Do You Make Your Kid Say “Sorry”? Don’t.

There are multiple uses for the word “sorry”. Bump into someone? “Oops, sorry”.  Late coming home due to traffic? “Sorry I’m late”. But what about kids? Are we teaching them bad habits at a young age by insincerely apologizing?

Popsugar.com wrote, “According to Laura Markham, a child psychologist who wrote the book Peaceful Parent, Happy Siblings: How to Stop the Fighting and Raise Friends For Life, such forced apologies are doing more harm than good. That’s because, if you ask children what they think of the practice, they’ll be the first to tell you it’s meaningless:

“It’s lying to apologize when you don’t mean it.”

“Forcing the words “I’m sorry” not only teaches the wrong lessons, but it doesn’t actually solve the problem. “Decades of research on romantic relationships shows that when one person in the couple feels forced to apologize before he or she is ready, it doesn’t help repair the relationship at all,” Markham told Yahoo Parenting. “We believe the same is true for children when it comes to friends and siblings.”