A stiff apology is a second insult. The injured party does not want to be compensated because he has been wronged; he wants to be healed because he has been hurt.
- G.K. Chesterton, author (1874-1936)
"You did wrong. You hurt your sister. Now apologize."
"I'm sorry."
"That's better. Now, go to your room."
What was accomplished? The offender was made aware of his offence and that it was unacceptable. The offender was made to lose face by hunbling himself before his sister. The offender was punished. The mother (judge) is satisfied that a wrong has been righted.
Nothing has been done to help the victim to heal, to get past the hurt, to forget. In a sense, the victim was ignored by the administrator of family justice. Being ignored, to a child, is another form of hurt. The victim was hurt twice. The victim hurts more than ever as a result of the misunderstanding of the effects of faults in the family justice system.
Community and national legal systems use the same system for administering justice. The perpetrator is punished, the administrators are satisfied that justice has been served, but the victim remains hurt. An exception, sometimes, is family courts.
While it may be said that legal systems have no way to compensate victims other than by the granting of financial compensation (which is seldom available except when large companies lose a civil suit), families do have the means to help victims to heal.
Families need to be told, preferably before the family grows beyond the man-woman stage, what kinds of healing mother and father can offer to help a victimized child. Otherwise our administration of family justice remains as ineffective as the administration of our legal systems at preventing further hurt.
Bill Allin
'Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems,' striving to help parents understand the effects of their parental decisions on their children.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
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Comments: 14
Manette, I feel as if we are climbing two ladders, side by side. We greet each other as we each take the next step.
They have not been told how to manage childhood misbehaviour in parenting classes. (See 'Turning It Around' Appendix B.)
Parents tend to manage the behaviour of their children from an adult point of view, not from the point of view of a child and what the child needs. Given that, all behaviour management (in general, not the specific clinical therapy) will be wrong because it has no basis in child-centred need.
In my opinion, adults are often as clueless as children when it comes to insincere apologies. Because I don't accept them, especially when they are thrown out only for appearance's sake, I am often considered the ogre. Recently, I was in a situation where someone offended me deeply, apologized, but denied the offense and made no attempt to correct it. To me, that is a hollow, selfish apology meant only to make the person apologizing feel (or look) better, and does nothing for the person harmed. Yet, many in our society believe the 'polite' response is "apology accepted".
People who unleash offensive remarks that hurt should not be taken seriously. These should be markers to identify people who should be avoided because they cannot and will not do us any good. Deep inside, they cannto forgive, even themselves. They are destructive in a psychological sense.
Candida, you are correct that actions have meaning while words do not when the subject is something involving the emotions. When hurt is involved, the subject involves the emotions. To heal a hurt we can only change our behaviour in such a way that we show by our actions that we (the offenders) are different now.
Just as important in my mind, is that a child know how to accept a genuine apology, and carry on without carrying a grudge, as in being a victim.
A hollow apology as you discuss is worthless, and is usually made for others in attendance as opposed to the person harmed. I would say that early in life that not learning the "why" and being accountable for it, can cause a person problems later in life, as well as society as a whole. The same goes for being able to genuinely accept an apology when offered honestly.
Being able to accept an apology in a way that does not further destroy when the original insult did is important. It can restore a friendship, for example. Implicit in this is forgiveness. Without forgiveness, nothing ets better after a hurt.