To truly apologize requires empathy. Empathy is a skill that plays a significant role in having nurturing, compassionate and caring relationships. Empathy is when you understand how someone else is feeling because you can imagine what it is like to be them or stand in their shoes. For children, empathy develops in its own way, at its own time, and is one of the last social skills to develop. This explains why young children have a hard time understanding the viewpoint of others. When we command young children to say sorry, when developmentally they struggle to understand what others are feeling, children cannot genuinely own the words they are saying.
Does that mean we should let young children off the hook and allow them to get away with such behaviors as hitting, pushing, biting or hurting others? Absolutely not! It also doesn't mean we should have our kids give the obligatory "I'm sorry" when we know they don't really mean it. What these behaviors in young children tell us is that we have an opportunity for connection with our kids while teaching them to behave appropriately at the same time.
Here are 5 steps you can take to begin developing empathy skills and help young children take responsibility for their actions:
3. Focus on the future. Instead of forcing children to say sorry, focus their commitment to do something differently in the future. "Can you let your friend know that you won't take his bike without asking again?"
4. Help young children identify their feelings. Give feelings a name. Labeling feelings for toddlers and preschoolers is a first step toward them eventually being able to name and process their feelings on their own. You could say, "It looked like you were really angry when you scratched Maddie." Learning positive ways to express emotions is an important life lesson for children. For toddlers and preschoolers this learning takes lots of repetition.
5. When everyone is calm, talk to your child in a calm tone, in a quiet area away from others. Help make the connection of how the other child felt as a result of their behavior. "When you scratched Maddie, she was hurt and she felt sad." For younger children, we need to provide them with the information. Young children don't always know the words they need to make sense of the motions they or others feel. This is part of our teaching.
While forcing kids to apologize in the heat of the moment often makes parents feel better, it does little to help children truly understand the effects of their misbehavior. Most importantly, forced apologies don't change behavior. Being mindful of these guidelines will help children develop future great friendships. Children will learn that all feelings are okay although not all behavior is acceptable. Teaching them to take responsibility for their actions and make it right with the other person is an important part of being a friend or part of a family. Choosing to say, "I'm sorry" comes after children have developed authentic empathy. It should come naturally and be their choice.
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Hayley Goldberg is a certified parent educator and teaches parenting classes for parents of toddlers and preschoolers. Her training began at the The Living Success Center where she built a solid foundation in counseling skills. During her time at the center, she worked with couples, families, and individuals spanning a range of diagnoses. This experience opened her eyes to the value of attachment and the parent-child relationship as being one of the most essential factors in allowing us to become socially strong and emotionally secure adults.
Later, Hayley moved on to working with families in the area of adoption and foster care at The Kinship Center. Here she continued to work with her passion of developing healthy parent-child relationships. She assisted families who had adopted or were fostering children to build new, solid, happy, healthy and connected relationships.
For the past seven years Hayley has worked as a parent educator and behavior coach with the Irvine Unified School District. Her work has been dedicated to supporting parents and early childhood educators in understanding and reducing challenging behavior in young children at home and in the classroom. She has worked with families of typically developing children as well as families needing parenting support with special needs children.
Learn more about Hayley Goldberg on her WEBSITE. Sign up for an upcoming PARENTING CLASS.
