Apologizing From The Heart

About 2 years ago I blogged here about teaching our boys to say "I'm Sorry". Lucas in particular was struggling to say the words. After hurting one of us, we were requiring that Lucas apologize. I definitely received some backlash when I blogged about this, with many people saying we shouldn't force our kids to apologize. And I certainly understood the reasoning behind that. But my thought was that if it begins as a habit, it will eventually turn into something our kids do from the heart. At the age of 4 or 5 they may not understand why they are apologizing, but with enough reminding, they will at least realize it is important. And then with age and maturity, they will learn the importance of apologies and forgiveness.

Fast forward two years. Lucas still struggles with anger and aggression, and he often gets carried away and hurts his siblings. And for the last two years we have been requiring an apology from him after these types of incidents.

(This was taken just last week after the boys were fighting after school)

Over the weekend Lucas and Jenna were playing together and I heard Jenna crying. She told me Lucas had pushed her over, so I put him in a timeout. Often this will escalate things, and he will not stay in his timeout. On this day he stayed on the couch, so I left him alone for a bit. When I peeked into the room 5 minutes later, he had a paper and pencil. So I left him alone to continue cooling off.

A while later I found this scrap of paper next to Jenna. She told me Lucas had given it to her. "To Jenna I am sorwe that I pust you ovr"

An apology without prompting, straight from the heart. This makes me so happy! I feel like he is finally learning real remorse, and that an apology is not only required, but an important thing for him to do. I love it when my kids do the right thing without being prompted. I am also so impressed with his writing and spelling. He tries so hard.