Reply to 4 yo refuses to say "I'm sorry"

Forum Index » Infants, Toddlers, & Preschoolers

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

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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. [/quote]

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! [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics