"I'm sorry!" - Part 2

So what’s a sincere apology? A sincere apology has three components:

• empathy – recognizing the impact of their actions on others (not just regretting getting caught!)
• amends – making up for the damage done, where possible
• resolve – having a plan to prevent it from happening again.
  

A sincere apology is demonstrated by change – even if that change is small at first.

We as a society have a mistaken belief that people must feel bad before they will behave better. This belief has resulted in four common strategies:

• Criticizing. Have you ever been on the receiving end of criticism? What was your response? If you’re like most of us, you became defensive and started explaining or justifying – even if only to yourself. Instead of bringing about the desired change, criticism further entrenches others in their behaviour.
  

• Blaming. Blame is designed to bring about change through guilt. The problem is that guilt doesn’t bring about a change of heart – or behaviour.
  

• Threatening. This is a “promise” of retaliation, and is designed to bring about change through fear. But fear doesn’t bring about a change of heart either.
  

• Punishing. “Punishment is a clever device that allows good people to do bad things without seeing themselves as evil.” (Albert J. Bernstein, Emotional Vampires) “Beatings will continue until morale improves.” ‘Nough said.
  

In fact, teens (and everyone else) will change when they feel safe, not when they feel bad. So if you use any of these four strategies–

• your teen will feel less empathetic,
• he’ll resent making restitution (if he does it at all), and
• his resolve will be around figuring out how not to get caught next time.
  

Here are some questions you can ask to help your teen feel safe enough to transform self-serving and meaningless apologies into sincere apologies:

• Empathy: What exactly are you apologizing for? What do you think you did that requires an apology? What was the result? Who was impacted?
  

• Amends: Now that it’s done, what (if anything) can you do to fix it? Is there something you can do to make up the damage? If that had been done to you, what would you want to have happen next?
  

• Resolve: If you had it to do over, is there anything you’d do differently? If a similar situation comes up in the future, how will you handle it?

"I'm sorry!" - What to say when they don't mean it

Apologies. They're as Canadian as saying, "Eh?" (Do we really do that?!) We're forever saying, "Sorry!" - even when someone runs into us with their shopping cart at the grocery store.

In an attempt to teach toddlers good manners, parents insist on these three sets of "magic words":

• "Say please."
• "Say thank you."
• "You say 'Sorry' right now!"

The problem arises when we don't teach them what it means to be sorry, not just say "Sorry."

There are two main types of apologies: sincere and insincere.

An insincere apology is a substitute for a conscience. The person apologizing may want to placate (e.g., get off the hook without being held accountable) or be absolved so they can feel better about behaving badly.

So what do you do with an insincere apology? Are you required to accept it, to forgive and forget, even though you know it's just empty words and there's been no change of heart?

You are not required to acept an insincere apology
or forgive anyone just because they ask you to!

Here's a true story:

A friend of mine, recently married, was struggling with an errant husband. Oh, he wasn't getting into any trouble. He was just a free spirit. So he would disappear after work, sometimes for hours, and was often absent when my friend returned home at the end of the day.

She asked him to take his cell phone with him. She asked him to at least leave a note letting her know what time he would be home. She begged. She pleaded. She reasoned. She argued. What if there was an emergency? What if something happened and she had to get hold of him? All to no avail.

Her husband had been raised to be polite, and so, when she would become upset with him, he would apologize. After all, that was the right thing to do.

Until the time it didn't work. Once again she berated him, and once again he apologized. Only this time, without even thinking about her response, she said, "I don't forgive you."

He was flabbergasted. "But you have to!" he insisted.

"No, I don't. You've been apologizing for months, but then you go and do the same thing again. I won't believe you mean it until I see it."

From that day forward, he left a note. And then, three months later, my friend approached him and said, "Now I accept your apology, because now I know you mean it!"

Next time your teen approaches you with crocodile tears of remorse (can I actually say that?!), try this: "Oh, that's okay. I don't need an apology. I'll know by what you do, not by what you say."

In the next instalment, we'll look at what constitutes a sincere apology, and how to help your teen experience a change of heart.