Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / #1226 - Forcing Kids To Apologise (R)

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#1226 - Forcing Kids To Apologise (R) · Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families

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Speaker 1: In Season one of Parental Guidance, I created a bit
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Speaker 1: of a national controversy. There were national news articles written
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Speaker 1: in some of the online publications about one line in
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Speaker 1: particular that I shared, Hutson, did you throw.
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Speaker 2: Your throng at him?
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Speaker 1: Yeah? Can you look at him and apologize for wrongs?
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Speaker 2: All right? It doesn't make it better if both of
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Speaker 2: you do it to each other. All right, all right,
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Speaker 2: let's go. Come on.
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Speaker 1: I want to say something kind of provocative. Forcing children
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Speaker 1: to apologize is teaching children to lie. Controversy today, we're
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Speaker 1: talking about whether or not we should be making our
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Speaker 1: kids apologize when they do the wrong thing to ask
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Speaker 1: to their peers, to their siblings, or maybe they just
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Speaker 1: break something in the house they're really emotional about it.
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Speaker 1: Should we be making our kids apologize?
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Speaker 2: Whenever you ask this question, I go straight back to
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Speaker 2: a story that you've told multiple times that just so
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Speaker 2: clearly depicts this in action.
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Speaker 1: This is the one where I fought with my sister
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Speaker 1: in the kitchen. Yes, yes, all right, Shall I tell it?
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Speaker 2: Tell it?
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Speaker 1: I'm about fifteen years old. I've got a lot of
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Speaker 1: bad attitude. My sister is four years younger than me.
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Speaker 1: She's there for about eleven in our home, we didn't
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Speaker 1: watch Neighbors or Home and Away or The Simpsons because
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Speaker 1: of all the bad attitude and the characters and the relationships.
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Speaker 2: I really didn't need any any extra.
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Speaker 1: I don't think it made any difference whether we watched
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Speaker 1: it or not. I had a bad relationship with my sister, okay,
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Speaker 1: and so we also didn't use words like stupid in
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Speaker 1: our house. That was the s word. And I got
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Speaker 1: really drank it with my sister in the kitchen one
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Speaker 1: day and I called her not just stupid, I called
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Speaker 1: her a stupid idiot.
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Speaker 2: Double whammy.
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Speaker 1: So Mum heard it. She was in the living room.
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Speaker 1: She came into the kitchen said, justin, we don't speak
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Speaker 1: like that in this home. You need to apologize to
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Speaker 1: your sister. She literally forced an apology out of her
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Speaker 1: fifteen year old son, who had a bad attitude. And
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Speaker 1: so in apologizing to my sister for calling her a
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Speaker 1: stupid I literally said, fine, Karina, I'm sorry, you're a
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Speaker 1: stupid idiot. It's really bad.
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Speaker 2: I'm laughing, but it's just this is this is why
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Speaker 2: I love this story. When I think about the times
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Speaker 2: where I have been forced to make an apology, whether
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Speaker 2: it be by a a real life enforcer or my
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Speaker 2: own internal enforcer. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: Yeah.
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Speaker 2: When I feel like this is I'm supposed to do this,
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Speaker 2: it leaves me in a victim mentality because I've been
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Speaker 2: done wrong by This is not it's got nothing to
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Speaker 2: do with me. This is all about the other person.
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Speaker 2: So all my focus and energy is on what a
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Speaker 2: stupid idiot in your words, the other person is for
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Speaker 2: hurting me or doing wrong by me. Right, I don't
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Speaker 2: learn anything through the process because I'm not doing any
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Speaker 2: internal thinking. I'm not I'm not looking at how I
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Speaker 2: might have contributed to this situation. It is all about
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Speaker 2: the other person. But on top of that, if I'm
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Speaker 2: being enforced by somebody else, not only does it rupture
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Speaker 2: my relationship with the person I'm saying sorry to because
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Speaker 2: I don't believe that I'm sorry, I'm not sorry.
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Speaker 1: That's my fault that now I'm in trouble.
