Parent's Corner: How Children Learn to Say ‘I’m Sorry.’

Parents I know or parents I work with are always worried about whether they have done something wrong. And usually the thing that they are currently worried about isn’t a big problem or they handled it just fine, but as to the question of whether they ever got it wrong? The answer is yes. Here’s the thing: It’s not possible to get it right all the time in ANY relationship—child or adult. It’s just not. So why do we even expect it? Of course you will get it wrong. And of course you will get it right. But by worrying about what it means when we get it wrong we often miss the gift in it.

Keep in mind that what creates a secure attachment between caregiver and child isn’t getting it right all the time. It turns out that parents of all kinds seem to make the same amount of mistakes. What differentiates a parent who creates a secure attachment is the awareness that something is amiss, and the capacity and patience for repeated attempts at mending it.

When you think you have done something wrong, or when you are confronted with feedback where it felt wrong to someone else there is something you can do.  You can simply say you are sorry. Often it will not feel like enough. To you, or to the other person. When your child is disappointed and you say you are sorry, it will not fix it right away. This lack of immediate feedback may be what makes sorry so difficult to learn and believe in. Often in that exact moment nothing really happens, which can be puzzling. Something happens, someone feels bad, someone says “I’m Sorry.” And for a bit, nothing really happens. It takes a while for bad feelings to dissipate or for the situation to slow down.

Sorry is something that is learned. It takes time and practice. And it is best learned (although painfully) as a feeling and not as an idea--and we learn that feeling by feeling hurt and being apologized to. If you never say you are sorry to your children, how do you imagine they will learn to say it to you or to someone else? How will they understand the complicated give and take of what feels broken and how it gets repaired? So when you worry that you have gotten it wrong—rejoice. It’s the chance for your children to learn the necessary dance steps of relationship. If you never get it wrong, or believe that you never get it wrong, and therefore never practice repair—then your children won’t learn this important skill- one of the most important relational skills there is—the ability to stay in a difficult situation and mend it.

I worked for many years with children in the juvenile justice system and so often heard “that girl has no remorse for what she has done.” Or, “He never apologizes.” But I can tell you that these children had lived very difficult lives and I am fairly certain that no one ever apologized to them. Where on earth would they have learned this? I am not excusing the behavior for which people wished they had remorse, but I am saying that these kids wouldn’t have felt ‘sorry’ because they never learned to feel the hurt in a relationship and have it mended. Sorry is something you need to learn in relationship.

In some ways ‘sorry’ is both a feeling and a contract or an investment in the future. One way to think about it is the way we handle breaches of trust in sports. When someone does something in sport that is against the rules—they receive a penalty which requires some form of restitution. If they push someone, or hold them, or trip them their team is required to give the other team something in return that is helpful: they get a corner kick, or a shot from the foul line or they get to move half the distance to the goal line. In essence, this ‘payback’ from the other team is a version of “I’m sorry.” The corner kick doesn’t fix the transgression. It doesn’t make it better, or make it so it never happened. The corner kick is an acknowledgement that something went wrong and an offer from one side to the other to stay in the game. To keep going.

“I’m sorry” doesn’t fix the problem, but it is an invitation to the hurt party to stay in the game, to keep playing. It is a humble request to try again. Sorry doesn’t say that what was hurt is all better, sorry says that the relationship is big enough to hold the hurt.

And don’t get hung up on whether or not you or your child ‘feels’ sorry. Feelings are complicated. Sorry is the acknowledgement that something is amiss, not necessarily a complete understanding of what the situation meant for the other person. Don’t require that your child ‘feels’ sorry before he or she says it. Often they won’t feel sorry about what they did because that’s not the feeling they are having at the moment. When I was in kindergarten we had these mesh screens that we got to use to make paintings by sticking toothbrushes in paint and brushing them over the mesh to make splatter paintings. I totally got in to it and in my excitement splatter painted my classmates new dress. I didn’t feel sorry. I felt confused. I had done exactly as I was told and had no idea what the outcome could be. And I was frustrated that they made me stop painting because it was really fun. And I was sad that everyone was mad at me. But I was asked to apologize to my classmate and I think it was a good idea because that is the social interaction of “I’m sorry.”

