The Hardest Word

I'd heard Alex was having a tough day.

There were many tough days. Alex seemed constantly disregulated.

By the time my session with him was due I arrived to a child in full meltdown. 

I let him know I was there and narrated to him what I was doing. ‘Alex I am here for our time together.'

'Leave me alone!'

‘I can hear you want to be left alone so I am going to sit outside this room and wait. In a couple of minutes I'll come in’.

This is important for Alex to hear what I am doing, but also gaveme time to talk to the adults and unpick what had happened.
The surface problem seemed to be that Alex had got angry ‘all of a sudden’ and said some questionable things to his classroom assistant. The teacher was insisting that he apologise immediately. 

I want to talk about the use of the "Sorry" word.

Do I believe saying sorry is important? Yes.

Do I believe we can inadvertedly create problems by forcing children to say sorry when they don’t mean it? Also yes. 

When a child is dysregulated they are not accessing their prefrontal cortex, the most developed part of their brain, the part of our brain that uses language, that helps us with reasoning, rationalizing and problem solving. When a child is in meltdown they are mainly resonating in their Limbic system, their emotional brain. They are purely focusing on surviving. 

When I joined Alex in the room the first thing he yelled was ‘I AM NOT SAYING SORRY, YOU CAN’T MAKE ME’. Alex was in survival mode and was being pushed into a deeper sense of fear by the pressure to say sorry. I made it clear that he was right and we weren’t going to make him say sorry. We continued the conversation - ‘I just wonder why you think the adults think you should say sorry’. Alex was able to start to pinpoint what had happened and what he had said. The fact he was starting to talk to me was clear he was starting to move out of his limbic system. However, if I rushed this I knew I would push him back into meltdown. 

I started getting out the Uno cards and we started silently playing Uno. Was I rewarding his behaviour? No. I was getting him back into his prefrontal cortex by focusing on a specific task. Time passed and he said ‘I don’t want to say sorry, I hate that word. But I want to draw a picture for Miss’. 

The picture was delivered. It was Alex’s way of saying sorry. 

For so many children sorry can be a trigger word. It is forced upon them increasing when they don’t even mean it and when they can’t access the part of the brain that helps them linking words to actions. We all want the child to experience the healing that comes in a relationship through apologising and receiving forgiveness but I want to encourage you to first focus on regulating the child. By helping them out of their survival brain and into their thinking brain again and to remember that for some children saying sorry might look like a hug, a picture, a high five or a whispered ‘I love you.’

The most important thing is we are helping them develop skills that will help them regulate their emotions that will continue with them for the rest of their lives.