The No Explanation, Excuse-less Apology

We begin trying to teach children at a very young age, to apologize when they have done something "wrong" or when they have hurt someone's feelings. Many people-parents, grandparents, teachers- force kids to apologize when they catch them in these dirty deeds.

"You march yourself over there and say you're sorry!"

"You better go tell him you're sorry."

"You owe her an apology."

And there is a lot to be said for teaching children empathy and helping them to understand how their actions affect other people. But I've often wondered about the methods we use to teach these lessons. Is it effective to force a child to apologize if he is not truly sorry for what he did or said? I have heard the argument that we're teaching them habits. Fake it till you make, so to speak. Eventually children will make it a habit. I am not so sure I agree with this mindset. It seems more like creating a habit of insincere apology. When the apology is empty, the child likely hasn't learned anything about another person's perspective, empathy, or what it means to apologize. She has simply learned, if I deliver what the grown-up expects as a response for unkind behavior, then said adult will leave me alone. Essentially, the adult is reinforcing insincere behavior.

Of course, we hope as children get older and become teenagers or young adults, they'll understand the connection between an apology and how the other person felt. However, as a person who has worked with youth and adolescents most of my adult life, I'm not so sure this is how it plays out. This type of apology is really self-serving; to get the adult off my back or to keep the other person from being angry at me or telling on me.  It's all about what will happen to me or how people will feel about me, not about how the other person felt.

As adults we do this too. We concoct explanation of why we did or said what we did. We do this out of preservation of the other person's feeling about us, not out of what it meant to them. We feel the need to give excuses and explanations for why things happen, when what we should do is just say we're sorry. If I really mean it, it's not about how I appear to the other person, it's simply about being sorry. I find myself really growing in this area, being mindful of a legitimate and sincere apology. I have a tendency to be a bit verbose. Even in my writing I can be overly detail oriented and over explanatory (hopefully I'm not doing that here!). Something that happened yesterday is what gave me the idea for this post.

I have been in casual contact with a professional friend and colleague recently. She had mentioned she wanted to talk to me, and needed my professional opinion about something. We made loose arrangements to talk and I failed to pick up the phone over several weeks. In the back of my mind I knew she was waiting to hear from me, as my schedule is less flexible than hers. I thought about it several times, and I never called her. Last night I sent her a text setting up time to talk with her at the end of the weekend. Then I thought, wow... it's been weeks since she asked me. Shame on me.

Some time ago, I might have gone on and on about how busy I had been, all the travel I had been doing for work, craziness when I returned, and not feeling well the past couple of days. Truth? I just didn't make it enough of a priority, and that's just a shitty thing to do to a friend and someone you respect. She didn't need an explanation or excuses, just an apology and a commitment to do what she needed me to do. Once we scheduled our call for Sunday, I simply said, "I'm sorry I didn't get back to you sooner about this." Period. No excuses. No long-winded explanation. It wasn't about me, it was about what she needed. I apologized and set my time to talk with her. It may have been a bigger deal to me than her, but I still felt horrible about it.

I think the apology is an important sentiment in relationships. Sometimes it's all we need to hear to feel better about a negative situation. But we all know what those insincere apologies are like too. The teenager who says, "Soooo-ree." Who wants to hear that? Or how about when your significant other ends an argument with. "Fine. I'm sorry." Empty words mean empty apologies. An apology can go a long way to repairing a mishap in a relationship, but it's as important to know how an apology feels as it is to have the habit of saying you're sorry. Let's teach people to process their thoughts and actions and help lead them to want to make an apology on their own, rather than just because we force them to. Then maybe they'll actually learn what it means to feel sorry.