A Question of "Sorry"
Wednesday, April 8, 2009 by Amy
Yesterday, Riley walked past the monkey bars at school, in a wide enough berth that she should have been safe. But the girl on the monkey bars turned sideways and kicked Riley full in the mouth. Riley of course screams and cries and her lip was busted. Not a really big problem, in truth, since accidents happen, and it wasn't intentional or malicious. But the girl didn't say sorry. This upset Riley a great deal. She was heartbroken that a girl she has gone to school with for three years didn't care enough about her to say sorry. I know this is a big debate in the parenting community, and I'm not sure where I stand on it, but here goes...
It seems that a lot of parenting decisions are quite ego-centric. We think about what is best for our child alone and not what's good for the community as a whole. I find it strange that these philosophies are most predominant in "hippie" natural parenting "communities." How hypocritical that we teach non-violence, diversity, and tolerance in the same community that we allow our children to be grossly inconsiderate and self-centered. It is rare that your particular child is the only one impacted in a situation. If you don't want to teach your son not to play with his penis in public, fine, but for the love of god, don't let him touch the apples in the grocery store. I don't want to wonder if I got the penis apple when I get home. But it's not about ME, is it? It's about your precious little son alone, and no one else. It's always about YOUR CHILD, isn't it? Who cares that someone eats his penis apple? It's all about his fragile little ego and avoidance of body shame. Wah wah wah.
In truth, I've had a child commit a mild infraction upon one of my children quite often in public, and it always makes me uncomfortable when a parent forces their child to say "sorry." It's like "say sorry, Johnny. Say sorry to the little girl. Johnny, say sorry! SAY SORRY NOW!!!" If I'm really lucky I'll get to see the parent spank the child for not saying sorry. What's up with that? It is obvious that the child is not sorry and that the opportunity to say sorry has clearly passed. Usually it's not even something that warrants an apology. How weird. Oddly enough, sometimes the child is altogether too young to even form the word "sorry." Wackos.
Which leads me to wonder, how sorry does a person have to be to SAY sorry? I guess people have different thresholds of "sorryness." I say say sorry, please, and thank you way too much. I've been asked on multiple occasions if I went to Catholic school, since I obviously have a "Catholic sense of guilt." Whatever that means. I mean, on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being that you just realized that your slow-moving children are blocking other people on the sidewalk, and 10 being you just ran over someone's dog in front of all five of their children, where on the scale are you sorry enough to SAY sorry? For me, it's 1. But because I actually AM sorry. No, I won't go to confession over it, and I won't lose sleep over it, or make a blood sacrifice, but I am still sorry. So I say it. Perhaps some people only say sorry between 5 and 10 on the scale. I don't know.
There are also many times in life when we have to do things to make other people happy, or make them feel better. Those who say they don't are liars. We all do it. We say "sorry" in order to avoid a fight, or because we're sorry that someone was hurt by what we said or did although we don't regret doing or saying it. You know? Sometimes Rudi is a jackass, so I tell him he's being a jackass. Turns out, he really doesn't like being called a jackass. I say sorry that he was hurt, although I still feel like he was being a jackass. I see no benefit to sheltering my children from the intricacies of human interaction.
Now, I don't force or coach my kids into saying sorry. That just seems obscene to me. See, I'm conflicted...
But it's not really about the sorry. It's about why was this child NOT sorry. The word is secondary, and not really important in and of itself. She could have shown "sorryness" in another way. Making sure that Riley was okay, etc. But she did NOTHING. In the end, the the child may or may not have been sorry, I really don't give a flying turd, but to Riley that simple "sorry" would have meant a lot, heartfelt or not. Had I posted this story on MDC, some sappy mother would have posted that maybe the child WAS sorry, just didn't show it and who am I to say that she wasn't really sorry blah blah blah. Because that doesn't count. If someone told me that they were a doctor inside their own head and may they please operate on my child...you get the idea. I don't care how the girl FELT, honestly, if she was internally tormented. I care about my child with blood coming out of her mouth. Maybe I'M the one being ego-centric. I mean, how dare I not show compassion for the physically whole uninjured child who may or may not be emotionally conflicted? I guess I'm just SO wrong to show compassion for the child who is bleeding from the mouth and, more than that, is most injured by the fact that her "friend" doesn't care enough to say sorry. I guess I flunk MDC. Oh well...
It seems that a lot of parenting decisions are quite ego-centric. We think about what is best for our child alone and not what's good for the community as a whole. I find it strange that these philosophies are most predominant in "hippie" natural parenting "communities." How hypocritical that we teach non-violence, diversity, and tolerance in the same community that we allow our children to be grossly inconsiderate and self-centered. It is rare that your particular child is the only one impacted in a situation. If you don't want to teach your son not to play with his penis in public, fine, but for the love of god, don't let him touch the apples in the grocery store. I don't want to wonder if I got the penis apple when I get home. But it's not about ME, is it? It's about your precious little son alone, and no one else. It's always about YOUR CHILD, isn't it? Who cares that someone eats his penis apple? It's all about his fragile little ego and avoidance of body shame. Wah wah wah.
In truth, I've had a child commit a mild infraction upon one of my children quite often in public, and it always makes me uncomfortable when a parent forces their child to say "sorry." It's like "say sorry, Johnny. Say sorry to the little girl. Johnny, say sorry! SAY SORRY NOW!!!" If I'm really lucky I'll get to see the parent spank the child for not saying sorry. What's up with that? It is obvious that the child is not sorry and that the opportunity to say sorry has clearly passed. Usually it's not even something that warrants an apology. How weird. Oddly enough, sometimes the child is altogether too young to even form the word "sorry." Wackos.
