I was sitting at the dojang today watching the boy go through his stripe testing. This time around was kind of a big deal for him, as he’s about to earn his next belt level. The warm-up phase of the class had just ended and the instructors released the kids for a water break. The boy went over to the bubbler, but one of his classmates came over to the parent’s viewing area and asked her Dad: “Do you have my water bottle?”
He kind of raised his hands in defeat and replied “I must have left it on the counter at the house, sorry.”
And I couldn’t help but think “Why is he apologizing?” Is his daughter incapable of keeping track of her own water bottle? If the same thing had happened with the lass, my response would have been “You must have left it on the counter.” And the lass is at least a couple years younger than this girl.
Then I realized that I see quite a bit of these sorts of exchanges between kids and parents: child asks for something, parent sheepishly apologizes for not being able to satisfy the child’s request. I suppose part of it can be attributed to just being an automatic response given the situation.
But that doesn’t mean it’s a correct response or even an appropriate response.
Apologizing to a child puts them in the driver’s seat. You’ve “screwed up” and owned up to it all in one sentence, so now you owe them or need to make it up. That puts a parent at a disadvantage and makes the job of parenting more difficult. They get to blame you instead of owning up to their own mistake. Do it enough and an outsider might begin to wonder just who is the boss in that relationship.
Plus, taking the blame for something a child should be responsible for isn’t doing them any favors. They miss an opportunity to learn from their own mistake. It’s hard enough to get them to do admit to making a mistake as it is; forget about it when the parents starts voluntarily taking the blame. Generally speaking, there’s no better teacher than making a mistake. A child does it a few times and is forced to suffer the consequences, they’ll figure out how to correct things on their own. Heck, it’s the best weapon in the parental arsenal! Why relinquish it?
That’s not to say it’s as easy as all that. They’ll do whatever they can to pass the blame off:
“It was your job!”
Proper response: “Uh, no it wasn’t.”
“Yes it was!”
Proper response: “You mean in addition to feeding you, helping you with homework, driving you to after-school activities, museums and zoos, and cleaning your clothes? I can do all that and you can’t keep track of this one thing?”
“It’s your fault for not reminding me!”
Multiple possible responses: “I did remind you, several times” or “Why should I have to remind you. It’s your class, I’m driving you there, we’ve gone through this enough times that you should know.”
“The dog ate my homework!”
Proper response: “I told you not to do homework at the table after eating a PB&J sandwich.”
Anyway, I think the idea is pretty clear hear. No apologies necessary.