I see parents make this mistake all the time…
When their child does something mean and hurtful to another child, they tell their own child to apologize, then everyone moves on with their lives. Everyone except the child who got hurt.
Let’s get one thing straight: forcing your child to say sorry doesn’t solve the problem. Not at all. Your child may not be sincere in his or her apology, and saying sorry will most likely NOT make the other child feel better.
So what can you do?
Wendy Young uses a unique strategy that will help both children feel much better about the situation…
For every put-down that your child makes, he or she must come up with four put-ups (or something nice to say) for the hurt child. Or, instead of coming up with four nice things to say, your child could do two nice things for the other child.
I think this is is an effective way to get the child doing the put-down to really think about what he or she did, and it cheers up the child being put-down by hearing positive things.
Have you tried something like this before? How did it work out? What do you do to help make the other child feel better? What do you do with your own child?
When Sorry Doesn’t Cut It: Put-downs and Put-ups [Examiner]
