Children and Apology

My friend Tiffany and I have lamented several times about the complexities involved with the pros and cons of forcing our children to apologize.  It's an issue that comes up in a family with 5 children almost every day and having a conflicted outlook on what should be done adds to the confusion of a moment of strife between 2 children or a parent and a child.  I have to admit that just last week in a moment of pure reaction instead of well thought out action, I blurted out, "Apologize!  Or you get another chore!"  Ugh.  I totally disappointed myself in that moment and have regretted it ever since.  But, in spite of my inconsistency over the years, I think I've finally come to the conclusion that for me, forcing an apology  upon a child doesn't feel right.  And here is why:

1) It Teaches The Child To Lie.  In a nutshell, a forced apology teaches a child that it's OK to say things you don't mean in order to accomplish an objective. This is a dangerous lesson.

2) The Child Doesn't Learn To Feel Empathy For Others.  Empathy is a necessary component in any SINCERE apology and, in my opinion, a necessary part of the emotional makeup of any decent human being. When the focus of a conflict simply becomes the apology, rather than the effect the original behavior had on another individual, the lesson is lost.  The emphasis, in my opinion, should be the learning of empathy, versus the stating of an apology.  Hopefully, apologizing and empathy go hand in hand, but to me, learning empathy is much more important.

3) It Encourages Negative Behavior.  Instead of teaching children that bad behavior results in negative consequenses, the habit of forcing apologies teaches them that they have sort of a revolving get out of jail free card. They do what they want, say sorry, then go about their business. They learn that their parents will bargain with them for their behavior. 

Step into the child’s mindset and emotional state for a moment. You can imagine that any empathy that they were feeling because of their wrong doing, just flew out the window as their parents put the spot light on them and their screw up, which is now on public display. Next, you are commanded to apologize (as if you wouldn’t have capacity to do so of your own volition). Well, its humiliating and degrading, frankly.

What usually happens after a forced apology:

The child’s use of a mocking tones serve to help them save face and keep a shred of dignity in the moment.

The child is saying with their behavior “I won’t be forced against my will. You can’t make me. You might be able to force me to say “I’m sorry”, but you can’t make me feel it – HA! I win! I defeat you!

Sadly, it becomes a war between parent and child, a total distraction from the actual task of learning from their mistake, helping the harmed party feel better and ultimately making amends for the incidents.

The child begins to feel angry at their parents and instead of owning the responsibility for their behavior they feel the other party actually got them in trouble with their parents, so they don’t feel empathy or remorse anymore. In fact, they now feel justified and not responsible!

What to do instead?

1) Modeling. If you are one to say “sorry” when you err, they will mimic you. I have found incredible teaching power in apologizing sincerely to my children.

2) Pause. That’s right. Give kids a moment to volunteer a genuine response to a situation before you jump in guns a’blazin’. You may well discover that your children do say they are sorry, if given a moment to compose themselves. I have a particular child (or 2) that given some time, still may or may not feel empathy over whatever it is that he/she did. What then? I have decided that the natural consequences of alienating siblings and peers is a better teacher of proper social behavior than me forcing an apology that is not felt. I then explain to the child that was hurt that the unapologetic child is still learning the importance of an apology, but that I am sympathetic to their injury whether it be physical or emotional.

3) Focus on the future: Instead of forcing them to say sorry about the past, which they can’t change, put the focus on their commitment to do something differently in the future. “Can you let your friend know that you won’t take his bike without asking ever again?”

4) Ask your child “what should happen now?” If they broke a neighbor’s window playing ball, letting the child think for themselves of how to right the situation helps build empathy, internalizes the lesson, and generates positive feelings about rectifying the situation. Replacing the window with their allowance and writing a letter stating it was an accident and promising to play in the park in the future feels restorative when they come up with the idea.

This is my new theory at least. I've been kind of leaning towards this way of thinking for years, but it is only recently that I've tried to remove my inconsistencies and embrace this strategy fully. In the end, I think inconsistency itself is the worst situation for children to be in and so completely committing to any strategy has a better outcome than them not knowing what to count on.

What do you think?

