Should you forgive someone who hurts you by mistake? Or is it not as simple as that?

I’m having a bit of a wrestle with myself at the minute. It’s about how to handle something with my kids.

They have taken to play fighting a lot recently, and it pretty much always ends up the same way: someone is in tears and everybody is angry.

The play fighting isn’t extreme, it’s just being a bit boisterous. But, inevitably, someone accidentally elbows someone else. In fact, the other day, I got involved and was tickling my daughter: first she headbutted me in the face, and then accidentally kicked one of her siblings.

Both purely accidental, no harm meant.

But then sometimes what we are getting is that they won’t forgive one another. And that then becomes a problem in and of itself, because there is this aggression and tension that goes well beyond the original issue.

The problem I am having here is that I want to address the idea that it isn’t fair or indeed helpful to hold something against someone for all time, particularly when they didn’t mean to do it. Equally, if you do accidentally hurt someone, you have to apologise even if you didn’t mean it. They are still hurt and it was still you, even if you didn’t mean to.

However.

Being a therapist and all that, I happen to know that generally speaking, people who consistently mistreat other people will sometimes use “I didn’t mean to” and “I didn’t help it” as a way of trying to absolve themselves of responsibility, and putting it back on to the person they have hurt. “It’s not fair of you to hold this against me. You know it was just a mistake. What do you want me to do, grovel for my whole life? You are being totally unreasonable. You can’t hold on to the past.”

So you see my dilemma. I don’t want my kids growing up thinking that they have to forgive someone every time they say it was an accident, and that they are being unreasonable if they don’t, but I also would like them to learn to be kind and understanding towards one another so that they can get on.

Ultimately, I think the thing here is that everything requires context, and a “one size fits all” approach isn’t fair. Generally speaking, the intention in the family that we validate it when someone else is hurt, even if we didn’t mean to hurt them, and we take responsibility for our role in it is a good one.

I also think that encouraging forgiveness when it is accidental is important, and that it is OK to have a bigger issue with someone doing something intentional or repetitive. I think validating their feelings when they are hurt is important, because that is always something I want them to have: just because it was accidental doesn’t mean you have to pretend it didn’t hurt.

As they grow, I suppose I would want them to have access to more about this too. What is accidental and what can people help? Sometimes the language problematic people use paints their choices as accidents: “It was a mistake.”

“No, me spilling my coffee over my keyboard was a mistake. What you did was make a bad and hurtful choice. A series of them, in fact.”

I would want them to know that people are supposed to take responsibility for their actions, regardless of what the reasons are, and that someone refusing to do that is a red flag.

If I am honest, I didn’t really know where I was going when I started writing this. I just knew it was on my mind and wanted to say something about it. Actually, now I have written this and thought it through, maybe what we are doing with this is OK.

• Validate the feelings: it doesn’t matter if it was an accident, it’s OK to be hurt
• Everyone has to take responsibility for their actions, even if they didn’t mean them
• It is helpful to be forgiving of someone that you love when you can see they really didn’t mean it, but if they keep doing it or it’s not an accident but a bad choice, then that’s not the same.

That will do, I think.

Thanks for reading. Until next time,

Ted

P.S. I would really like to know whether you have any thoughts on this one, so drop me a line if you do.