Sorry not sorry: Why you shouldn’t apologize for your kid

In this episode of In It, hosts Gretchen Vierstra and Rachel Bozek welcome Christina Cipriano, PhD, MEd. Dr. Chris is a psychologist, and an associate professor at the Yale University Child Study Center. She is also the author of Be Unapologetically Impatient, which comes out this summer.

Dr. Chris has four children, including a daughter who has ADHD and sensory challenges and a son with a rare, regressive disease. She has given a lot of thought to the idea of apologizing when you have nothing to be sorry for. 

What can we say instead of “I’m sorry”? And what do we do when others say they’re sorry to us, just because something in our lives is a challenge? Dr. Chris has helpful tips for many of these scenarios. 

We love hearing from our listeners. Email us at init@understood.org.

• What families wish you knew about learning disabilities

• Tips from an ADHD coach: Saying sorry too much

• Why I stopped saying “sorry” as a mom (and started saying “no”)

• What to write in an email to your child’s teacher

• Need help advocating for your kid at school? We talk to a pro

• What is self-advocacy? 

(1:43) The problem with the words “I’m sorry”

(7:35) What is a deficit frame?

(11:42) Alternatives to “I’m sorry”

(19:54) More alternatives for apologizing

(21:11) Teaching our kids to be unapologetic

(23:42) Starting with “thank you”

(24:46) The science of it all

Gretchen: Hello and welcome to "In It," a podcast for families with kids who learn and think differently.

Rachel: Here you'll find advice, camaraderie, stories of successes, and yes, sometimes failures from experts and from parents and caregivers like you.

Gretchen: I'm Gretchen Vierstra, a former classroom teacher and an editor here at Understood.org.

Rachel: And I'm Rachel Bozek, a writer, editor, and mom who has definitely been in it. Today, we're talking about why we need to stop saying sorry.

Gretchen: Now we're not talking about real, meaningful apologies. We know those are important, but what about all those times we say sorry for things that aren't actually our fault? Like when our child needs some extra time to complete a task.

Rachel: And what about the times other people tell us they're sorry things are the way they are, even though we know those people actually have the power to change the way things are?

Gretchen: Our guest today is someone who has given all of this a lot of thought. In fact, she's written a book about it.

Rachel: Dr. Christina Cipriano, most people just call her Dr. Chris, is a psychologist and an associate professor at the Yale University Child Study Center.

Gretchen: Her new book is called "Be Unapologetically Impatient," and even though it doesn't come out till this summer, we had the pleasure of previewing a few chapters, and it's so good.

Rachel: It is so good. Dr. Chris writes as an expert on psychology, but also as a parent to a daughter who has ADHD and sensory challenges, and a son with a rare regressive disease.

Gretchen: We're so happy she's joining us today. Hello, Dr. Chris, welcome to "In It."

Christina: Thank you so much for having me.

Gretchen: We are so thrilled to be talking with you today. And what we want to talk about is the problem with the words "I'm sorry," and why we should all stop saying it when it comes to advocating for kids who are different in some way. You say you had a change in perspective on this phrase almost from the first moment you became a mom. What was going on for you back then that led you to rethink this phrase?

Christina: Absolutely. Thank you so much for the opportunity to share about this. And so, you know, for me, when I started to hear "I'm sorry" being said to me in the context of my children and their needs, it lit a light bulb for me that, you know, typically we would think about someone being, you know, apologetic as an opportunity to express sympathy or that they're trying to be kind maybe moving in the direction of seeking to connect with us, although sympathy really what it does is kind of can help to make the person who says the I'm sorry feel better and kind of leaves you or it leaves me in this case like kind of at a loss.

And so, I have four beautiful children, they are wildly diverse, my oldest has a rare disease, my middle daughter is neurodivergent, and the "I'm sorry" started coming out in respect to kind of their needs, and the ways in which they weren't getting access to services or treatments or opportunities. And so, you know, for me, when I started to hear it and the light bulb went off, I was thinking to myself, "Well, why are you saying you're sorry for us? Like, are you positioning us as kind of less than? Like, is it, is there some sort of hierarchy here in what you're saying? Or, you know, is the expectation that I should be sorry for my kids' needs?"

