A second essential
is teaching children how to deal with their failures.
We have to learn that ourselves because we're not perfect parents.
And dealing with our failures means that we learn how to apologize,
and then we choose to forgive people when they do apologize to us.
In fact, you will not have a good relationship
with your spouse or your children
if you don't learn how to apologize.
And if they don't choose to forgive you because none of us are perfect.
So what we discovered is that children are taught
by their parents to apologize or not to apologize.
We discovered
that about 10% of the adult population almost never apologizes for anything.
And most of them are guys.
And they learned it from their fathers.
Who said to them when they were little real men, don't apologize.
The reality.
Real men do apologize.
And so we want to help them apologize.
Now, you have an idea in your mind of what a sincere apology looks like.
And you probably learned it from your parents.
You know, your you pushed
your little sister down the stairs and your mother said, don't do that.
Go tell her you're sorry.
So you say, I'm sorry.
Even if you weren't, you said, I'm sorry.
Now you're an adult.
What do you say when you want to apologize?
You typically say, I'm sorry.
But you see, there's five fundamental ways that people apologize.
We found this out by asking thousands of people two questions: When you apologize
what do you typically say?
And when someone is apologizing to you, what do you want to hear them say?
And one of them is, I'm sorry, but always tell them what you're sorry for.
I'm sorry that I lost my temper and yelled at you.
Another one is acknowledging that you're wrong.
I was wrong. I should not have done that.
And this really can be taught very young to a child.
A four year old breaks a cookie and says it broke. It broke.
And the parent says, honey, let's say that a different way.
I broke the cookie.
There's nothing wrong with breaking a cookie.
We're just helping the child accept responsibility.
For what they did. Okay?
So expressing that I was wrong
and then offering to make restitution.
How can I make this right?
How can I make this up to you?
What can I do that would that would help your hurt feelings?
And this is a part of an apology.
To some people it's a huge part of an apology.
And then also expressing the desire to change your behavior.
I don't want to do that again.
I just. I don't like that about me.
Yeah.
Can you help me that I can get a plan, that I won't do that again.
And for some people, that is a sincere apology.
And then the last one is actually requesting forgiveness.
So could I suggest that you sit down with your children
if they're old enough to talk now and relate, you know, eight, nine, ten years old,
and talk about apologizing that we want to learn how to apologize in our family.
Because sometimes mommy does things wrong.
Daddy does things wrong, and we have to apologize to each other.
And we want to
teach you how to apologize.
It's amazing. How they'll pick up on it.
And if you say to your your child, if you ever see me do something wrong
or something that really hurts you deeply and I don't apologize
you just say to me, Mommy, I think you need to apologize
and then I'll apologize.
Okay?
If we put it on the front burner, they'll learn how to apologize.
Now, with that, of course, comes also forgiving the person who apologized.
That's the pattern of the Bible.
We forgive
when people apologize, just like God forgives us when we apologize to God.
And so forgiveness is not a feeling.
Forgiveness is a choice.
I'm going to pardon you.
I'm not going to make you pay for this.
And I'm going to remove the barrier that was created by this hurt.
Okay? We choose to forgive.