4 yo refuses to say "I'm sorry" - advice?

[Anonymous]

My mother can't say I'm sorry and she's 70, so I wouldn't expect too much of a 4 year old.

If my 4 year old does something bad to another kid not my own, I insist on a verbal apology. Sometimes I need to wait a few minutes for him to calm down before he's ready to give it. In the meantime, focus on comforting the other kid and ignoring yours (which is the best practice anyway when someone is being a dick). Usually if I give it enough time, I can get the apology out.

If he's a dick to me or his little brother, I'll usually settle for a hug or any other nice gesture showing empathy, because its easier to get it out of him. And honestly, most adults have trouble explicitly saying sorry to family, so it just seems like I'd be banging my head against the wall for no reason.

[Anonymous]

To a friend, I would INSIST on an apology. If the child refused, the child would be removed from the area.if at a play date, we go home. In the same vein, if I lose my temper (yell) at the kids, I always apologize later to them explaining why I was frustrated. Model the behavior you want.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To a friend, I would INSIST on an apology. If the child refused, the child would be removed from the area.if at a play date, we go home. In the same vein, if I lose my temper (yell) at the kids, I always apologize later to them explaining why I was frustrated. Model the behavior you want.

That's not a real apology, if you're still blaming the other person for making you frustrated. Would it be an apology is your 4 year old said, "I'm sorry I hit you, but I was angry that you wouldn't give me your toy"? Of course not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To a friend, I would INSIST on an apology. If the child refused, the child would be removed from the area.if at a play date, we go home. In the same vein, if I lose my temper (yell) at the kids, I always apologize later to them explaining why I was frustrated. Model the behavior you want.

That's not a real apology, if you're still blaming the other person for making you frustrated. Would it be an apology is your 4 year old said, "I'm sorry I hit you, but I was angry that you wouldn't give me your toy"? Of course not.

Actually that one is right on the fence to me, and its certainly not a categorical rule that you can't apologize successfully when explaining your feelings.

Clearly inappropriate:

"I am sorry I hit you. You should not have offended me."
"I am sorry you are upset that I hit you."

Pretty clearly appropriate in my view:

"I am sorry I hit you. I got upset when you said X, and lost my tempter. That was inappropriate of me and I should not have done it."

Your example, which I think you take to be obviously inappropriate, is actually right on the line for me. It could either be interpreted as "I feel compelled to apologize but you did something B.S." or "I am sincerely sorry and wanted to offer an explanation for my actions." You would need to know the context and the past history between the two people to judge whether it is a sincere apology.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To a friend, I would INSIST on an apology. If the child refused, the child would be removed from the area.if at a play date, we go home. In the same vein, if I lose my temper (yell) at the kids, I always apologize later to them explaining why I was frustrated. Model the behavior you want.

You get to choose when you apologize, and you are choosing to apologize "later". We want our kids to apologize NOW.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To a friend, I would INSIST on an apology. If the child refused, the child would be removed from the area.if at a play date, we go home. In the same vein, if I lose my temper (yell) at the kids, I always apologize later to them explaining why I was frustrated. Model the behavior you want.

That's not a real apology, if you're still blaming the other person for making you frustrated. Would it be an apology is your 4 year old said, "I'm sorry I hit you, but I was angry that you wouldn't give me your toy"? Of course not.

Actually that one is right on the fence to me, and its certainly not a categorical rule that you can't apologize successfully when explaining your feelings.

Clearly inappropriate:

"I am sorry I hit you. You should not have offended me."
"I am sorry you are upset that I hit you."

Pretty clearly appropriate in my view:

"I am sorry I hit you. I got upset when you said X, and lost my tempter. That was inappropriate of me and I should not have done it."

Your example, which I think you take to be obviously inappropriate, is actually right on the line for me. It could either be interpreted as "I feel compelled to apologize but you did something B.S." or "I am sincerely sorry and wanted to offer an explanation for my actions." You would need to know the context and the past history between the two people to judge whether it is a sincere apology.