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Speaker 2: That's exactly right. It ruptures my relationship with the person,
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Speaker 2: and in this case an adult in a child, it
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Speaker 2: ruptures my relationship with them. And on top of that
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Speaker 2: that whole process. If I'm not a fifteen year old
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Speaker 2: teenage boy with heaps of attitude, and I'm more of
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Speaker 2: a timid person. What I learned through the process is
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Speaker 2: that in order to make life pleasant for everybody else,
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Speaker 2: I need to please other people.
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Speaker 1: I like the words that you use, the external enforcer
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Speaker 1: or the internal enforcer. I wasn't going to talk about
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Speaker 1: this too. You use these phrases, but I want to
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Speaker 1: go back to something that I wrote in the most
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Speaker 1: important parenting book that I believe exists on the planet.
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Speaker 1: It's called The Pairing Revolution. I wrote it a couple
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Speaker 1: of years ago, and I just wish every parent could
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Speaker 1: read it. In that book, I talk about a motivation continuum,
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Speaker 1: and at the very shallow end of motivation. No one
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Speaker 1: wants to swim in shallow motivational waters, right. You want
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Speaker 1: to be in a deep water where you have fun.
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Speaker 1: But a very shallow end is this thing called extrinsic motivation.
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Speaker 1: Extrinsic motivation is when you do something because somebody else
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Speaker 1: is making you do it, either because you're going to
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Speaker 1: get a reward or a punishment. So a forced apology
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Speaker 1: in that instance is literally an extrinsic enforcer. But you
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Speaker 1: also use the term internal enforcer. The next level of
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Speaker 1: motivation on. This motivation continuum is called introjected motivation. Now,
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Speaker 1: I know I'm getting a bit sciency, but that's precisely
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Speaker 1: what's going on here. No one's making you apologize. You're
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Speaker 1: doing it because you feel like you have to. There's
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Speaker 1: an internal police officer who's sort of berating you. It's
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Speaker 1: your conscience, saying you've got to do it. You've got
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Speaker 1: to do it. But you're not there yet, morally or
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Speaker 1: mentally or psychologically. You're just not there. And so the
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Speaker 1: apology gets spat across the room. The apology does not
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Speaker 1: come across the sincere and neither you nor the person
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Speaker 1: receiving the apology feel like hugging at the end of
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Speaker 1: this and saying, oh, yeah, everything's all better now, So glad,
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Speaker 1: so glad I got the apology.
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Speaker 2: And while I sit in that space, though, what actually
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Speaker 2: happens is I feel more and more justified to be
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Speaker 2: angry and hurt, right right.
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Speaker 1: And then of course, and they get the apology, they
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Speaker 1: get the apology that's been spat across the room, and
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Speaker 1: they think, hmm, I was right to do that to
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Speaker 1: them in the first place, because they're really that sort
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Speaker 1: of a person.
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Speaker 2: That's exactly right, and so what happens is, instead of
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Speaker 2: me actually feeling soft and kind towards that person, my
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Speaker 2: anger and my resentment builds.
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Speaker 1: Okay, now I want to add some nuance here. I
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Speaker 1: think that we both sit on the same side of
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Speaker 1: the fence on this one. Forced apologies are generally ineffective. However,
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Speaker 1: I want to lean on some research and a little
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Speaker 1: bit of I guess, an alternative view. There's this thing
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Speaker 1: called theory of mind. I've talked about it a lot
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Speaker 1: on the podcast. It develops in children somewhere around four
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Speaker 1: or five or six. In fact, recent research suggests that
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Speaker 1: it might be later, it might be around seven or
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Speaker 1: even eight. And there is some research that shows that
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Speaker 1: when an under seven child receives an apology, regardless of
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Speaker 1: how they receive it, they're actually pretty good with it.