Which leads me to wonder, how sorry does a person have to be to SAY sorry? I guess people have different thresholds of "sorryness." I say say sorry, please, and thank you way too much. I've been asked on multiple occasions if I went to Catholic school, since I obviously have a "Catholic sense of guilt." Whatever that means. I mean, on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being that you just realized that your slow-moving children are blocking other people on the sidewalk, and 10 being you just ran over someone's dog in front of all five of their children, where on the scale are you sorry enough to SAY sorry? For me, it's 1. But because I actually AM sorry. No, I won't go to confession over it, and I won't lose sleep over it, or make a blood sacrifice, but I am still sorry. So I say it. Perhaps some people only say sorry between 5 and 10 on the scale. I don't know.
There are also many times in life when we have to do things to make other people happy, or make them feel better. Those who say they don't are liars. We all do it. We say "sorry" in order to avoid a fight, or because we're sorry that someone was hurt by what we said or did although we don't regret doing or saying it. You know? Sometimes Rudi is a jackass, so I tell him he's being a jackass. Turns out, he really doesn't like being called a jackass. I say sorry that he was hurt, although I still feel like he was being a jackass. I see no benefit to sheltering my children from the intricacies of human interaction.
Now, I don't force or coach my kids into saying sorry. That just seems obscene to me. See, I'm conflicted...
But it's not really about the sorry. It's about why was this child NOT sorry. The word is secondary, and not really important in and of itself. She could have shown "sorryness" in another way. Making sure that Riley was okay, etc. But she did NOTHING. In the end, the the child may or may not have been sorry, I really don't give a flying turd, but to Riley that simple "sorry" would have meant a lot, heartfelt or not. Had I posted this story on MDC, some sappy mother would have posted that maybe the child WAS sorry, just didn't show it and who am I to say that she wasn't really sorry blah blah blah. Because that doesn't count. If someone told me that they were a doctor inside their own head and may they please operate on my child...you get the idea. I don't care how the girl FELT, honestly, if she was internally tormented. I care about my child with blood coming out of her mouth. Maybe I'M the one being ego-centric. I mean, how dare I not show compassion for the physically whole uninjured child who may or may not be emotionally conflicted? I guess I'm just SO wrong to show compassion for the child who is bleeding from the mouth and, more than that, is most injured by the fact that her "friend" doesn't care enough to say sorry. I guess I flunk MDC. Oh well...
I would totally flunk MDC too!
Penis apple? Seriously? Some of the pictures you put in my mind, I swear. :)
I have to say that I enjoyed writing "penis apple" and tried to think of an excuse to use it one more time. Penis apple.
'Sorry' and 'Sharing': the two holy grails of parenting!
I am sometimes conflicted about the message I give my children in these situations. There's a fine line between thinking of other's feelings and standing up for your own. And if adults don't even know where the line is, how in the hell can we expect our kids to know?
Of course, sometimes the line is about as obvious as the color of the sky...and both parties still walk away feeling wronged and/or self-righteously smug about the impeccable manners of their child!
Penis apple. Great, can't WAIT for the next trip to the grocery store.
Oh, sharing. Don't get me started on that one!
I think the problem arises when people don't realize that sorry can be said out of compassion not out of a sense of wrong-doing. It aggravates me when one of Riley's toy is found broken in the street and all the kids say "I didn't do it!" Seriously? Are we raising our children to think of only themselves?
Again, I don't know the answer to this one. But I do know that when a child hurts another child (keep in mind this girl was 6) they should feel sorry AND say sorry. I know that saying sorry doesn't mean that they are sorry. I just can't wriggle free of the notion that there IS something to saying sorry in a sincere way just to make someone feel better. It's just what people do for other people, because we're people.
I totally agree with the "self-righteously smug" thing, since most times parents force a "sorry" out of their child and miss the opportunity to actually talk to their child about what happened. Saying sorry is not a universal band-aid in and of itself.
But then again, I'm the mean Mommy. Somewhere along the way, Riley has learned that sorry absolves everything. Where? School? I don't know. I have actually stopped accepting her apologies on some things. But I'm mean. Sorry is a start, but is not enough in many cases.
So, Abby has been the child who has hurt another kid, both purposely and accidentally, and well, both times she looked rather scared at what she had done when the other child was hurt and yet never said she was sorry. But on the other hand, she has said she's sorry for little things. Both times I had to walk Abby over to the kid in question and I apologized for Abby. I had a point but I've lost it. We'll talk more later...
But MDC can be a sucking ground.
Oh, Riley has hurt many a kid, because afterall, she is Riley! It's a tough one, though. I generally talk to Riley and ask her how she feels about what happened, and how she thinks the other child feels. Usually at this point she'll say sorry, or help the kid, or comfort the kid. Sometimes I ask her point-blank if she's sorry, and if she thinks the other kid will feel better if she says sorry. I never MAKE her say sorry, but try to arrive there naturally. I don't know...it's complicated.
Oh this is a great post Amy! And penis apple made me laugh. I don't know, how do we "teach" empathy? Other than modeling it, which is not enough since it still does not really help children to learn that they are not the center of the universe.
That's a whole 'nother philosophical debate right there, Stacy! Do children need to be taught empathy, or are we naturally empathetic? Nature vs. nurture and so forth. I don't really know the answer to that! I can see both sides, but I can see that the line is really blurry.
You all are thinking way too hard! We tell our children to say "I'm sorry" when they intentionally or accidentally hurt someone, because they are supposed to be sorry (as opposed to feeling sorry). Think of "sorry" as an action, not a feeling. We are obligated to care for those we hurt. Sometimes the apology is all that's necessary - but it's the absolute minimum, and that's why we teach our children that they must say "I'm sorry". We are teaching them how responsible people act toward others. Come to think of it, that's probably how you teach empathy, too. Now, what's so hard about that?
Love,
Mom
P.S. Don't forget to wash your apples...