Shed off the ‘mummy-daddy’ title and own up

One of my sons did something not so funny some months ago. I was too tired to listen to him so I lashed out at him, rebuking him sharply. That night as I slept, I thought through the whole incident and realised I had overeacted and needed to apologise to him.

I approached him the next morning and made up with him.  When I looked at what he had done from his point of view, an eight-year old’s view, I concluded he was right and I was wrong. If I were his age, I would have done exactly the same thing or even worse.

When do parents apologise to their children? Is it okay to admit we are wrong and shed off the “mummy or daddy knows it all” and own up? My friend Hassan, a typical Acholi man, does not believe so.

“They are children and we are parents. They know we love them and would not hurt them intentionally. There is, therefore, no need to show my weaknesses to my children. My parents never apologised to me. They were always right and I was always wrong. That is how it is and that is how it should be,” he argues.

But come to think of it, we are human and often times, we err. It is good grooming that when you err, you sincerely apologise. You have hurt someone’s feelings and that maybe your child, just like it maybe a workmate.

Apologising has nothing to do with age or whether or not you are a parent. And you want to model good behaviour that when a mistake is made, an apology is in order. It is one way of managing interpersonal relationships. People who do not apologise when they wrong others hurt and constrain their relationships.

Consequences

Hassan may get away with it in regard to relating with his children out of respect for him or fear, but if he carries the same attitude to a workplace or in his marriage, or fraternities, he will suffer the consequences. People might withdraw their affections from him. And nothing survives without good relationships.        

In Father Forgets, a poem by W. Livingstone Larned, captured by Dale Carnegie in How to Win friends and Influence People, the author aptly draws out my own sentiments as a parent;

“Listen, son; I am saying this as you lie asleep...as I sat reading my paper in the library, a stifling wave of remorse swept over me. Guiltily I came to your bedside.

There are things I was thinking, son: I had been gross to you. I scolded you as you were dressing for school because you gave your face merely a dab with a towel. I took you to task for not cleaning your shoes. I called out angrily when you threw some of your things on the floor.

Fault-finding

At breakfast I found fault, too. You spilled things. You gulped down your food. You put your elbows on the table. You spread butter too thick on your bread. And as you started off to play and I made for my train, you turned and waved a hand and called, “Goodbye, Daddy!” and I frowned, and said in reply, “Hold your shoulders back!”

Do you remember, later, when I was reading in the library, how you came in timidly, with a sort of hurt look in your eyes? When I glanced up over my paper, impatient at the interruption, you hesitated at the door. “What is it you want?” I snapped.

Well, son, it was shortly afterwards that my paper slipped from my hands and a terrible sickening fear came over me. What has habit been doing to me? The habit of finding fault, of reprimanding—this was my reward to you for being a boy. It was not that I did not love you; it was that I expected too much of youth. I was measuring you by the yardstick of my own years.

Still a baby

And there was so much that was good and fine and true in your character. The little heart of you was as big as the dawn itself over the wide hills. Nothing else matters tonight, son. I have come to your bedside in the darkness, and I have knelt there, ashamed!

It is a feeble atonement; I know you would not understand these things if I told them to you during your waking hours. But tomorrow I will be a real daddy! I will keep saying as if it were a ritual: “He is nothing but a boy—a little boy!”

I am afraid I have visualised you as a man. Yet as I see you now, son, crumpled and weary in your cot, I see that you are still a baby. Yesterday you were in your mother’s arms, your head on her shoulder. I have asked too much, too much.’’ 

Good for emotional healing

Jackie Akidi Birungi, a community psychologist and social worker, who works with children at Malayaka House in Entebbe says: “If you have wronged your child, apologise to heal them of emotional (or physical) pain you have inflicted on them. State the wrong you have committed, (and make no excuses for it) and promise not to repeat that behaviour. Maintain eye contact to show them you are meaning what you are saying.”

Are there situations when a parent should not apologise? Yes; when children are too young to understand the apology or when you make a hard decision for the family and you know they will get hurt but you have to do it, anyway. When you discipline them for a misdemeanour or when someone else has wronged them you cannot apologise on their behalf.