An Open Letter to Gym Weirdos

Dear Mr. Gym Screamer and other Gym Weirdos,

I applaud your intensity, your work ethic, and your dedication to building freakishly huge biceps while managing to utterly forsake those fragile, colt-like stilts where your legs should be. During those brief moments that you glance around to ascertain whether any admirers are watching you, you are no doubt perplexed by others' apparent fascination with the treadmill and the rowing machine, and comforted by the fact that the otherworldly orange glow of your leathery tan eclipses me as you walk by. I am like a pale, thin ghost next to your magnificence, but you don’t need me to tell you that. I can see in your eyes that you are smugly congratulating yourself on the knowledge that you could beat the ever-living crap out of most of your fellow gym attendees with those biceps, including myself. This is probably true, provided you could catch me, because those spindly legs of yours most likely would cave under the pressure of bearing the weight of your upper body while chasing me. I also don’t mind that you cause such a riot of commotion, what with all the noisy breathing and those heavy plates crashing to the ground. Nor do I mind that you spend so much time staring lovingly into the mirror at your profile, though this is unnecessary; just ask anyone in the gym and they’ll assure you that your arms are wicked huge, bro. You are akin to the loud, low riding, decked out Kia car next to me in traffic waiting for a light to change; the more you rev your engine, the more I spit up a little bit in my mouth.

What I mind most are those startling war screams that occasionally escape from somewhere deep inside your bowels. When you did this yesterday, I nearly dropped the weights I was holding as my heart rate jumped astronomically thinking that with this amount of sound, surely someone had been decapitated. It sounded like a cross between a dry heave and the cry of some fantasy-novel humanoid—an ogre perhaps. Dry heaves are disgusting, unnecessary, overly dramatic, and frankly, scary. If you can startle me with your shrillness over the top of the music of FloRida blaring in my headphones, you are too loud! After the initial shock of your gurgled scream wore off, I had only the sincerest concern. I assumed that anyone uttering that sound must have just had an aneurysm, and would be lying dead on the floor, or was perhaps battling a mean case of giardia, and would be standing in a puddle of liquid excrement. I was, however, annoyed when I figured out that it was just you again, living in your steroid-induced moment of pure, weightlifting ecstasy.

So I beg you, please tone it down, so that I, and the rest of your fellow gym attendees, might break our humble sweat in peace. Please stop assuming that hearing you grunt, heave, drop your weights, and simply walk past the rest of us is in any way impressive, inspiring, or the highpoint in our day. Consider saving some of that intensity and energy for FINDING A JOB so that your day is filled with more than 3 hour workout sessions and self aggrandizement. But you will probably just continue showing off for all of the nubile young women in the gym who you will continue to assume are most certainly lusting after you, because, as you are well aware, there’s nothing hotter than bulging shoulder veins tearing at the seams of a sleeveless T-shirt with the neck cut out mixed in with colt-like stilt legs, a huge ego, and a bad spray tan.

I could also write similar letters to the other perplexing personalities at the gym: the woman who is obviously hopped up on testosterone given her muscle girth, neck circumference, B.O. that reaches every nook and cranny of the gym, and complete lack of breast tissue. Also the much older gentleman who I always worry has died on his piece of workout equipment, but is instead napping, the oddly over-confident, obese, naked woman in the locker room who galavants around the room, bending and contorting in perplexing and disturbing ways, and the phantom farter who seems to always strike when I am trekking up that most difficult incline or sprinting on the treadmill and therefore having to breathe in, rapidly and deeply. Darn you all!!


Sincerely,


Sandra Flynn--fellow gym attendee

Her-Story

Have you ever wondered how divergent history would be if it were written by women?  This is how I think our history might differ:

--Less talk of wars.

--Less gruesome details of war.

--More emphasis on relationships between people in history.

--More references to women and stories of women in history.

--Less talk of women in subservient terms and demeaning terms.

--More references to Heavenly Mother in scripture.

--History in general would hold fewer facts and more feeling.

--More attention to detail regarding just about any topic.

--More attention to the mistreatment of those in society who were considered "less than".

--More questions; Fewer answers.

--More talk of families and individuals, versus the collective whole.

--There would be less references to him, he, his, and MANkind and more references that used the terms she, her, and humankind.

--It would probably be a lot more interesting to women, but less interesting to men because women usually enjoy the details of people's private lives while men seem to be more interested in the blatant facts of an incident.  Sometimes while sitting in Sunday School, I feel like I could tear up from the painful boredom of whom begat whom, where certain people traveled, etc.  (My friend Annie's class is never boring, however)  My ears always perk up just a little bit more when we are talking about a specific person and getting to know them through scripture or when I can apply experiences from someone else's life to my own.  It's hard for me to find the same value in factual information.

Think how much the present might be altered had we more female voices recorded in history.  We would probably have many more female heroes to emulate today, and there most likely wouldn't have been as much discrimination against women in our more recent history because allowing women to speak way long ago would have shown that they were more honored than they actually were at the time, and that they had more control over their own lives.

Along with these wonderings, I often think how interesting it will be when I go to heaven and see all of the things in history re-played and am able to interpret the events and outcomes according to my own point of view.  And truth be told, I really wouldn't want history written completely by women because I think we really miss out when we hear it only from one perspective, as we do now.  Certainly there are benefits from a male perspective that perhaps women in general wouldn't have.  It does seem to be true that the person that tells history, holds a lot of control over which things are valued over other things, which things to include or leave out, and overall perspective of how the rest of civilization will be told of how history played out.  Women tend to value different things when telling a story so this leads me to believe that history would be very different from a female narrative.  Maybe this is why journaling is so important; it allows everyone to have their own perspective of events and how they occur.

Hmmm.  Just a thought.  Thanks for listening.

Living Authentically

Sometimes, a particular blog post will feel like an open wound that I voluntarily choose to expose to the world and with each comment of feedback, whether it be public, private, or here say, the wound either begins to scab over or is once again ripped open raw again.  So why do I choose to share my life, my weaknesses, musings, and opinions publicly you might ask?  There are a couple of reasons.  First of all,  it is because of something I will refer to as quietism and the negative effects it has had on me and on what I have seen it do to other people.  I will define quietism as the constant need to quiet oneself in order to ease the burdens that being open and honest would have on yourself and others.  It is the belief that if you shove your feelings, thoughts, and experiences down deep for long enough, they will cease to exist or become less important.  It believes that being open and honest breathes a negative life into things that left quiet, would otherwise die.  Quietism has been the great solace and the great temptation of my reserved and fiercely private temperament. The problem with this is that sometimes quieting yourself for many years starts to feel like shame.  Shame convinces us that owning our stories will lead to people thinking less of us.  Shame is all about fear.  We are afraid that people won't like us if they know the truth about who we are, where we come from, what we believe, what mistakes we have made, how much we have struggled or are struggling, or how wonderful we are when we are soaring.  "Shame needs three rings to grow out of control in our lives:  secrecy, silence, and judgment."  (Brene Brown)  And in all likelihood, there are people who most definitely WILL like us less, accept us less, and not respect who we are when we choose to open ourselves up to honesty and vulnerability.  But should we value their view of us over our own?  The thing about it is, that we all have lived very lonely lives at one time or another, silently wondering if we are the only ones that feel this way, made this mistake, think that way, or are innately this or that way.  If only we had someone to confide in that had felt the same way or gone through similar struggles, we may think.  Maybe if we did, they could give us insight and help ease the loneliness.  It takes a brave person to expose their vulnerability and struggles to those around them, but in doing so, there is a ripple effect of kinship with others of like mind, of empowerment that if they can get through something so can I, and the most important effect is others knowing:  I am not alone.  One of the bravest people I know is my good friend, Annie who has been through more in her life than just about anyone I know.  What I admire about her is her tenacious honesty about her mistakes, her history, and her unbridled disclosure of her whole self.  She is incredibly resilient and in spite of what she has been through, including the horrific death of her sweet daughter Kailee, she is probably one of the happiest people I know.  She gives everyone around her strength because we, as her friends think, if Annie can be happy, certainly I, having much less to carry, can be happy.  She makes it okay for everyone around her to have flaws, to be honest about them, and yet to press forward trying to be better.  I have found this ripple effect when writing about my parenting failures and triumphs.  No one feels close to a person who is always happy, has perfectly behaved children, whose life is all peaches and has no apparent flaws because, simply put, deep down we know it's a lie and so do they.  We've all probably experienced the awkwardness of having a conversation with someone where we choose to divulge something about our imperfect life, like how we couldn't wait to get our kids out the door in the morning, or how we don't always enjoy going to church and it's met with silence or an incredulous "Really?!"  If you're anything like me, you either avoid this person like the plague in the future or come to the realization that you too, will have to lie in that person's presence in order to maintain any sort of relationship.  E.E. Cummings said, "It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are."  Nearing my 40th year, I feel the inclination strongly to live authentically, which to me means to embrace who I am, realizing that there is peace to be found there and that it is impossible to truly be accepting and compassionate of others until you are of your own self.  Someone today at church referred to the fact that he was incredibly flawed but that the challenge to change all of the myriad of things he needed to, excited him.  What a healthy and inspiring attitude!  I am flawed, I embrace myself flaws and all, and coming from this vantage point, change is exciting!  This is what I want for me.

