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Parents find it shocking when I give the advice ‘don’t force your child to say ‘I’m sorry’ after an incident.’ They think I am letting kids off the hook. Not true! Let me take a moment to clarify my reasons.
First, to be clear, I want your children to have good manners and develop a true sense of empathy and compassion for others. Yes, I want them to take responsibility for their actions and to make amends when someone has been wronged. All of those pursuits are important. I am only suggesting a different means and method to arrive at that end.
When parents simply force a child with the ole’ parenting chestnut, ‘Come on now, say you’re sorry,’ they invite that classic nasal and sarcastic reply, ‘I’m saaaawry’.
Step into the child’s mindset and emotional state. You can imagine that any empathy that they were feeling because of their wrong doing just flew out the window as their parents put the spotlight on them and their screw up, which is now on public display. Embarrassing.
Next, you’re commanded to apologize (as if you wouldn’t have capacity to do so of your own volition). Well, it’s humiliating and degrade, frankly.
Why They Do It:
What to Do Instead?
Our children experience enormous pressures to be online all the time. They are starting as young as 2 years-old on the iPhone and evolving to the 8 to18 year-old spending more than 7½ hours per day in digital activity of one form or another, and that doesn’t include cell phone use.
Some schools require children as young as 10 to have a Think Pad and to maintain a regular blog. They bring their schoolwork home on a digital stick and use the Internet for assigned research. Teens meets with their classmates via Skype to complete school projects because it’s more convenient than getting together face-to-face. To stay connected with their friends, our children keep their noses to the screens while texting and Facebooking. They entertain themselves online with video games, TV shows and YouTube videos. And we parents are putting the pressure on them, too. We ask our children to stay in touch with us digitally, and encourage them to distract themselves online when we want time to ourselves.
While accepting that our children’s lives will require a certain amount of screen time, we can be important advocates for off-screen activities to counter the weaknesses of a digital life. Already doctors are seeing young people showing the physical fallout from years of computer use—neck and back problems, carpal tunnel syndrome, diminished hearing, effects of inadequate sleep. Drama teachers are finding that today’s students are so dependent on texting they have trouble expressing themselves when they’re asked to communicate face-to-face.
To counter the sedentary, sometimes solitary screen-based lifestyle, our teens need social, physical and tactile experiences: making music or art, dancing or drama, sports, volunteering, time in nature. If your child is resisting reduced screen time, ask him or her to propose a solution that takes into account your concerns. If she argues that she needs to be online all the time because her career will be dependent on her cyber skills, you can counter with the example of Pierce Vallieres. He’s the 14 year-old who created a Rubik’s Cube app for Apple that is generating worldwide sales. Doubtless Pierce spent hours online fine-tuning his creation, but, according to media reports, he still manages to find time to play baseball, hockey and guitar, and is learning to fly an airplane.
You’ll be strengthened in your resolve by the position of many Silicon Valley computer geeks who are sending their children to schools like Waldorf that don’t use computers. According to a recent article in The New York Times, these parents are aware that their children will need computer time to compete in the modern world but say “What’s the rush, given how easy it is to pick up those skills.”
At Waldorf Academy here in Toronto we are not against technology per se. It has been one of the most important benefactors of human culture and development. However, we do not think it benefits the children in the classroom until middle school. Our alumni are attaining degrees in every subject and are grateful for that very brief moment in their lives when they weren’t ruled by technology but were encouraged to imagine and foster their own creativity.
I agree completely with this article as we have already encountered this techno problem with our five year old grandson who goes completely into a hysterical fit every time he plays with any of the online learning games, Wii, Dsi or any other gadgets out there. His parents and I are diligent about time slots for these activities but he gets so upset at the end that we take the privileges away more and more it seems. What to do next is frustrating for all of us.
Comments
I love Alyson! I have been reading her advice for years and it has positively helped me deal wiht many situations in parenting my 2 children for the better.
Two of my 3 children tend to escalate quickly. Apologies are hard to obtain in heightened stress, so I’ve learned to diffuse the situation first (so it doesn’t turn into an even bigger event) and then discuss the steps that need to be taken. This is hard when you’re in a public situation and others don’t understand why you arent’ demanding your child to make an instant apology. If I pushed for an apology when they were younger, they resisted and their brains became even more blurry from the stress (causing more ‘acting out’ for lack of a better word). Rather, at home and in most social occassions, I taught them to (if possible) make a short statement of apology, but if they are way gone, then I wait until they are calm to deal with apologies and consequences. It’s far more sincere, and sometimes requires even more steps because we have to go back to the place where the ‘victim’ is (drive to a friend’s house to deliver a sorry card or another token of good friendship).