We Won't Make Our Daughter Apologize

As of right now, Gabe and I don't plan on making Elle say "I'm sorry." This post is me externally processing why in order to see if my gut makes sense on paper.

I recognize that this is a hot take, especially in Christian circles, and I'm holding my philosophy loosely. If I remember correctly, the argument for making children say they're sorry has something to do with practicing repentance early, and the fact that there is value in developing muscle memory for some things before you understand or believe in them.

The reasons I don't subscribe to that practice—as of right now—fall into three categories: 1) it's disingenuous, 2) it builds bad habits, 3) it misses the point.

1) Requiring kids to apologize trains them to be disingenuous.
There is almost nothing less genuine than a child's forced apology (unless it's an abusive partner's apology, which I'm not convinced is unconnected).

We've all seen it: Kid A snatches Kid B's toy. Kid A's mom rushes over and says, "No, no! We don't take toys from someone. Tell him you're sorry." Kid A MIGHT throw a glance in Kid B's direction before saying, "Sorry" and moving on. On a bigger scale, maybe two siblings are screaming at each other and Teen A calls Teen B a name. Parent enters the conversation and demands that Teen A apologize. Teen A rolls her eyes and says, "SORry" before throwing up her hands and leaving the room.

In both cases, the kids aren't sorry—they haven't even had a chance to be sorry. The parent jumped in and demanded that they read a script before any reflecting happened. I certainly can't apologize genuinely .2 seconds after an offense while I'm still heated. I don't know many adults who can. Why would we expect children to be able to rise above a situation and gain perspective enough to deliver a genuine apology that quickly? (Depending on the child's age, they may even be developmentally incapable of being "sorry.")

When we require kids to check the apology box before they actually feel sorry, we train them to use words they don't mean, and that is never a good thing.* That's how you end up with "I apologize even though I know it's lies. I'm tired of her games. I know I'm a liar." In fact, that's a horrible habit to establish, especially early.

2) Requiring kids to apologize builds bad habits.
A lot of adults say things they don't mean. I don't necessarily think that stems from being forced to apologize as kids, but it might be related. Many of us today identify as people-pleasers or "recovering" people-pleasers. We have trouble saying no, holding healthy boundaries, disagreeing with people in authority, speaking up when we don't want to go to that restaurant. We've built a habit of undercutting ourselves, and part of the way that manifests is apologizing too much, even for things that aren't our responsibility or fault.

It's like we were trained to think of "I'm sorry" as a fix-all, catch-all, automatic phrase to deploy when something bad/sad/inconvenient happens. Are we even sorry? Or is it just a verbal tic? I've actually ranted about this here before. Let's not use "Sorry" like a reflex, and let's not program kids to do so either.

3) Requiring kids to apologize misses the point.
This might be my biggest issue with forced apologies. Saying the words "I'm sorry" doesn't make anything right or different, and if we train kids to think that that's a magical resolution formula or the equivalent of taking responsibility, that's dangerous. The real goal is raising kids that recognize when they've hurt someone, want to make it right, and try not to do it again.

To that end, Gabe's and my plan is to teach Elle to notice when her actions negatively affected someone and think about remedies. Something like, "Oh no, the toy hit your friend in the arm. Look how sad she is. Let's see if she wants a hug or a band-aid" and then after the very moment has passed, revisit with "Remember how the toy hit your friend in the arm? Next time, let's make sure you have plenty of room before swinging anything around."

At the end of the day, apologies are just words if they aren't backed by remorse and a plan for the future.

Three Thoughts from the Flip Side
1) Coming at child apologies from the other direction is kind of interesting.
I was thinking about how it feels to be on the receiving end of a forced apology, and it weirdly still feels kind of good? When a kid apologizes to me on command, it still trips a forgiveness trigger in my brain. I wonder why that is. Have we all been conditioned to respond to apologies with indulgence? Apologizing also has a submission component, and I think a lot of us feel uncomfortable or automatically reassuring toward people who "submit" to us. I bet the submission component is another reason the Christian community believes in making kids practice apologizing. That'll definitely have to be a post of its own XD

2) Opposite to the Apologetic Reflex crew, you have those adults who seem incapable of apologizing.
"I'm sorry" rarely, if ever, leaves their mouths, and when it does it's followed by "ifs" that completely negate the sentiment: "I'm sorry if your feelings were hurt"; "I'm sorry if you took that the wrong way." Should those people have been made to say "I'm sorry" more as kids? Or were they made to apologize one too many times for things that weren't their fault? Or do they just have issues that would've raised their heads no matter what? Who knows.