And to help your children with “I am sorry” I think it is often helpful to help them find a way to make restitution if the transgression was big enough—help clean up the mess, re-do what was done poorly, do something kind or helpful after something unkind. Restitution isn’t punishment—it’s a chance for the both parties to experience trust in a relationship again.

I’m sorry is learned from both sides: from feeling hurt and being apologized to as well as being the one who needs to say I’m Sorry. Both sides need to be learned and practiced in order to fully learn the dance steps necessary for working through difficulty in relationships. Good news for parents and children alike: If you are wrong or have made a mistake: you are creating a chance at an even stronger relationship.

© 2016 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD

 

Understanding Change Part III: I have tried everything and I can't change it...

What if the thing you are trying to change is the thing you have tried to change before? Tried to change AGAIN and AGAIN? Why can’t I change this? Especially if I complain again and again that I WANT IT TO CHANGE?

This phenomenon of feeling totally stuck with a behavior you hate has some different names. I call it a pain in the ass. Psychologists would call it ‘resistance to change.’

Resistance has been defined as ‘the motivational forces operating against growth or change, and in the direction of maintenance of the status quo.'** The psychiatrist Martha Stark simplified this description in her book Working with Resistance even more to a tension between “yes” and “no” “Yes, I want to change” and “No, I want to stay the same.” And she beautifully breaks down the experience of working with this resistance. If you lean more in the direction of talking about or working with the ‘yes’—wanting to change, you will feel more anxious and uncomfortable. If you lean more in the direction of avoiding change or not talking about it, your anxiety will go down. So psychologists might also call these things defenses in the sense that the behavior we want to change is protecting us in some way—at the very least, it lowers our anxiety more to keep doing it than it does to change it.

So how do you shift such stuck behavior? How do you take a goal that you keep saying you want to do and find out how to make it happen?

The best technology for unlocking the  resistance to change that I have found is the Immunity to Change model that Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey have created. In their model you start with the goal or change you are trying to make and you walk it (and yourself) through a process of looking at what you are doing that is getting in the way, and more importantly, how these roadblocks may be serving you. For example, I say that my goal is to be more disciplined with my writing writing every day. Then I make a list of all the things I am doing or not doing that is getting in the way of this goal. And I discover that I say I want to be disciplined about writing, but instead I am doing favors for people with the time I would be writing. So rather than be committed to writing,  I am protecting my identity as a “good friend or good person.” In their lingo I am more committed to being liked than I am committed to being disciplined about writing.  This model helps you see the obvious: that if being liked is really important to me then of course I wouldn’t change my writing behavior. DUH. My behavior makes perfect sense. It just doesn’t match my stated goal.

Kegan and Lahey talk about resistance in terms of ‘immunity to change’— they articulate perfectly the dilemma of wanting change—wanting to do something differently. And, the reality that while we say we are committed to change, really, we are often committed to protecting ourselves. And behind these protections are big assumptions: If I don’t please people, I will be abandoned.  The solution according to Kegan and Lahey is to create small tests of our big assumption—kind of chip away at it so that you can see it for what it is—an old rule that isn’t objectively true, and isn’t serving you anymore.  Their model of change essentially has you come at the problem backwards. Instead of heading right at your goal: write every day. They would have you chip away at your big assumption: What if don’t please people?

I use this model in a coaching program I teach in to help people understand change and resistance to change, and with clients of all sorts and I have taken to giving a verbal warning label when I teach it: only pick something to work through this model that you really want to change, because it really works. Everything I have taken through this model has shifted.

I will warn you, it’s not a quick fix, but I think that’s okay. Generally the thing you are trying to change has been with you for a long time. There’s a New Yorker Cartoon with a man standing  in front of a mouse hole in his wall, and there is a mouse-sized garage door next to the door and a mouse-sized swimming pool and deck chairs in front of the doors. Next to the man is a handyman in overalls with a toolcase, and the caption states, “You should have called me sooner.”

If the mouse has already put in the pool, it’s going to take a while to get the mouse to move out. So it will take some work to move through your immunity to change and to shift the behavior—but this process helps untangle it the best.