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Speaker 1: They're like, okay, good, they apologize. Now, if the apology
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Speaker 1: is really explicitly forced, if it's a really unkind apology,
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Speaker 1: like you're one, yeah, then even under sevens don't tend
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Speaker 1: to take to them very well. But as a general rule,
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Speaker 1: if you haven't got theory of mind, that is, if
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Speaker 1: you're a parent of very young children and they do
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Speaker 1: the wrong thing. You could probably say you need to apologize,
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Speaker 1: and they will spit an apology out at their sibling
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Speaker 1: and everything will actually be okay. So I just want
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Speaker 1: to acknowledge that because the research there kids under seven
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Speaker 1: really do just want to hear sorry. Whether it's a
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Speaker 1: prompted apology or whether it's a spontaneous apology, it is
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Speaker 1: usually going to help the relationship. As they develop more
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Speaker 1: cognitive capacity, from about the age of six or seven onwards,
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Speaker 1: those prompted apologies become less and less meaningful, particularly when
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Speaker 1: it's quite clear, quite obvious that this is not an
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Speaker 1: intrinsically motivated apology, that is, it's an introjected or an
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Speaker 1: externally prompted apology.
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Speaker 2: So then my question is, before the age of six,
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Speaker 2: should we be encouraging our kids to apologize.
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Speaker 1: So I'm going to just say no. I mean, I
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Speaker 1: think it's a pretty low stakes conversation. Honestly, when you're
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Speaker 1: talking about the younger kids, I really think it's low stakes.
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Speaker 1: If you want to, fine, do it, fine, fine if
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Speaker 1: you have to, but you're not setting yourself up for
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Speaker 1: success later because then you kind of get in this habit,
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Speaker 1: this pattern where you think this is the way it
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Speaker 1: should be. And as the kids do get older and
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Speaker 1: develop more cognitive capacity and complexity, the apologies become a
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Speaker 1: little bit more tricky and you don't know where to go.
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Speaker 1: So I just think with these things start early and
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Speaker 1: it gets easier.
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Speaker 2: As you're talking. I'm just thinking this through. Right, You've
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Speaker 2: got children, they're young, they don't harbor resentment the same
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Speaker 2: way we do, so asking there or encouraging them to apologize,
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Speaker 2: like you said, it's low stakes, there's not the huge
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Speaker 2: amount in it. But as they get to that point
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Speaker 2: where you can start to see there's a sticking point,
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Speaker 2: isn't that the perfect time to then start to have
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Speaker 2: conversations around you know, in the past mummies asked you
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Speaker 2: to apologize. I can tell you're actually still really really
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Speaker 2: angry about this. What should we do?
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Speaker 1: This is when we move further into deeper motivational waters.
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Speaker 1: Along that motivational continuum that are write about in the
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Speaker 1: Parenting Revolution, we're moving into identified or integrated motivation. So
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Speaker 1: identified motivation is where you say, yeah, I can see
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Speaker 1: the value in it. Integrated is where you say, this
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Speaker 1: is pretty much who I am as a person. I'm
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Speaker 1: a person who wants to repair and make amends. See
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Speaker 1: this argument that we should be forcing our kids to apologize,
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Speaker 1: it's really it's an say it's useless because it promotes
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Speaker 1: empty apologies. Number two, I'd say it's unnecessary because there
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Speaker 1: are better ways. But ultimately, why is the child apologizing
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Speaker 1: when it's under duress where it's coerced apology. They're apologizing
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Speaker 1: because they want to escape punishment. That's really it. It's an
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Speaker 1: extrinsically motivated.
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Speaker 2: Apology and goes back to my conversation around this desire
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Speaker 2: and need to people please.
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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, but you know what, they're not developing. They're
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Speaker 1: not actually developing the empathy that we want them to develop,
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Speaker 1: mainly because of a lack of cognitive capacity, but also
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Speaker 1: because it's now being forced. They don't actually feel sorry.
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Speaker 2: But on top of that, I'm sorry, I'm cutting in.
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Speaker 2: But on top of that, they don't feel seen, hurt
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Speaker 2: or valued either, because if you're enforcing me to say sorry,
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Speaker 2: you don't see the hurt. You don't see what's happened
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Speaker 2: to me, you don't understand what I'm going through. All
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Speaker 2: you see is that I've done something and it's hurt
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Speaker 2: that person. But you didn't see what happened that led
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Speaker 2: me to that and there or I feel invisible.