Because let's be real, like, no, we don't need to give anybody any reason to look at our families and our children as less than anyone else's on the basis of any needs, right? We have our right to be fully showing up and have the opportunity to access and benefit from our world. And so, it was kind of this combination of things over really the first decade of my parenting that brought me to this realization that, you know, people say that they're I'm sorry to me all the time for things that they can change? Why is there seemingly an expectation that I would somehow be apologetic about things that I can't, about the needs and the rights and the interests of my children?

Gretchen: Can you give an example?

Christina: Yeah, absolutely. So, my oldest has a rare disease. It's called Phelan-McDermid syndrome. It's a regressive syndrome. As he ages, he loses skills. And he now relies on a wheelchair for full like mobility services. And the amount of times, and I talk about just a few of them in the book, I thought I could have probably written a whole book about the wheelchair, and I'm sorry to be quite honest with you, that people in our kind of broader spaces, so whether it's like the airline or at the amusement park or at the industrial office or the government building, the baseball game, who would say things to us like "Oh, I'm sorry," or "I'm sorry for your inconvenience," or "I'm sorry" and it has something to do with the wheelchair.

Like, you know, his wheelchair doesn't arrive after we're like trying to get off a plane, and we're stuck on the jet bridge for 45 minutes because the wheelchair got brought to luggage pickup as opposed to being coming to us at gate check. And you know all the TS agents are saying they're sorry to us and the administrators, as though like we have any other option than to just wait there for the wheelchair.

Rachel: Right.

Christina: Like, the necessity of it is just lost and you know maybe just another example to kind of enrich this um there is also a lot of "I'm sorry" that comes up around like the idea that my children have you know diverse diagnoses like like a "sorry for," like people will say like "Oh I'm oh i's sorry to hear that" or "I'm sorry for them" and yeah even just saying these things out loud they like make my blood boil and it really kind of signals to us like a a bit of a devaluation of them as people, as people who derive great joy in the world and have so many assets and strengths that they bring to everything that we engage in.

Gretchen: So, there's another example you give about a visit to an amusement park where you looked on the website beforehand, and it says that all these different rides are accessible to wheelchairs. But then, when you get there, the people running the ride say, "Oh, sorry, that wheelchair doesn't work on this ride." That is just infuriating.

Christina: Absolutely. Oh my gosh, yes. And you know, in that particular example, I was speaking about the policy that used to exist at Universal Studios. And so, I say it used to exists because they actually changed the policy. After I went through a series of interactions thereafter, our very kind of unfortunate situation where we were being denied access for our son to go on the quote unquote accessible rides, as a result of the policy being structured to not account for pediatric wheelchairs.

So, it was designed as though like they had a set of questions that they had to ask. The attendant at every ride would say, you know "Is his seatbelt for comfort or safety?" And it's a pediatric wheelchair. So, they like, newsflash, they're all for safety.

Gretchen: Right.

Christina: You know, you have all the rules around being in cars, et cetera, with seatbelts and children. And so, that in and of itself was supposed to mean then therefore he couldn't go on the ride. And so, I was like, this is something that we can, we can address this. Like we can have a conversation.

Rachel: Because he actually needs the seatbelt.

Christina: Absolutely, as does every other child in a pediatric wheelchair who's not just like, you know, being wheeled around because they twisted their ankle that day.

Rachel: So, you talk about the phrase "I'm sorry" as a kind of deficit framing, that's the term that you use. Can you talk a little bit about what that means?

Christina: Yeah, yeah, so it's basically, so when we think about someone in a deficit frame, we're devaluing that person or treating them as less than. And so, we will talk about the things that someone or a group of people can't do or make assumptions about things that they can't do or maybe would not be interested in doing. And so it is a... yeah, a devaluing of the whole person, and in many places and spaces it can come off really like demoralizing and dehumanizing of the individual.

