Hello parents, I found this article very interesting and imagined myself in some situations like that when my children hurt another child, fortunately, I got to stop this process following some rules at home and nowadays my children don´t do that anymore. Thanks God. But maybe this can help one of you who is living it and even for me if one day I pass by this again. This article is totally written at:http://www.janetlansbury.com/2009/12/youll-be-sorry/
So, what do we do when our child hurts someone?
If a child has a tendency to act out with other children when he is tired or frustrated, we should be close by to intervene before another child is hurt. We might say firmly, “I won’t let you hit,“ then create a physical boundary between the children with our hand. Or we may have to restrain our child to stop him. If we are too late and a child is hurt, we should apologize profusely to the injured child and his parents and then remove our child immediately from the situation – it’s time to go home. Generally, when young children deliberately misbehave, they are signaling that they feel ‘out of control’ and need intervention. They cannot be expected to turn on a dime, compose themselves and express regret.
If our child is old enough to understand apologies and hurts another by accident, it is still best not to direct the child to respond. We should acknowledge the situation, wait, and then model the behavior we want our child to emulate, as the mother did in this example from my Comments section:
…I went to the little boy, and his mom said he just had stitches removed where he got kicked. I said to him, “Ouch, I’m sorry that Hope dropped her shoe on your scar. I can understand that is a super sensitive spot. †Meanwhile, he is showing me the spot and I say that “I see itâ€. My daughter dries her tears and walks over to him and finally says her honest, quiet and beautiful “I’m sorryâ€.
In some instances, there are better ways to make amends than apologizing, and when trusted to respond naturally, children will come up with these sincere gestures on their own. The boy who pats his opponent on the back when they collide on the soccer field, the toddler who offers a toy to a crying child, and the daughter who reaches for a towel to wipe up the spilled juice are all acting out of authentic empathy.
If we want our child to express an honest apology, we must be patient and not push. ‘Hi’, ‘goodbye’, ‘share!’ and ‘thank you’ are all loaded words for a child when parents demand them, but ‘I’m sorry’ takes the cake when it comes to parental expectations. Since our goal is for our child to make amends for his misdeeds because he genuinely regrets them, we must trust him to find the words in time.
We are powerful examples for our children of all that is human. We teach “I’m sorry†best by modeling it. Children need to hear us apologize to others, and also to them. They need to know that human beings are not perfect. When we say to our child, “I’m sorry, I made a mistake,†we give the child permission to make mistakes too.
While we are modeling apologies, our children will teach us again and again about forgiveness. Implicitly understanding the errors of their peers, children usually forgive immediately and return to playing together. We must grant our children that same compassion. By trusting our children to develop authentic social responses, we give them the self-confidence to be the sensitive and deeply caring human beings we hope they will become.
“Respect the child. Be not too much his parent, but also his pupil…†–Ralph Waldo Emerson