3) We intentionally model apologizing.
I believe (poor Elle, being guinea pig to all this) that we should teach kids to be good adults, which hopefully means teaching them to live the way we do. I particularly want to apply this to language. (You'll notice that adults don't end every single request with "please," so why do we demand kids do that? There are plenty of legitimate ways to be polite without using "the magic word.") To that end, I try really hard to apologize to Elle when I hurt her, whether that's snapping at her to "STOP IT" when she won't stop whining in the car, or backing into her while fixing lunch. My hope is that if I can model apologizing well—for the right things, in the right way—she'll pick that up.

We'll see.

Five Apology Languages
A couple of years ago I heard about The Five Languages of Apology, a theory from a book by Gary Chapman. I haven't read the book so I'm sure I'm missing a lot of nuance, but basically it says that there are "apology languages" just like there are love languages. What feels like a meaningful apology to me might not feel like one to you.

The five languages are: expressing regret, accepting responsibility, making restitution, planned change, and requesting forgiveness. My number one is planned change (What are you going to do to make sure you don't do this again?) and Gabe's number one is making restitution (How can you make up for this?). I personally could not care less about you expressing regret—that feels like making the apology about you and your feelings, not me and mine—and requesting forgiveness makes me uncomfortable. It's fascinating to me how it takes different approaches to make us all feel acknowledged and loved.

Anyway, this was quite a collection of thoughts, and I'm super interested to hear others' if anyone feels like sharing. Currently Elle's only words are dada, help, hat, tickle, and bellybutton, so we're a ways away from rolling out this strategy in real life.

~Stephanie

* I haven't actually thought about this yet. Is it ever a good thing? Could it be? Maybe? But for the sake of this post, never a good thing.

Sometimes It Really is A Big Deal

In March 2023, I wrote a blog called Avoid Appearances. Gabe felt like it was controversial, so I never published it, but after rereading it recently, I'm going to. (I did.) I think it's a problem that it feels controversial, which is—ironically—the entire point of the post.

The tl;dr of the post is "I was taught it was inappropriate and/or sinful to reveal the bad side of authority figures." This was brought to my attention by my therapist when I spent a long time circling the idea of someone in my life being unhealthy or problematic instead of just SAYING so.

My therapist and I unpacked that can of worms for a while, but today I realized there might be more to why I couch criticism in euphemisms or hints.

I have a passionate, extreme personality and I process externally. That means that "someone cut me off in traffic" could easily manifest as "some asshole ruined my day" when I begin telling someone about it, but after getting through the initial rage, the story turns into, "No, not really, they just cut me off, but honestly they might not have seen me; that's kind of a blind turn."

Because I know this about myself, I often soften what I say to people. I don't want to shock them, especially if I'm going to land on something less extreme in the end. I don't want people to think I'm too crazy/judgmental/hot-headed/critical to be taken seriously. I recognize that a 7 out of 10 on my scale could register as a catastrophic 11 on some people's. Thus, I temper my words.

But the thing is...sometimes it really is a big deal. Sometimes the person really was abusive, the pain really was intense—and I don't know how to recognize that. I automatically censor and dismiss myself because I believe my perspective is extreme to the point of being inaccurate. When I beat around the bush telling the truth about authority figures, it is sometimes because I don't feel I have permission to label them the way I see them. Maybe I'm just being sensitive. Maybe it's my fault for being so much.

For someone who cares about truth and justice, this is a difficult place to be in. How can I assure that I'm being accurate without being melodramatic?

Fortunately, I married someone who both takes me very seriously and sees the world very differently. I think that's probably the best solution for now: building my perspective in collaboration with a trusted source. That's probably what all of us should do, because even non-extremists have blind spots. As Christians, we should be lovingly checking each other anyway.