Also, there's an affirmative difference between apologizing to adults and apologizing to children. Adults don't particularly need to know your reasons for doing something; they just need to know you are sincerely sorry. Children affirmatively benefit from having emotions and motivations labelled. It helps them to label their own emotions correctly, which helps them process those emotions. And it helps them learn to empathize. I want my child to know both why I got upset and that, despite this reason, my behavior was still in appropriate and warranted an apology.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Mine does this too. I think it's because he gets embarrassed, especially if another person is involved. He gets extremely stubborn about it and will face any consequence rather than say sorry. He definitely understands empathy but can't get past his embarrassment of having made a bad choice. It's tough because he can just be so stubborn about it. I tell him it's ok to say what you mean in other ways, like "are you ok?", but he still gets so embarrassed that he refuses. Luckily it doesn't happen too often.

This was my kid, too. Horribly ashamed when he has hurt someone or "done something wrong," to the point where he acts even worse. So at 4, yeah, he often would refuse to apologize and if we insisted it just made things spiral out of control. He is 9 now and easily says sorry for almost everything. But sometimes it still happens. The other day I was tucking him into bed and he playfully insulted me and I told him he hurt my feelings. He was so embarrassed he couldn't even talk to me, and asked me to leave his room. He now is able to come back later and apologize, which he almost always does.

If your kid is otherwise a kind and empathetic person, I'd really consider whether forcing him to say I'm Sorry helps anything. I like the idea instead of having the kid figure out a way to help make things right, which actually means something!

[Anonymous]

Its not just about your kid and whether its sincere, its about the other kid knowing that he is being told to say sorry to her.
If your kid hits my kid and says sorry, we can talk about it, I can tell her that he said sorry, now lets move on.
But if your kid hits my kid and doesnt have to say sorry and acknowledge to her what he did was wrong then she feels doubly wronged.
Like he is being told its ok to hit and theres no consequence.
Make sure that you say sorry a lot around him. I say sorry to the dog if I bump her for example, or if i spill something close to DD I will say " oops, sorry about that" she hears me saying it so have never had an issue with it. Its something we say when we make a mistake or wrong someone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Four year olds hate saying their sorry. I insist on it too.

+1. I'm sorry is a requirement when you are in the wrong. Many young people (including my employees) these days don't say it even when they should. It drives me batty. Kids at a young age have to learn to take full responsibility for their actions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Four year olds hate saying their sorry. I insist on it too.

+1. I'm sorry is a requirement when you are in the wrong. Many young people (including my employees) these days don't say it even when they should. It drives me batty. Kids at a young age have to learn to take full responsibility for their actions.

meant to say- I'm a mom of 4 yr old twin boys. I make them sit in timeout until they are ready to say I'm sorry. Sometimes takes 15 minutes.

[Anonymous]

this was us. it sucks. Just keeping modeling it.

A friend also recommended the book "Tumford the Terrible." It's great. We read it every night for a month and it still gets pulled out during tough times. Cute rhyming story about just this problem.

[TheStrongWave]

I know this too well. Our 4.9 year old would roll on the ground and cry just because she didn’t want to apologize. Whenever she resorted to such behavior we had her sit in the “naughty corner” – the time-out area. Have you tried the “time-out” form of discipline with your son? It took us a couple of weeks to establish this form of discipline, but it all worked out.

[Anonymous]

Wow, time outs! How novel!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Four year olds hate saying their sorry. I insist on it too.

+1. I'm sorry is a requirement when you are in the wrong. Many young people (including my employees) these days don't say it even when they should. It drives me batty. Kids at a young age have to learn to take full responsibility for their actions.

How often do you say it to your employees?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't insist on the words because when you're forcing it the words lose meaning. What I say instead is "You played so roughly with Sophie that she cried. What can you do to make things right and make her feel better?"

+1

I don't care if she says the words "I'm sorry," I care if she is willing to say that what she did was wrong and take some step to make it right.

Different things work for different families, obviously, but I do insist that DD4 say the right thing as well as doing the right thing to remedy the situation. And I don't particularly care if she means it or not. Most apologies most people offer are not "sincere" by that criterion, in my opinion. They are just what is expected, and older kids or adults know that failing to offer an apology in a situation where one would normally occur only makes future interactions between the people more difficult. Social scripts are social glue that make it easier to interact with other people and maintain polite, productive interactions and relationships.