I will also say that this model is really for things that are resistant to change, the things that are stuck, the things where you say to yourself: HOW DID I GET HERE AGAIN?!? There are plenty of things where you can take a more straightforward approach and where you can go straight at the problem. But if you have already tried all of that. This will really help.

You can check out their website here. It exists as an EdX course, and the book is below.

But if you take nothing else from this whole blog, I hope you take this. When something sticks around for a really long time, it’s because it is serving an important function. Important isn’t the same as good. You may not like it. But your system believes that it is an important piece of infrastructure—and so you have to honor it in some way. And you have to be kind to yourself about the fact that you haven’t changed for good reason, and that you will. When you don’t need it to do its job anymore, and when you can see that it isn’t the thing that is holding your world together. 

**Ghent, E. (1990, 1999). Masochism, Submission, Surrender: Masochism as a perversion of surrender. In S. Mitchell and S. Aron (Eds.) Relational Psychoanalysis: The Emergence of a tradition. Hillsdale, NJ; Analytic Press

© Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD 2014


 

Understanding Change Part II: Are You Ready for Change?

“Those that cannot change their minds cannot change anything”
— George Bernard Shaw

Many years ago, researchers looked into how to understand why some people engaged in behavior change when others didn’t. These researchers, Prochaska and DiClemente, found that not everyone who needed to change, or even wanted to change, were in the same starting place.

The thing about change is you can only start where you are. Through their work and research Prochaska and DiClemente established the Transtheoretical Model (or Stages of Change) of change. This model describe how people go through various stages as they move through change—and most importantly that at any given time only about 20% are in place of action around change—which flies in the face of a lot of what we believe and understand about change. This small bit of information should help all of us stop lecturing people about change: stop lecturing our clients or patients, stop lecturing our family members and loved ones, and even stop lecturing ourselves. What we all need is a good dose of curiosity…”I wonder what would happen if?”

The stages of change are Pre-Contemplation, Contemplation, Preparation, Action and Maintenance. Each of these stages of change has its own needs and is best served by different supports. This is often why some people do really well with one sort of program or book or support and others don’t. It’s often not a matter of motivation or willpower—it’s a matter of the resources matching the stage of change.

Pre-Contemplation

Pre-Contemplation is the stage where you actually aren’t interested in changing something. Often others around you are more interested than you are. In this stage the best support is information you can take in on your own terms: books, videos, stories. Action oriented programs often backfire, and the frustration of not being ready can prolong your own resistance. This is a good time to just take in information and begin to imagine the possibility of change. Or even just to reconnect with goals that are important to you, which might be served by such change.

Contemplation

In the Contemplation stage you have moved to thinking about changing in the next six months. You have gotten enough information to know about the pros of changing, but you are also very aware of the cons. This is still a time of gathering information, but also a time to explore your values, your passions, your motivations. It’s a time to question what will be gained if you change, and what will be lost. And perhaps most importantly—what is the cost of doing nothing? This is important time to gather energy and motivation for the long process of change. People do get stuck here, but it is also important to take the time you need to.

Preparation

In the preparation stage, you intend to change in the next month. Often you are moving towards action. You are finding the right resources: a course, a gym, a nutritionist, a therapist. Perhaps you have experimented with change and pulled back. In the preparation stage you would be well served to gather as much information as you can, not about the impact of change as you did earlier, but about what supports the process. Talk to others who have tried—what worked and didn’t work for them.  Think about what might support your work as you begin to change—do you have what you need? In this stage you don’t have the work or stress of change, so you have more energy and resources to do some of the prep and building work.

Action

This is the stage that everyone recognizes as change: in this stage you are making the change: you are going to the gym, you are changing your diet, your are in the process of quitting smoking. In this model you are in the Action stage until the new health behavior is habit (or until the old behavior is gone, ie. you no longer smoke at all). In this phase it is important to value your strength and courage to continue in your efforts and to experience confidence in your continued work—to get the sense that “I am a person who can make changes like this.”

