On saying sorry when we scream
It helps when our children understand our feelings too
S: Why did Captain Hook have no hand?
Me: Because he wasn’t nice to the crocodile, I think.
S: Oh… He didn’t say sorry…
Many of us teach our children to apologise as soon as they start to show undesirable behaviour towards others. In our house, it started with biting and hitting, often done to get a reaction or let out frustration, not usually maliciously intended.
Now and again our toddler (21 months) hits and says “go away” when his frustration builds. We ask him to say sorry and sure enough, after he has calmed down, he comes over and gently strokes the head of the hit victim. He learned to do this shortly after he could walk and we hope it helps him to understand that when he hits it causes distress to someone else.
Hitting may simply be a lack of impulse control, because he does understand when others are in pain. When I bumped into the corner of our sharp table (terrible furniture choice for kids) he instinctively attempted to comfort me. In other words, he already feels empathy and it will develop further from here on.
It’s a hugely important trait to develop. We are social creatures and in order to navigate our social world we need to understand how others feel. Early on, children recognise that others around them have different thoughts or emotions to their own. They have been shown to exhibit comforting gestures in response to distress as early as 14 months old. By the age of three, children can express more sophisticated vocal concerns about how others feel. My daughter regularly explains to me why someone else may be crying.
What’s especially useful about this is that it allows us to reason with our children to help them understand how adults feel too. For instance, when I lost my patience after a day of constant tantrums, I told S that when she screams it makes me feel stressed (when children scream, it literally releases stress hormones in the brain). Telling her how I feel will, I hope, help her to understand that screaming affects those around her, however valid her frustration is.
In The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read– psychotherapist Philippa Perry writes that it’s good to explain how we feel to our children, just as we can and should empathise with how they feel. This is better, she suggests, than disallowing their feelings – which many of us may instinctively do, say by telling them to stop being so silly at crying about a spill, or that they shouldn’t be upset that their favourite socks are in the wash (easier said than done of course).
It’s useful even when it means explaining why we lost our temper, or felt grumpy.
“I never expected that taking responsibility for my own bad behaviour, not justifying it or blaming someone else, would mean [my daughter] would learn to do the same,” writes Perry.
The same has happened for us. After a day of multiple meltdowns, S later apologised to me at for shouting and screaming. And I did the same…*
If we cater only to their emotional needs and forego our own by bottling up our own frustrations, it will make us less happy in the long run. An unexpected consequence is that it also means that when I tell S off she tells me it makes her feel stressed, echoing my own words. Or when she is in full meltdown she reasons with me and says, amongst sobs: “I’m not having a tantrum I’m just sad,” pointing to her tears to validate that she is, in fact, upset.
It’s a balance, of course. I refrain from sharing my feelings of boredom in the playground, or my frustration when asked to read the same tedious book ad nauseam. But at least I know that when I do share how I feel, the messages are heard loud and clear, and will no doubt be repeated back to me later on.
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*NB to her my stern voice counts as shouting, which I would argue does not.
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