For many years, I was of the philosophy that to be a good parent, you expose only the best of yourself to your children, carefully hiding things of your past and flaws of the present in order to model the best person for them to emulate.  Of course just having children, generally inspires us to be more and to want more from our own selves, and certainly, there must be much prudence taken when talking to our children about our own life struggles, taking into account their age and level of maturity.  But I am of the opinion now that it is more important to model how to get through our struggles and mistakes in a healthy and triumphant way then to pretend we never had any.  They don't even need to be the same problems that our children struggle with because in essence, all pain, loneliness, failure, doubt, joy, etc. is the same to varying degrees regardless of how we come by them, so we should always be able to relate to our children in empathy even if we haven't gone through the exact same thing.  Subconsciously hoping that they will never make any mistakes so that they don't have to feel any pain is not only futile, because they most certainly will, but misguided because we learn and grow from mistakes.  I believe that the philosophy that if you admit to doing something wrong to your children that it validates it for them that they too can now do it, is a faulty notion.  First of all, a lot depends on the tone in which you speak to them about your problems and whether they will interpret it as something desirable or not and secondly, the advantage of helping them feel that you can relate to them and that they are not alone is an advantage that highly outweighs the risk of being honest with them.  Some of my most tender moments with my children are when we take a long walk and they choose to open up to me about something they are worried about, or did that was wrong and I am able to say, "I know how you feel.  I had the same problem.  This is what I did that helped me get through it."  So far, my children tell me EVERYTHING--almost too much information sometimes!  But I feel greatly privileged to connect to them on this level.

My quandary with entering this new year was the question, is it better for me to sink back into the obscurity in the temptation of quietism in order to spare myself and perhaps others a certain amount of discomfort or to embrace the growth that can be found in being open and honest about my opinions, my struggles, and my life?  Believe me when I say it was not an easy decision and definitely not clear cut.  But I think at this stage in my life, I feel the need to move past the fear of what people will think if I am me.  Because quietism has equalled shame and felt like oppression to me, I can no longer continue in it.  So even though for me, sharing is the harder road, I will do for others what I want done for me:  openness and honesty which can only lead to a brotherhood and sisterhood among those who desire the same thing, where we are all there when one falls to help give each other a hand, and all there to cheer when one soars.  Here's to living authentically!

Glittering Mica

If I had to say the one thing I have been really good at lately it would be MEDIOCRITY.  It feels lately like all of my normal activities and responsibilities are but a mere burden and for whatever reason I can't seem to get past that.  What I didn't realize up until this stage of my life was how much life was about enduring the absolute banal.  For the majority of my adult years, life was invigorating with always something to look forward to; a new baby, a move to a new place, meeting new people, etc.  I sort of got addicted to the excitement that the drama of these things brought into my life and had a hard time when they stopped and it was time to simply settle into life.  Now life is very much copacetic (satisfactory at best) and the majestic sunsets in my days seem fewer and far between.  Take the other day for instance.  Upon realizing that I was late for a carpool I had to pick up and also feeling very flu-ish, I raced to Bountiful to pick them up and while in the car I got two phone calls within 2 minutes from home.  One was informing me that the dog had barfed 3 times and the other was to inform me that the toilet had overflowed and was still overflowing.  And I think I might have said the "H" word in frustration.  When I arrived home, one of my children accosted me into a corner of the house and bestowed upon me this message:  "Remember those 2 things I confessed to you last week?  Well there are 2 more things I need to tell you that are waaaaay worse."  Okaaaayyyy.  Now, what's for dinner?!  And can you help me with my homework?  These are the absolute banal things that fill my life all day every day which sort of weigh on me and lead me to feeling worn out even though nothing that is happening to me is particularly awful.  This in turn leads to me performing sometimes at a mediocre level which I feel really bad about.

I guess Life is really just made up of moments, small pieces of glittering mica in a long stretch of gray cement.  The question is, can you find and appreciate the mica in the gray cement which is your life?  Sometimes I can, and sometimes it feels like there's a severe drought and I am thirsting for some sort of rainbow and no matter how many times I tell myself to live in the moment and enjoy the small things, I feel anxious and like it wouldn't be so bad to not appreciate some of those moments.  I would love to tell you I have an amazing and inspiring solution to my problem, but I don't.  Except for maybe perseverance.  Because I just know there will be some glittering mica around the next corner.  And maybe in fact, on this day, I found some.

Madison and best friend Ashley sledding

Neighborhood sledding

Robert trying to snowboard his sled down the hill.

Little Bear