By Evan Page

I’m going to be totally honest with you. I am horrible at apologies. They are one of the hardest things I have had to work at getting better with in my life, and I still have a lot of room for improvement. The sad part is I never realized this until I got married. Maybe it was because I didn’t grow up in a house full of apologies. But I am seriously the worst. My husband is one thousand times better at apologizing and is almost always the first to say it. After having kids, I was slapped in the face again with how rarely I said those two little words … “I’m sorry.”

When I first got married most of my apologies came when I realized things weren’t going to get better unless I said them. And they almost always went a little something like this: “Hey Stephen, I’m sorry, but … ” You fill in the blank. Sound familiar? I wish someone had bopped me across the head and told me that an apology is not an apology if it has the word “but” in it; it is merely an explanation. You see, my whole reason for my apology was just so I could explain my side of the story. In that case, I wasn’t taking into consideration what the other person may be thinking or feeling or how I may have impacted them. I was putting my explanation first.

I have worked really hard on apologies with my kids. This includes apologizing myself and encouraging them to apologize as well. Here’s the formula I use (and no, I’m not an expert, but it seems to be working so far): I have my kids go up to whomever it is (most likely a sibling, can I get an amen?!), and I make them say a specific apology (“I’m sorry I took your tractor without asking”), and then they have to ask for forgiveness. In some instances, I even encourage them to ask, “Is there anything I can do to make it better?”

My whole point in being specific in the apology is not to embarrass them but to allow them the ability to acknowledge that their words and actions affect other people. It allows them to practice empathy and compassion. It’s hard to add a “but” to our apology when we are taking ownership and truly acknowledging our individual actions and the impact they have. It gives us an opportunity to step outside of ourselves (and how often does our culture encourage this?!).

I’ve had people tell me that they don’t think an apology is valid unless it means something. And I totally get that. I also believe that many times feelings follow actions. You don’t always love serving your spouse, but when you do it anyway, you learn to enjoy serving more. You don’t always love waking up to work out, but when you do it anyway, you start to feel the benefits later in the day. The more we practice something, the more our emotions can align with our actions. I believe apologizing is the same. The more I have worked on apologizing, the more I am able to mentally take ownership of my words and actions and address it. The more I see how my actions can affect others, the more I realize how selfish my actions can be.

Something else that I’ve learned is that most of the time, one apology has the ability to lead to another. Even if one of my kids takes a truck without asking, there is usually a selfish response on the other side … hitting, kicking, screaming or an all-out brawl. Yes, I encourage my kids to communicate, but the more they do, the more they see their role and how it may have contributed to the problem. Even if I ask my kids a million times to clean their room, and it leads to me yelling and screaming, two wrongs don’t make a right. You may understand why I lost my patience, but even then, it doesn’t give me the right to be disrespectful to my children. Or if my husband comes to apologize to me about forgetting to transfer money into our account, I have the ability to acknowledge how I may have had an irrational reaction because I felt embarrassed.

Although it isn’t easy to do and sometimes feels silly or embarrassing, I wonder what our world would look like if we started to practice sincere apologies. Could it help decrease the divorce rate and increase family ties? Could it help us take ownership of our actions and stop the increasing level of entitlement? Could it help you become a better wife or a better father?

Evan Page lives in Hilton Head Island with her husband, Stephen, and their three children, Merrick, Wake, and Wells. She is currently a stay-at-home mom, and most of her days are filled with trying to capture adventures with her children on camera.