And so, like I'll give you an example, my oldest, Miles, with his rare disease, he derives incredible joy from the Toy Story franchise and you know, people will like see us out and about and he'll have like his tablet and his Toy Story things et cetera and you know, sometimes people will say things like, "Oh, like, does he watch anything else?" or "Why don't you change it up?" Like if they're by my house, like it's on for like the millionth time. And I'll explain that, you know, like he gets great joy from this. It's his brain, it's different than, all of our brains are different. And for him, he drives great joy, and they'll say like, "Oh, like, I'm so sorry that he like can't or won't..." but I just fill in the blank.

Well, it could continue on as though it's like a bad thing. Whereas, meanwhile, I am just clinging on that, wow, he gets such great joy from these experiences and from, you know, Buzz Lightyear is his spirit animal and like, we're all in it with him. So, I'm not sorry about that at all.

Rachel: Yeah, yeah.

Gretchen: I want to pick up something else about this deficit framing that I want make sure we're making clear. You know your readers, a lot of them actually have very challenging things going on in their lives. So, it's not that you're saying like "Everything's peaches and cream 100% all the time," right? That is not your point.

Christina: Absolutely. No, absolutely, absolutely. I mean, I write from the lens of disability and our experiences with disability, but there are many different kinds of ways and spaces and places where we maybe consider ourselves or someone may consider us disadvantaged. And I introduce this idea that disadvantage actually provides you with this different vantage point. And so, yeah, these disadvantages they can and they do, as I say in the book, likely they suck, right? They're not great things.

I mean, when we think about kind of the ways in which poverty intersects and kind of interrupts our opportunities to advance in society from the ways in which, you know, having certain minoritized identities in different spaces and places worldwide can put you at a disadvantage and that can experience like tremendous challenges in livelihoods to access and benefit from school, have the opportunities for gainful employment. I'm not saying that none of that is true.

But on the contrary, introducing the idea that well, you have this perspective, like we can use it to effect change because the reality is it can take our lifetime to change how a system sees you. But each and every one of us can shift how we see ourselves in the system right now, and that's kind of the steps that I'm moving through in the book of how to harness that vantage point, that, you know, in many spaces and places is positioning you at a disadvantage as actually you have insights to share with the world right now to affect change.

And here are some evidence-based strategies for how to engage other people and letting them in, inviting them into your vantage point, so they can see the world the way you see the world, and we can build a world that's better for everybody through that and through those interactions.

Rachel: I love that. That's so great. One situation I can imagine is that someone finds themselves talking to a parent who reveals that their child has some kind of disability or learning or thinking difference. I think many people may have the initial reaction of saying "I'm sorry." What else might someone say in that situation?

Christina: Yeah, I appreciate that question so much. So, you know, you can start with gratitude, thanking someone for letting you in, for sharing this information with you, and providing you kind of a glimmer of insight. And then move from that gratitude into asking a question that's non-judgmental of like, you know, "Would you like to tell me more about..." whatever that might be, or you know, we can move into even a more kind of empathetic or compassionate response. "How can I support you and your family, you know, now learning this information?"

And I'll tell you, for someone who, you know, we have a beautifully diverse family, and we've had beautifully diverse reactions to our family. But the most close to my heart moments are the moments when strangers or, you know, the parent on the soccer field or that someone in the, you know, at the supermarket and the parking lot will ask like, "How can I help? Like, how could I support you? What would be useful?" And they're really kind of offering, and to me that's moving beyond right, that and not just to me, but to science as well. It's moving that kind of sympathetic top-level response to this more kind of compassionate interaction of, you know, "We can do something together" or "I can do to support you in many ways."

