Aha Moment

I was talking with my mom this morning and was telling her a story and had a realization that I thought I would share.

I think it's pretty common for parents, when a child has injured another child, to have the perpetrator give the victim a hug when they're saying sorry. Well, my kids are still young and a while ago I read somewhere that making your children say sorry when they aren't is kind of (in a way) teaching them to lie, so the approach I've tried to take is to put my child in time-out (or whatever the appropriate discipline would be) and then, if I feel they aren't sorry, I apologize for them, to be an example for them. As a result of this method it just hasn't been natural for them to have to give hugs after being mean. So, here's the story I related to my mom this morning...

A while ago, out on the playground, a little 4 year old girl was crying. Her mom wasn't out there so she was sitting there crying for quite a while. I wanted to comfort her, but I don't know her and didn't know how she would respond to me so I mentioned to her 7 (or 8) year old sister that she probably just needed a hug and maybe she could give her a hug to help her feel better. The older sister looked at me like I was crazy and said, "But I didn't do it." I said, "I know, but I think a hug would make her feel better, maybe you could just give her a hug to let her know you love her." And she repeated, "But I didn't do it." And then continued to stare at me.

This situation struck me as funny at the time and that's why I was telling my mom about it but as I was telling the story I had an 'Aha' moment:

By forcing these kids to 'hug it out' after a fight or after apologizing, the natural correlation would be that hugs are related to punishment.

And I told my mom when I realized this, "Look at that, it appears I've unintentionally done something right as a parent!" I LOVE that my kids care about each other and I feel my heart is going to burst each time I see them comforting each other. And they do that surprisingly often. Especially with Cosette. If she's injured or sad or upset for whatever reason and one of the older kids are closer to her than I am, quite often she'll go to them for hugs and 'loves.' I'm so grateful that my kids don't associate hugs with punishment and are therefore eager to give them to each other and us. Hopefully this is an aspect of their relationship with each other that will stay with them as they grow.