It’s better to appeal to a child’s honor than to force an insincere apology

“Tell your sister you’re sorry.”

“Apologize to Evan for breaking his pencil.”

Regardless of the setting — either at home or in the classroom — the only guarantee I could count on is that the resulting apology would be halfhearted and insincere. Furthermore, it would never lead to what I really wanted: a change in behavior.

For 34 years I taught in public schools. During eleven of those years, I co-parented my partner’s children from his previous marriage.

In neither of those scenarios did I ever ask a child to commit a lie by saying that he was sorry for something he did. He wasn’t sorry! Why make him say something the he most assuredly did not mean?

We talked about feelings. We talked about doing things differently. We talked about respecting each other. Nothing seemed to make the impact I was shooting for, until about five years prior to my retirement from teaching. That was when I finally came up with something that brought us closer to having the changed behavior that I was looking for.

I called it The Book of Agreements.

I used a standard binder with several sheets of loose-leaf paper inside it.

I trotted out The Book of Agreements after we had a discussion about what a more desirable behavior might look like. We would try to come…