Of course, you're always welcome to ask for my uncensored thoughts and reactions, but consider this your warning that it might be A Lot 😂

~Stephanie

Avoiding Appearances

March 11, 2023

If you've grown up in Christian culture, you've probably heard the phrase that we are to "avoid the appearance of evil." This is why I wasn't allowed to take walks with a boy alone in high school or wear black nail polish, and why it was wrong for opposite genders to be roommates or for male church leaders to give girls rides home from youth group by themselves.

I think it's also why I wasn't allowed to confide in anyone about issues I had with authority figures in my life. Not to avoid the appearance of being "evil" myself, but to protect those in authority from having their "evil" (i.e., often simply "imperfect" or "human") behavior exposed.

I don't mean I was asked to keep silent about problems like sexual harassment or discrimination. I'm talking about not being allowed to vent to my friends—or even other adults in my life—about relationship conflicts I went through if they involved adult leadership. There is profound isolation in having your communication privileges taken away or your conversations eavesdropped on so that an authority figure can be protected from your "talking bad about them."

Will teenagers "talk bad" about adults in their lives? Absolutely. Will all of that talk be fair, accurate, or constructive? Absolutely not. Should teenagers still be allowed to have outlets for their frustrations? I believe so.

I'm a big believer in the truth coming out. If adults are truly acting unjustly, people will find out; no amount of damage control can prevent that. If adults are being mischaracterized by a petty teenager, that'll come out too.

The worst thing that can happen is raising an adult who thinks that discussing emotional damage inflicted by adults is sinful.

I recently started therapy. In the first or second session, my therapist asked me to clarify what I meant about someone. It took me five minutes to convey the impression I needed to, because I wandered alllllllllllll around the perimeter using euphemisms, "maybes," and "I don't know, but I guesses."

When I was finished, my therapist still wasn't completely clear on what I meant, but she said, "You said a lot, but it's like you were apologizing the whole time, or trying to qualify what you said. Why do you think you do that?"

I had to think about it for a second, but then I told her what I'm telling you now: I guess I'd internalized that speaking unflatteringly about authority figures is sinful, petty, and inappropriate.

"That's not true," she said, looking me right in the eyes.

"Oh," I said.

People have told me for years that everyone should go to therapy—maybe not long-term, but at least to check in with how they think and feel. We all have cognitive distortions: thought patterns or beliefs that aren't the healthiest. If we don't go to therapy, we might never know that our minds and lives could be better. I'm finally at a place where I can see if "people" have been right about therapy. Turns out they were.

I guess the message of this blog post is two-fold:

1) Isolating angry teenagers for the sake of your own reputation is gross.
2) Go to therapy.

~Stephanie

Facing Demons: Feel the Feelings

Gabe and I don't believe in distracting Elle from her feelings.

There's definitely a place for redirection ("We're not gonna play in the trash can, but you can pull things out of the recycling"; "We're all done with chalk for now, but we can read a book when we go inside"), but if Elle is crying/scared/throwing a fit, we think it's important that she feel those feelings and process them, rather than cheer up at any cost.

To me, this goes along with the "meltdowns are not teachable moments" idea I touched on in The Riskiest Post to Date. When Elle is in the middle of big feelings, I try to hold her (if she's open to that) and say absolutely nothing, at first. I want her to know that her big feelings don't scare me, I can handle her even when she's difficult, and I'll be on the other side when she gets there too, but talking to her does nothing but contribute to overstimulation; she can't actually hear me in the moment.

After she's felt her feelings and begins to calm down, we'll either talk about what went wrong—like if she fell out of a chair, I show her why she fell and what she can do differently next time—or move on to something happier. We don't want Elle to be an adult who can't stand to be in her feelings long enough to come to peace with them and move on healthily.

Well.

Sunday night, Gabe and I got into a stupid fight after Elle went down. Afterwards, he stayed in the living room and I went upstairs to tidy up Elle's room. I walked up the steps, seething, and pulled out my phone to get a podcast going to take my mind off things.

Oh.

In the middle of Elle's room, I realized I was doing the exact thing we don't want Elle to do. Instead of sitting with my feelings and sorting through what they were trying to tell me, I wanted to drown them out with the story of someone getting murdered.

I put my phone down and sat with a sigh.

"Fine," I muttered. "What am I feeling?" I was mad, frustrated, discouraged, a little sheepish. The fight was stupid, but I could see how it had happened. I knew a podcast wasn't going to make me feel better, nor was the TV I planned to watch after cleaning Elle's room.