I know I use a few examples throughout the book that kind of get at some of these pieces and you know from the kind of initial like tongue-in-cheek of people responding to me when they would see me out with my littles, my three little, my three youngest are all 15 months apart and so, I talk about this beginning in the book, that they're, they kind of looked like you know twins and then triplets but who are all different than each other and people were very quick to say things like "Oh I'm so sorry. Oh you have your hands full" and I knew they were just trying to form connection, but really, like, I didn't need a reminder that I was not an octopus.

Rachel: Right.

Christina: Like, that was not a helpful thing. It was not saying like, "Well, let me hold the door for you."

Gretchen: Right. Yeah.

Christina: Like, right? "Could I do something?" And anyway, that's a very superficial example. But like, they get much deeper as we kind of move through those experiences. And you know the last week I was at Children's Hospital with my son Myles and we were talking to a service provider and they couldn't really figure out what was going on with his G-tube and you know there are many children and adults who have G-tubes across the country and you know one of the nurses who was evaluating with the doctor said something about "Well maybe he's having an allergy to it."

Because they had a new one placed, and she sai,d "I've never seen that before, but I mean it could happen like it's presenting like an allergy. You should call the provider of who makes the G-tubes and find out if they changed the material that they use to make them." And I laughed and I said, "Well, I could try. It'll probably take me six months to get someone on the phone. I don't know how I would ever get access to that. But I imagine if you tried to call as the provider and said, on behalf of all of your patients, rather than it just being just me, Miles' mom making a phone call, and I'm no one to them, maybe they can answer."

And the doctor and the nurse and and my husband was also in the room they all like stopped and I saw my husband like trying to not laugh because he, he's very familiar with my book and knows that I'm calling people in in the book of saying like "It's not just my job to deal with things that I, are addressing it's everyone's, it's we need to do this together" and then you know they said "OK well, we'll look into this. We will follow up," you know. And you know, she understood my perspective

Gretchen: And like you said, she's representing or they're representing a whole bunch of folks who are going to need answers to this question, so why put that on you?

Christina: Exactly.

Gretchen: OK. So we've talked about how yucky it can feel to hear "I'm sorry" from someone else, especially when we're talking about our families, so now let's pivot to when we want to advocate for our families, for our kids. Can you give us a few quick examples of when parents and caregivers say "I'm sorry" when they're advocating? Because I'm not sure we're all realizing how often we might do it.

Christina: Absolutely. You know, we are, in many ways have been socialized to apologize for asking questions when questions are a form of how we learn, right? Of how we engage. And so, if you, you know, are becoming a parent of a child who has a diagnosis or is in need of additional supports or services at school, it's a whole new world. And so we would expect that you would have lots of questions, right? Even those who have training in special education, lots of question of what's needed.

And so, when engaging with the school system or the medical support system, it's very common to hear parents and caregivers saying things like "I'm sorry, can you repeat that?" or "I'm sorry, what do you mean by..." or "I am sorry" and then asking questions regarding the child servicing, as like the first step of even just understand what is happening. And then there's the second layer of it of apologizing for asking for services, services that your children are entitled to by law to meet their needs and to understand and embrace their diverse ways of knowing and seeing and navigating their world as though we have been uh socialized to anticipate that that is something we shouldn't or couldn't ask for.

And so, this like, you know as though we're apologizing and we see this with families and caregivers that we're apologizing for the doctor's time, we're apologizing for the teacher's time, for the speech therapist's time, for the OT's time. But on the flip side of that, right, it's not something to be sorry for. Like that dismisses our child or our family's needs and values. You know, our kids and our families and our needs are not something to be positioned as less than. They are not something to be sorry for.

Gretchen: And I think, like, you know, after us talking about your book and this conversation we were going to have, and I just realized how often in my day I say "I'm sorry."

Rachel: So many times a day.

Gretchen: So many times. And I think part of it is, too, and this also probably comes from this deficit framing, just in terms of when we're talking about advocating for your kids' needs, is like, I think I'm not going to get what I need if I don't apologize first.

Rachel: Right. I was just thinking about that in terms of, I've been lucky enough to not have had this experience. But I've heard so many people talk about it where whoever is there to help them through their situation, it's like they're doing them a favor.

