This week we will focus on forgiveness. We define forgiveness as the act of excusing a mistake or an offense. We work with students each day to help them understand the power of forgiveness. We all make mistakes or offend someone at some point in our lives. We help the offender earn to take responsibility for their mistake and help the person who was offended learn to offer forgiveness. One thing we work on when students offer an apology for something is that if the offender chooses to accept the apology, he/she should say I accept your apology and let the other person know how it made him/her feel. We remind students not to say, "It is OK." Because if it was ok, there wouldn't be an issue.
You can explain forgiveness to a child by describing it as letting go of anger and choosing to be kind and generous to others.
Way to help our kids understand how to forgive some include:
- Explaining to them that it is a decision to let go of anger when something happens to us
- It can involve acknowledging the hurt, accepting it, and learning from it
- Forgiving others can help us move past things that bother us and develop empathy and patience
- Forgiveness can be practiced through activities like role-playing, meditation, and reading stories
- Encourage children to practice sincere apologies by acknowledging the wrong doing, admitting the action, and committing to learning from it
As with most of our values, it is important that we model showing others forgiveness and share with our kids why and how we forgive others.
