing happened or try to justify our behaviors, this can send the wrong message, communicating that the infracting behaviors are acceptable or their hurt feelings were somehow wrong.

✨Apologies model and allow our children to practice the process of being hurt by someone and then moving into forgiveness and then reconciliation.

✨In this age of ghosting, it's important to teach and model healthy skills for navigating conflict. Our kids need to learn skills for addressing problems and setting things right again. 

It's not enough to just ask our children to apologize. In order for them to really learn how to do this, they need to see us do it too.

How to Respond to an Apology

You may have noticed that these days, the most common responses to an apology are:

❌"No problem!”

❌"No worries!"

❌"It's okay!"

Sitting with hurt feelings can be so uncomfortable, sometimes all we want to do is alleviate everyone's distress and make it go away. These responses all suggest that the behavior wasn't a problem in the first place…but it was.

I propose that families develop a habit of instead saying, "thank you" in response to an apology. The truth is, the behavior was potentially hurtful. 

By saying "no problem," we're invalidating this—saying, “your behavior was not a problem.” 

But by saying "thank you," we're acknowledging "yes, your behavior was hurtful, thank you for recognizing and taking responsibility for that." 

It's a much more powerful stance to forgive and move on with acknowledgment of a hurt, rather than denying there was ever a problem to begin with.

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

The final step of an apology is behavior change. Although there is no limit on apologies and forgiveness, apologies need to come with action items—otherwise your words risk losing credibility. No one is expected to be perfect, and sometimes the best-laid plans fail, but it's important for the other person to see that you're making an effort to change—even if that effort needs to be said aloud.

Food for Thought...

Apologizing can be incredibly powerful for our children. I talk to so many parents who worry about hurting their children. Sometimes parents have painful memories of their parents from their own childhood and spend their adult years striving to be the opposite. When mistakes happen, they can be even more painful because they re-ignite the fear, "I'm just like my mom." Making repairs can be a powerful tool to break this chain.

I often talk to parents whose life's work has become not being like their own parent. When they tell me stories of how their parent hurt them and was unkind, I always ask—"did they ever apologize?" The answer is always "no." Making repairs may be the best way to define your own parenting identity.