I picked up my phone again and texted Gabe: "Well that was a terrible way to end the weekend."

He responded with three texts in a row, honoring my side of things, owning his own, and offering to talk it through if I wanted to come down and talk. I did, so we did. None of that would have happened if I hadn't forced myself to face my feelings instead of distracting myself.

People talk about the importance of "feeling your feelings" instead of "thinking your feelings," and I'm not good at that. I don't quite understand what it means. I don't know if what I did Sunday night was feeling my feelings or thinking them, but either way, I know it was a step in a right direction. Too often I try to ignore my feelings because they're inconvenient/annoying/confusing/inevitable. I don't want Elle to do that, but if I'm going to teach her a better way, I'm gonna have to start some trial and error.

~Stephanie

How a Can of Tuna Changed My Life

When I was nineteen, I broke up with a guy over a can of tuna.

I'd been dating this guy for about a year, and we had a history that went back even farther. I loved him an unfortunate amount, but for a few months I'd been wrestling with the sense that I needed to end things. There was a maturity gap, a values gap, and a lying cavern that were all widening rather than closing up.

One day I was home from college at my parents' house hanging out with my boyfriend. I guess it was lunchtime or something and I wanted to eat but he didn't, so I just decided to have a can of tuna. I drained it over the sink, looking out into the living room where my boyfriend lay on the couch. Suddenly he sat up, glaring.

"Are you having tuna?" he asked, looking for all the world like I was preparing glass smeared with gonorrhea*.

I frowned. "Yeah? Why?"

"That's disgusting," he said. "I have to smell that. Why would you do that?"

I don't remember the specifics of what happened after that, but I remember the feeling of a puzzle piece sliding into place in my brain. It wasn't about the tuna—he's not wrong, tuna is a really strong smell and if you hate it, ew—but I suddenly saw a stark portrait of someone too selfish to be gentle, too crass to be kind. I think I probably called him out for being rude, but it didn't become a fight. The rest of the visit was unremarkable.

But later that afternoon, after he'd gone home, I was crying in the kitchen and talking to my mom and Sarah. Again, I don't remember the specifics, but I felt a certainty so unshakeable it became urgent. I needed to break up with him right then. I'd been thinking about it for months, but the tuna incident had set the decision in motion and it was gaining speed like a boulder down a mountain. I have a vague recollection of my mom...not trying to dissuade me, but wanting to make sure I was sure, because from the outside it had come on so quickly. I lived kind of far away from the guy but I knew I wanted to do this in person, so it was a not insignificant time commitment.

But I was sure.

I wrote him a letter, met him at a Starbucks, and he read the letter sitting in the passenger seat of my silver Kia Soul.

After he read it, he nodded, folded it up, and got out of the car.

We were broken up.

Technically.

It would be another nine months before it stuck. The official relationship was like most teen romances: intense, a little immature, but overall pretty healthy. However, the April through December after the breakup was a toxic cesspool of manipulation, guilt, emotional abuse, tears, ultimatums that didn't stick, false hopes, secret meetings, text fights, stomachaches, and bad decisions. One of the very last conversations we ever had was over text, and included this little gem, recreated by ChatGPT from one of my word-for-word journaling sessions.

I never spoke much about this relationship, mostly because no one ever asked me. They asked other people about it, but no one asked me what had happened or how I was. Privacy is nice, but...it does make escape from abuse kind of tricky.

I honestly don't know why I'm talking about this now, or what the point of the post is. It was inspired by a TikTok of a girl being like, "Here's an example of abuse that doesn't sound like abuse" and it reminded me of the tuna story (which I would NOT consider abuse; the TikTok just brought it to mind). I certainly don't want to cast bad juju on my ex-boyfriend. I haven't seen him in years, but I guess I hope he's happy. We both had a LOT of growing up to do and I hope he found people to support him through it like I did.

I guess the point of this post is
1) Listen to your gut when it comes to red flags. If someone berates you for eating tuna, they may also try to convince you that your beliefs are "f*cking incorrect" if inconvenient for them.

2) Remember that you never really know what someone else is going through.

~ Stephanie

*Thanks Ali Hazelwood for this metaphor that lives rent-free in my head.