Even at Two, Saying Sorry is Really Hard to Do

My son has always been pretty well behaved at storytime at the library. I take him and the other boy that I watch every week. Most weeks they are the two that do as they are told, listen really well to instructions and don't cause a scene. However, this week was different. Storytime was just coming to last few songs. My son and his buddy had done everything right, listened to all the stories, sang the songs, clapped their hands, done a jig, but the last song is when all the kids get crazy. I could see my son was getting very excited so I was keeping an eye on him because this is usually when he loses control. Well sure enough, he lost control. He was singing and walking to the beat when all of a sudden, he all out pushed the boy in front of him. Out of the blue he just pushed this little kid to the ground. The kid wasn't even looking at him, but my son all out pushed him down! I was furious, embarrassed and felt all judging motherly (and one fatherly) set of eyes on me. My mom status at storytime just crashed to the floor and fell through to the rock bottom! I was so sad, angry and embarrassed all at the same time....

What do you do next? Your kid just pushed another kid, you're in the middle of storytime. Do you get up and leave? Do you publicly punish your child? Do you yell and scream at him? Do you apologize to everyone in the room and try to justify your son's actions?

Well I grabbed my son and pulled him down to sit next to me pretty harshly. I told him he can't push and that was so mean to do to that little boy. And, I told him he couldn't get back up and join storytime until he had told this little boy that he was sorry.

In my mom brain, I figured this process would take a matter of seconds, my son would get up, tell the little boy sorry and restore his dignity by acting like a saint for the rest of storytime. Well my mom brain was working way too fast paced for my two-year-old's timeline for action. It almost took until the embarrassing last second of storytime for my son to say he was sorry. All the while I am staring at him, trying to convince him with my jeta mind tricks "just say you're sorry so we can move on and prove we are still ok people and I'm not a bad mom." Well jeta mind tricks don't work on two-year-olds. For an embarressing long twelve minutes or so (probably less but it seemed like hours...) my son and I stood in front of this little boy and his mom, me willing my son to say sorry, my stubborn son just staring straight ahead and the other little boy looking terrified!

Finally, before stamps were handed out and children got up to leave with their "perfect" mothers and father, Dylan said very matter-of-fact, "I'm sorry for pushing you." It was a victorious moment, but it was a long, long wait. I guess it's hard for two-year-olds to say sorry as it is mommy's and daddy's and cousins and aunts and uncles and husbands and wives to say sorry.

Later that day, I had the chance to relive the moment that my son had. I opened my big mouth and not nice things came out and I had to say sorry. It would have been easy to let it go and hope everyone who had heard it to forget about it. But remembering my own embarressment and my son's matter-of-fact sorry, I wasted no time and apologized right away. It wasn't easy but once I confronted the fact that I was wrong and that I had acted poorly and had sinned, a sorry was very easy. I think my son had to confront his wrongful act and come to aggreement in his mind that he needed forgiveness. I really don't know what my son was thinking at that moment, but I think it took him a while to say sorry because he meant it. Don't we all need to say sorry more? Even when it is hard, even when it is embarressing, even if it lowers our status, even if it hurts our image. When we face when we are wrong, we can be forgiven and it feels good to be forgiven. We all mess up, a lot! Sometimes for no reason, sometimes out of the blue we "push" people down with our commentary or our body language. Don't we all push or get pushed at work, at school, at home, at the store? We all need to say sorry, and sometimes it is very hard to say sorry, even for twenty-somethings, fifty-somethings, ninety-somethings.

I just hope my son continues to say sorry. I hope he learns what it feels like to be forgiven. He is going to mess up a lot in his life, we all are, but if he just asks, he can be forever forgiven from all of the wrong things he has done in his life from the only truely perfect Savior.