Sorry seems to be the hardest word – or not.

Sorry – Feeling regret or penitence.

Sorry.
It’s a funny word isn’t it?

Five little letters that some folk find harder to say than Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.
Others say it far to often, so much so that it quickly loses all meaning.

Seth falls into the latter category.
He must say sorry about 100 times a day.
I have no problem with him apologising but he just doesn’t have a clue what it means.

He will bump his head.
“Sorry”
“No, you don’t need to apologise for bumping your head”.

Someone will get hurt accidentally or growled at.
“Sorry”
“That’s OK, it was an accident. Thank you for apologising”

He’ll enter a room looking sheepish after drawing on the floor.
“Sorry”
“What have you done?”
“But sorry”
“Why are you sorry though?”
“I SAID I’M SORRY”
“OK, please tell me what you did!”

Standing in front of the TV about to hit it with his hammer
“Sorry” *Hammers the screen*
“No, that’s not an acceptable sorry. A preemptive apology doesn’t give you permission to go ahead and hammer the TV”

He will be screaming/having a tantrum/throwing things.
“Sorry”
“So stop doing that”
*Continues with generally crappy behaviour*
“But I said sorry”
“I know but you’re still doing it so you’re not sorry”

We try to explain what sorry means but he just doesn’t get it and if we don’t accept his apology then, well, things get ‘tense’.

“BUT I SAID SORRY!”
“IF. YOU. WERE. SORRY. YOU. WOULDN’T. STILL. BE. DOING. IT!”
“SORRY THOUGH, SORRY, SORRY, SORRY”
“Oh ffs. OK, you’re sorry!”

I know that’s not the ideal way to deal with it but it really isn’t worth having a three year old right up in my face screaming sorry until I forgive him.

So, how do we deal with this?
How do you get a small human to say sorry, understand what it means and actually mean it?

Am I raising a sociopath?
Should I just abandon all hope?

An interesting note here

As I was typing this post Seth stood in front of me, looked me dead in the eye and stood on my foot.
“Sorry, that was an accident”
He said at exactly the moment his foot pressed down on mine.

Ummm no son, I don’t believe it was!