Kids need to learn how to apologize – and mean it

When parents say, “Tell your sister you are sorry,” they don’t usually expect a real apology. It’s a little bit of social training spiced with the wish for a moment of sibling peace so folks could get back to the business of playing.

Parents expect a little more when they ask one of their children, “How would you like it if someone did that to you?” That approach can help children learn to put themselves in someone else’s place – an excellent place to start an apology.

Parents work on this with their children because apologies are important. Young people need to be able to both give and accept sincere apologies.

Sincere apologies are evidence of personal strength and recognize that we each make mistakes. Apologies signal hope that someone will change their behavior; apologies can build bridges and help heal relationships.

When it is appropriate to do so, wise parents apologize to their children, in part to be good examples for them.

But not everything that starts with “I’m sorry” is an apology.

For example, when detectives on “Law and Order” meet family members of a crime victim, they often say, “We’re sorry for your loss.” So do real-life detectives. That is not an apology, is not meant to be, nor should it be. It is an expression of sympathy, an offering of condolences.

“We’re sorry for your loss” recognizes the cavernous grief that threatens to swallow up people who have lost a loved one. The grief dramatized on “Law and Order” is a few degrees darker than some kinds of grief because it comes out of another human’s decision or action.

A sincere apology starts with that sort of sympathy for another person but goes two full steps further. The next step – and it comes on the heels of sympathy – is admitting personal responsibility for the action that caused the grief.

I can feel sorry for your loss without having any responsibility for causing it. But, if I caused it in whole or in part, accepting responsibility has to be part of the apology. It sounds like, “I’m sorry for what I did that caused your loss.”

In the criminal justice system, we hear many nonapologetic apologies from people who cause pain for others. They often say, “I am really sorry about what happened,” as if the victim’s pain had fallen out of the sky.

Sometimes offenders will not admit what they did, even to themselves. Sometimes they try to sound like they are apologizing to avoid the third step of an apology: stepping up to take the consequence for their action.

In a column in The Herald May 11, George Will described how to tell when an apology is real and when it is not.

“Listen to the language,” he wrote. “It is always a leading indicator of moral confusion.”

One problem for parents is that they can’t depend on many public people who would be moral leaders to provide good examples of apologies. Many seemingly moral church leaders tried for years to sound like they were apologizing for abusive priests.

But they didn’t taking responsibility for the victims’ pain or the coverups that helped cause it.

Now, President Bush has had trouble apologizing for the obvious American abuses in Iraqi prisons. He expressed sympathy that most – not all – Americans felt.

(It is stunning, don’t you think, that some public figures are defending the prisoner abuse by Americans?)

The president has not apologized. Perhaps he thinks it is important to not apologize for some reason: perhaps the war, legal battles or the election.

But we immediately know this: The prison abuses were predictable and preventable. The abuses reveal institutional failings; they are not just a few bad apples.

When President Bush’s condolences are passed off as a sincere apology it rings loudly of the moral confusion referred to by George Will.

Parents, teach your children yourself about moral apologies.

Bill France, a father of three, is a child advocate in the criminal justice system and has worked as director of clinical programs at Luther Child Center in Everett. Send e-mail to bsjf@gte.net.