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Speaker 1: You said it before. It makes a victim of the
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Speaker 1: person who is the perpetrator. Yeah, big problem there. Ultimately,
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Speaker 1: when we do that, it stops them recognizing how their
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Speaker 1: actions are affecting others because now our actions are affecting them,
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Speaker 1: and it stops them from repairing. You see, effective repair,
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Speaker 1: true repair. Making amends is an active process, and it
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Speaker 1: works best when we're in that deeper end of the
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Speaker 1: motivation continuum. I think it's worth unpacking briefly why kids
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Speaker 1: don't want to apologize. What's your take on that.
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Speaker 2: If I'm apologizing for something, then I have to admit
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Speaker 2: that I'm wrong. And if I admit that I'm wrong,
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Speaker 2: then in my mind, I'm not a good person.
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Speaker 1: Right right, What I'm hearing you say is an apology
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Speaker 1: comes down to, in some ways a level of personal pride.
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Speaker 1: For me to apologize means I have to acknowledge that
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Speaker 1: in that moment, I was not at my best, I
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Speaker 1: was not who I should be.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, and as a seven year old, I'm not thinking
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Speaker 2: that right. What I'm thinking is I'm trying so hard
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Speaker 2: to be a good person, and now I'm getting in
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Speaker 2: trouble for it, and that clearly means I'm not a
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Speaker 2: good person.
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Speaker 1: I have three other reasons on top of your very
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Speaker 1: very clear and important reason. Number One, I'm still frustrated
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Speaker 1: at the other person. I'm just not ready to apologize
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Speaker 1: to them. They offended me, they upset me, or whatever
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Speaker 1: it is, I'm still upset about the thing. Number Two,
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Speaker 1: I might be embarrassed. Let's say I broke a window,
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Speaker 1: or I said the wrong thing to somebody and it
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Speaker 1: got blurted out, or somebody took a screenshot of something
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Speaker 1: that they weren't supposed to take, like, I'm embarrassed about that.
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Speaker 1: And number three, I'm scared what happens if I apologize.
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Speaker 1: There's some research that shows that adults really really worry
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Speaker 1: about apologizing as well, because number one, they're worried about
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Speaker 1: the ramifications, and number two, they find it stressful because
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Speaker 1: they feel like it's going to be humiliating. Also that
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Speaker 1: research shows that when they apologize, it's not nearly as
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Speaker 1: stressful or humiliating as they thought it would be, and
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Speaker 1: they get the relief of the apology. But of course
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Speaker 1: the apology has to be meant.
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Speaker 2: And if you round all of that out for me,
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Speaker 2: it comes back to this, we don't like to be uncomfortable.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right.
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Speaker 2: All of this is about being uncomfortable and getting used
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Speaker 2: to the feeling of being uncomfortable.
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Speaker 1: Which is kind of an argument for why you could
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Speaker 1: get your kids to apologize, right, because that discomfort it
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Speaker 1: helps them to tolerate the discomfort and also to feel
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Speaker 1: the relief. But I mean, being forgiven feels good. Assuming
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Speaker 1: you do get forgiveness, sometimes the apology doesn't land quite
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Speaker 1: the way we want it to. The argument for apologizing
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Speaker 1: is forgiveness is nice. Kids can learn that frustration tolerance
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Speaker 1: and that discomfort tolerance, and they also do learn to
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Speaker 1: take responsibility. Although well, that's kind of an old school
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Speaker 1: argument I would argue against it. I don't think they
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Speaker 1: learn responsibility. I think they learn to be frightened of us.
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Speaker 1: But we do need to wrap this up. What are
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Speaker 1: we supposed to do when the kids do the wrong thing?
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Speaker 1: Must they apologize? Do we not do anything at all?
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Speaker 1: Do we give it space? How do we figure this out?
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Speaker 2: I think what's really important is that as we allow
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Speaker 2: our children the autonomy to work through these challenges, we
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Speaker 2: help them to recognize that sometimes time is needed, and
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Speaker 2: that in that space of time, the person who's been
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Speaker 2: hurt is able to let go of their anger and
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Speaker 2: they're hurt, and the person who's done the hurt is
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Speaker 2: able to recognize the part that they're played in that hurt.
