Should I Make My Child Apologize? {Part Three}

[dropcap]B[/dropcap]efore I finish up this series, I want to reiterate something that I’ve already said in the comments: my aim here is not to convince you that you should do as I do. I always enjoy making you think {as I also enjoy you making me think}, but my main purpose is actually to give a defense of training young children to apologize. After all, if a popular book is going to criticize the practice, we should certainly have the discussion of whether or not there is any other perspective to be had on the subject.

All of that to say: please don’t feel like this is pressure from me to change your family’s habits. I’m just doing what I always do: Afterthinking.

Moving ever onward…

There are many virtues, but I think courage is the one that best suits this conversation. Courage is interesting because it obviously necessitates a negative emotion: fear. When a man commits a courageous act, he does something — something dangerous, usually — in spite of his fear. If he did the act, but didn’t feel fear, we would rightfully call the act dangerous, but we wouldn’t call it brave because bravery requires the overcoming of fear.

People who do dangerous things without feeling fear are not brave and are usually doing something rash and stupid. There is no virtue in this sort of thing.

When we talk about authenticity, we can sometimes get a little confused. If someone does a brave act, is he really being authentic? After all, he’s scared. Wouldn’t the most authentic thing to do be to run away and hide? Is he a hypocrite in doing this dangerous deed, because what he really feels is fear and his actions are contrary to his feelings?

I think we’d all say no, no he’s not a hypocrite. He was courageous, in spite of his fear.

My point is: All virtues contain a negative component.

You see, virtue is attained when the bad is conquered by the good and what should be becomes what is. So chastity conquers lust, courage conquers fear, faith conquers doubt, and love?

Omnia vincit amor, to quote Virgil.

Love conquers all.

This sort of overcoming is not the same thing as hypocrisy.

But sometimes we get mixed up. We start to think that our authentic self is that self that wants to lust, fear, doubt, and basically wallow in sin. Well, that is a lie. The temptations are real, but so is the possibility of goodness. If we have been made new in Christ, we are a new creation, God is making all things new, including us. There’s a battle to be fought, of course {this is not a magical instantaneous transformation}, but Good really does win in the end — in the world, as well as in us.

To return to our conversation on apologies, there are really two takes on requiring children to apologize. On the one hand, we have the stance taken by folks like the authors of Give Them Grace:

We know that some parents insist that children immediately ask for forgiveness for their offenses, sometimes so that the correction will cease. Although such parents long for immediate reconciliation and repentance, we disagree with this practice. We do not think it is ever advisable to tempt children to lie. Certainly children should be taught that pain is a consequence for disobedience and that disobedience affects others, not just themselves. They should be encouraged to as God and others {including their parents} for forgiveness, but only if they are genuinely sorry.

If we encourage children to ask for forgiveness when their hearts haven’t been stricken by the rod of the Holy Spirit’s conviction, we are training them to be hypocritical. We are inadvertently teaching them that false professions of sorrow will satisfy God.

[snip]

Rather than insisting on an immediate show of repentance, you should give your children time to respond to the prompting of the Holy Spirit.{p. 104}

The assumption here is that because we are asking the child to do or say something that is incongruent with their feelings, we are training them in hypocrisy. This, however, denies the idea that we often have to do things we do not feel like doing, and that while virtue deals with overcoming passions and temptation, hypocrisy deals in deception — it is a faking of religion where there actually is none.

On the other hand, hypocrisy isn’t the issue at hand at all. Hypocrisy is more likely cultivated in homes where appearances mean everything, rather than where reconciliation and admission of wrong is a bedrock value. When a child is asked to do something he doesn’t want to do, and he learns to make himself do it, he is learning to say yes to what is right and no to his lower impulses. He is learning to be what God created him to be.

We are completely comfortable asking our children to do right in many other areas. We ask them to tell the truth, to say please and thank you, to do their chores, to be respectful of others, and on and on. We ask them to do right. I see no reason to treat apologies as a special, sacred ground, upon which we parents must not tread.

Training children in good habits pays a cultural dividend. Just as the Church and society will benefit from children who have been trained in honesty and manners, so will they benefit from children who have been trained that reconciliation is a matter of course. Children are not learning to fake it when they learn to do what is right. {I suppose an exception to this would be if you were trying to make them feel sorry but I have yet to meet a good parent who thinks they can control a child’s feelings by force.}

They are, rather, learning to practice virtue on a small scale, which is to say that even a child in his tiny, small world, can learn to overcome evil with good. Their consciences are being trained to know what is right. All of this will not guarantee that they will be quick to apologize when they are grown, but surely it will guarantee that they know reconciliation is their duty, and their many hours of practice mean that they know how to initiate it.

Or, to sum up my own opinion, virtue starts at home and is built incident by incident, line upon line, precept upon precept, habit upon habit.

[W]hat you would have the man become, you must train the child to be.
—Charlotte Mason

Read More in This Series:

• Part One
• Part Two
• Part Three ← you are here