30 Oct 2010, 9:24 am
I think it does come down to the thought processes. I do. I want to put in a fix so the problem does not re-ocurr again. I want to try to fix the hole in the system that went wrong. If I knew who was at fault I could try to find out what led up to what went wrong by them and fix it. I'm trying to prevent future mishaps. WE could try to go over all of this so we could fix the problem through step by step analysis. If something goes wrong with me I do not say life is not fair I want to know what went wrong and why it went wrong.
agreed on that....
huh, cubedemon, i might read more of your blog, but seeing the depht of the people commenting there, i might never dare to join in for fear of embarrassing myself
that is true philosophy in the comments, where are those people from??You won't embarrass yourself. Realize two things.
1. YOu know nothing and you know that you know nothing-This is from the great philosopher Socrates.
2. You don't know if statement 1 is true.
30 Oct 2010, 1:06 pm
azurecrayon. i understand the process you go through with your youngest son is there , from your point of view, to have him understand what he did. But he got all the answers right, didn't he? it takes some years for a child to start understanding that he has hurt someone, that the person is consequently in pain, and that given this is your fault, you should apologise.
If you want, i can tell you how I reacted as a child when i had hurt someone by accident. I saw the pain, since the kid was crying, but instead of feeling sorry for him i felt fear. This comes from kindergarden interactions , where hurt children start running after you to get revenge. If i had hurt someone, i was in panick. i would stand 3 feet away, watching for signs of anger, afraid that if i opened my mouth to apologise they would remember me and hurt me.
It always felt easier to apologise when a grown up was present to prevent any violence from the hurt party, and i did feel sorry, but the fear and self preservation instinct was stronger when no adult was present. i would run and hide.
Your son probably feels safe in your presence and that is a good thing! it will help him be able to try and apply the technique when only kids are involved. round the age of 7 , i found other children started to react to my apologies. not in a violent form anymore, but by saying they were barely/moderately/really hurt, and i could then go on and sympathise and apologise some more, since the dialogue had started in a non threatening manner.
you need to realise that before his peers are old enough to accept an apology , he will be wary of using it out of the presence of an adult shield. That doesn't mean he doesn't feel sorry though.
i need to edit that because i just went on with the idea in my head without relating it to our conversation so much 
every kid is different of course and you know your children better than anyone else, and they probably differ a lot from what i was, from what my children are , or yourself for that matter. i think we have closed the loop on what every type of apology might mean, but i think we can agree on the fact that an apology mends a relationship. the part that i was feeling unsure about, as in: forcing an apology to artificially mend a relationship between two people who have no desire to mend anything, is a little bit clearer though. the relationship is not what matters. one needs to apologise even when they don't feel sorry and very much intended to hurt the other person, and would do it again in a heartbeat. That's the kind of apology i usually don't accept, and i see no reason to force a child to accept a fake apology either,it's better to let them cool off and realise they ARE sorry and acted stupidly so they can apologise on their own behalf when the time comes. it's ok to differ on that i guess. We will probably see the same results in the end anyway, since all adults have their own sets of values, and i trust my children to apologise when they are in the wrong, and so do you. anything involving grown up politics is such a blurry mess anyway, they will know what to do to get the most out of it, probably more than i do....