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Speaker 2: And when we enforce it, we actually cut the learning
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Speaker 2: process off. We don't give either person time to actually
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Speaker 2: work through that in a positive way. But it requires
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Speaker 2: a fair bit of scaffolding, especially in those early years.
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Speaker 1: We've got to be there to support them. Right, So
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Speaker 1: two things from me. Number one, we've got to model it.
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Speaker 1: We've got to actually show our kids how to sincerely
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Speaker 1: apologize when we get it wrong, either with one another
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Speaker 1: or with the kids themselves. A sincere apology has four components.
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Speaker 1: Number one, I'm sorry. Number two, because that's where we
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Speaker 1: say because I did this to you, So it's.
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Speaker 2: Not because you did this which made me do this. No.
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Speaker 1: In fact, one of my sisters got really cranky at
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Speaker 1: one of our kids one time, and then she realized
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Speaker 1: she'd done the wrong thing and she apologized and she said,
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Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I got mad at you, but if you
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Speaker 1: hadn't done that, it wouldn't have happened, and I'm like,
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Speaker 1: that's not one an apology. No one was forcing it.
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Speaker 1: At least she said sorry, but it was an ugly apology.
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Speaker 1: So number one, I'm sorry, Number two because I did
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Speaker 1: this number three and it made you feel that, In
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Speaker 1: other words, I have reflected and can see how my
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Speaker 1: actions affected you. And then the fourth and most important thing,
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Speaker 1: will you forgive me? Oh gosh, they're important words. That's
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Speaker 1: how you know someone's really sincere when they are so
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Speaker 1: willing to be humbled that they ask you to forgive them.
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Speaker 1: They put the power of the relationship in your hands.
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Speaker 1: That is a profoundly good apology.
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Speaker 2: Over the years, we have used this structure and process
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Speaker 2: with our kids as we've made mistakes as parents, and
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Speaker 2: there's just something so beautiful when our kids recognize the
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Speaker 2: part they've played in a difficult situation and they come
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Speaker 2: and ask those words, will you forgive me? I just
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Speaker 2: I love that they're able to, through their own cognition
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Speaker 2: and introspection, recognize that they've done something that has ruptured
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Speaker 2: a relationship and their desires to reconnect and make that right.
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Speaker 2: But it takes them seeing us be humble. This is
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Speaker 2: what it comes down to the words humble, right. It's
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Speaker 2: letting go of our pride, it's letting go of the
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Speaker 2: acknowledgment that we're going to get it right all the time,
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Speaker 2: getting down to their level and saying I'm really sorry,
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Speaker 2: I got it wrong today and I know what made
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Speaker 2: you feel sad?
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Speaker 1: Will you forgive it?
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Speaker 2: Will forgive me?
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Speaker 1: We could do with those four words a lot more
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Speaker 1: in the world right now. So that's number one. Where
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Speaker 1: there's interrupture, there has to be repaired. And when we
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Speaker 1: model it, especially with that framework, it makes a big difference.
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Speaker 1: A second thing, and you've emphasized this, but I really
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Speaker 1: want to put a great, big red mark under this
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Speaker 1: so that everyone remembers that giving kids the opportunity to
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Speaker 1: reflect on their actions with our gentle support and involvement
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Speaker 1: leads to much better apologies because our children do want
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Speaker 1: good relationships with those around them, much better learning. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: sorry if we went over time, but we hope we've
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Speaker 1: been helpful here. Should you force your kids to apologize?
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Speaker 1: The research is ambiguous. I say no, but they do
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Speaker 1: need to learn to apologize. The Happy Family podcast is
16:42
Speaker 1: produced by Justin Ruhland from Bridge Media. We really hope
16:44
Speaker 1: this has been a helpful conversation for you in your home.
16:48
Speaker 1: If you would like more information about making your family happier,
16:50
Speaker 1: please check out happyfamilies dot com, dot A Y