Maintenance

Depending upon the behavior change—Maintenance can last from six months to five years—and maybe even longer for some. In this stage you are attending to the new habits and working to keep them solid. You are likely even working on other goals and other things that you want to change. And to support the maintenance stage you are consistently working on increasing other behaviors and habits that support you so that there is less likelihood that you need the old behavior that you worked so hard to change. If you used to smoke to relieve stress, you are consistenly working on stress management strategies so you have a wide range of options that doesn’t include smoking.

So, take amoment to think about that New Year’s Resolution again in the light of stages of change. Where are you? What can you do to support yourself in the stage that you are in so that when it is time for the action stage you have you feet solidly beneath you to spring from? You can read more about Transtheoretical Model here, they have lots of descriptions and an entire section on their research. And below you can get the link to their book.


Understanding Change: 3 Critical Success Factors for Preparing for Change

It’s resolution season. The season of change.  The season of saying “I am going to do it differently this year.” Every year around this time people make commitments to change their behavior, especially their health behavior. It’s a new year, a clean slate, and “this year is going to be different!” I thought it might be helpful this week to look at different ways to understand and think about behavior change. There are different theories in psychology about how and why people change and there has been a lot of research about what works and doesn’t in terms of behavior change. I think that the more information you have and the more you can understand what works for you, the more successful you can be with your own behavior change.

Understanding behavior change is important because it actually is one of the most difficult things you can do. Most health behavior change has an 80% relapse rate: diet, exercise, smoking cessation, quitting alcohol—all the big ones -- 80% at best.

These are not great odds. But most people head into these changes without much information or support. And most people don’t understand that behavior change requires different behavior and support depending upon where you are in the lifespan of the change.

So before you even begin your change plan, let’s look at 3 things you can do to support your efforts before you even begin to tackle your new year’s resolution in earnest.

1. Monitor. WRITE IT DOWN. Or take pictures. Just Keep Track!

Whatever you want to change. First find your baseline. Take a week and just pay attention to the behavior. What are you currently doing? Where are you starting? How many times a day or week are you doing it (or not doing it). Use a sheet of paper, a spiral notebook or a cool app to track your behavior. Research shows that the method of tracking your baseline or your behavior change doesn’t have an impact—so paper or high tech will work the same—the main agent of change is the self-monitoring itself. So whatever helps you do that is the best tool for you. When they have done research on behavior change, those people who kept track of the behavior they were trying to change actually were way more successful than those people who didn’t write it down.  Even if both groups were doing the same thing and had access to the same cool behavior change program from experts.

Once you actually start your work on changing—then you will continue to track. Monitoring helps you with your awareness because most things we try to change are habits of one sort or another and it is often hard to catch yourself in the act of a habit. So monitoring is really a self awareness exercise—because you have to be aware of it enough to track. And it can also be a self-management exercise because it can force you to slow down enough to write.

2. Social support. Birds of a feather change together.

Social support—relationships that support our change—are one of the biggest factors in behavior change. Whether it’s a group dedicated to the change you are trying to make, like a smoking cessation group, or an on-line forum, or colleagues from work you are sharing your goal with: you are more likely to not only reach your goal, but also maintain your change if you have support doing it. The best athletes have a team of people who support them.  Team Lemond. Team Nyad. Everyone needs a team to take on a big challenge. Whether you are trying to change your diet or trying to heal from trauma, or both, everyone would benefit from a team. The team can be real, or virtual. You can talk to them, you can create a FaceBook page, you can send them email. You can find a group, or you can create a group.

3. Motivation. What is motivating your change? What’s the driving force? Why change? Why now?

It’s really important before you launch into action to really have a deep well of motivation. Why do you want to change? How will the change impact your life? What are the benefits of the change? What might be some losses? How will the change help you with other things in your life? Your relationships? Your work? Your passions? Your goals? How is the change you are trying to make connected to your values? Your mission? How will it serve your bigger goals in life?

Really play with these questions. You can play with them imagining a future if you were successful with the behavior change. And you can play with them imagining if you didn’t change anything in your life.

Play with the questions to locate the source of your motivation so you can use that power and energy to sustain your efforts as you go through the change process. 

© Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD 2016