Why Kids Apologize For Everything (And What You Can Do Instead Of Saying ‘Don’t Say Sorry’)
Last Tuesday, I was passing out fraction worksheets (the ones with ice cream scoops for counting, the kids go crazy for them) when Mia’s pink axolotl-stickered water bottle tipped. One tiny drop rolled off the edge and landed on the toe of my white sneaker.
She went rigid, hands flying up to her mouth. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry Ms. Leo, I didn’t mean it, are you mad? I’ll get a paper towel, I’m so sorry.”
I wiped the drop off with my sleeve. It was a single drop. My sneakers have seen far worse than that after 7 years of teaching third grade. But as I walked back to the front of the room, I counted three more unnecessary apologies in 10 minutes. Javi said sorry when he asked for an extra snack cracker. Lila said sorry she had to go to the bathroom for the second time that period. Zoe said sorry her elbow bumped my arm when I leaned down to help her.
I’m so tired of seeing this.
After school that day, I was grabbing coffee with my sister, who has a 5-year-old, and she brought it up unprompted. Her son apologizes when the dog knocks over a cup. He apologizes when she asks him to pick up his toys, like it’s a personal insult he didn’t do it earlier. He apologizes for picking blue paint instead of red. It doesn’t matter how many times she tells him not to say sorry, he still defaults to it the second anything feels even slightly off.
It’s easy to brush this off as just kid politeness, right? We’re supposed to teach kids to say sorry when they do something wrong. But what we’re actually teaching a lot of the time is that your first job is to take blame, shrink yourself, and appease the adults in the room before anything else. I’ve watched quiet kids take the blame for things they didn’t do just because they got to the scene first and defaulted to an apology. I’ve seen kids hold back from asking questions or sharing different answers because they’re too busy apologizing for “getting it wrong” before they even open their mouth.
A few years back, I got a note from a parent of a former student that said her daughter still apologized for “taking up too much space” at the dinner table when she was 12. That stuck with me. This isn’t just a silly kid habit. It’s a habit they carry with them, and it starts young.
I used to just do what everyone else does: say “it’s okay, don’t be sorry” when kids apologized for nothing. But I noticed that didn’t change anything. They’d just apologize again the next time. So I started testing small, specific changes, both in my classroom and when I’m with my niece and nephew, and they’ve worked better than I expected.
The first change was stopping the automatic “say you’re sorry” we pull out every time two kids bump into each other or something gets knocked over. I used to step in immediately and say “Go say you’re sorry to Maya” when one kid knocked over Maya’s crayon box. Now I just say “Can you help Maya pick up her crayons?” The action of fixing the small problem matters way more than the words. If they want to say sorry after, that’s fine – it’s usually genuine when it comes on its own, not because an adult made them say it. But we don’t lead with the apology anymore.
The second change is what I say when they apologize for something that isn’t even a mistake. Instead of the generic “don’t say sorry,” I name what’s actually happening. If a kid says “Sorry I need help with this problem,” I don’t just say “it’s okay.” I say “You don’t have to apologize for asking for help. Let’s look at it together.” If they say “Sorry I got a different answer than everyone else,” I say “Different answers help us learn. Show me how you got that.” If they say “Sorry I have to go to the bathroom,” I say “That’s nothing to apologize for. Go ahead.” It’s just a small shift, but it tells them their need isn’t an inconvenience that requires an apology.
The third thing I did was start catching my own unnecessary apologies. I realized I did it all the time: “Sorry I’m running a minute late to this meeting,” “Sorry can I squeeze past you,” “Sorry I asked so many questions.” Kids copy what we do, not what we say. I swapped all those unnecessary sorries for simple, polite phrases: “Thanks for waiting,” “Excuse me,” “Great question, right?” It’s a small change for me, but the kids pick up on it.
It’s only been a couple of months of this, so it’s not like no one says sorry anymore. Yesterday, Javi knocked over an eraser and immediately blurted “I’m sorry” before I could say anything. I almost automatically said “it’s okay, don’t be sorry” too, before I caught myself. I just nodded at the eraser and said “Can you put that back for us?” He picked it up, and that was that. No need for more.
Some days, I still see that little flinch, that immediate “I’m sorry” before anything even goes wrong, and I still get tired. It’s hard to unlearn the idea that you have to apologize for taking up space. But I’ve started to see small shifts. Last week, our class terrarium got knocked over when someone left the window open too wide. A breeze swept through, tipped it off the shelf, and dirt went all over the windowsill. Five years ago, I would have had three kids immediately jumping up to say it was their fault, all apologizing at once. Last week, no one said sorry. They just grabbed paper towels and a broom, and started cleaning up. One of them went to get more potting soil from the supply closet, and another asked if we could replant the succulent after math.
It’s a small thing, but it’s enough. We’re not fixing everything overnight. There’s still a long way to go. But it’s better than watching kids shrink themselves to make everyone else comfortable, one apology at a time.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » Why Kids Apologize For Everything (And What You Can Do Instead Of Saying ‘Don’t Say Sorry’)