Gretchen: Right.

Christina: Right, right, and that's positioning us as though we're somehow like a burden or extra or unnecessary or you know fill in the blank with the ways in which it's positioned. And you know it's really common for that "I'm sorry" to come up when there is a hierarchy, and there's a lot of natural hierarchies in these systems and structures that we're engaging in as parents of children with disabilities.

So, it's the family or caregiver, you know I hate the idea of positioning of verses, but it's the parent or caregiver, and then there's the school system. There's the educator, but even at the micro level, there's a teacher and the student, right? There's a hierarchy there. There's the patient and the doctor or the provider, the patient, and the medical billing insurer, right?

The folks that we would imagine all of them would always have the answers to our questions and have the expertise and training to support us and our children and families to thrive. And yet... Many of us have been socialized to kind of keep leading with that "I'm sorry," as though, you know, we're taking up space with our needs.

Rachel: So, what are some alternatives in this context to leading with "I'm sorry," when we're asking for someone to do something differently for us or for our kids from an advocacy standpoint?

Christina: Absolutely, so lead with gratitude. I can't say that enough. Always start with a thank you. I also talk about in the book, making yourself known, like positioning yourself. So, I will introduce myself in every situation, like "This is Miles," or like "I am Miles' mother," or "We're not from around here." I will give them some context because in the absence of contextualizing who you are in the interaction, whether it be with a stranger or a new care provider or a teacher, you are a parent or you're that parent. And it's no fault of that person on the other side of things, right? It's just that as adults, our brain, it tricks us. We become more inward-leaning.

And so, you know, care providers, medical professionals, education professionals, they fall into the way they do things and what they see, just like we all do in our jobs, because our brain habituates the information. And so, humanize the experience so that we can help to bring people so they can see you as you are, not as how they imagine you might be in that context.

Rachel: So, is this unapologetic approach to self-advocacy something you've taught your kids or that you work on with them?

Christina: Absolutely. And especially when it comes to my neurodivergent daughter, Eleanor, teaching her to ask for support and to ask questions when she doesn't understand in ways that are opening up lines of conversation and not kind of calling out. So, in the book, I kind of walk through a series of steps of how we may unintentionally or intentionally, in some spaces, call people out or put people on the defense when we're seeking or asking for support or in the face of an injustice. And you know, when you do that, nobody hears you.

And so, when we advocate for ourselves and our needs, we wanna use a tone and I give her sentence starters to invite people in about why you need it because that like anger and frustration, it is so rightfully there, right? I'm not saying to not feel it. Like we feel it, and then we harness it. We harness the power of that emotion to help to advance us and everybody around us. I think one really clear example of this, so earlier in the episode we were talking about the amusement park, as we were going through it, now Eleanor was younger then, when this happened, and she was by the second day of all the ride providers telling us that Miles couldn't ride the ride, she was just like calling them ableist.

She was just saying like, "You're ableist. How dare you?" And like all of her fiery energy. And of course, I mean, I know we're kind of laughing as we're saying this, but that I explained to her like, "No one is going to listen to you when you do, like that is not going to help us." And I get the frustration. And, of course, where did she get that from? She got that from me. Like she saw me, like I had my moment of vulnerability and like broke into tears, one of the people on day one, and then and she, and I modeled it, and so she did it after that, and we kind of you know walked through that later.

And so now, when we're places and spaces and like there isn't a ramp and because this is a constant part of our existence, like think the navigation around with the wheelchair and stuff, she will still be frustrated but she will use kinder words with other people around us of like asking for their help to move the chair so that her brother's wheelchair could go through as opposed to being like "Why don't you move the chair?"

Gretchen: I mean, and I'm thinking in a classroom experience, for example, if you're middle-schooler, one of their accommodations is to get notes or an outline from the teacher, and the teacher forgot to give the notes. And you're telling to tell your child, "Well, ask the teacher. Say, you know, 'Please, can I have my notes?'" I imagine there what you're trying to say, you don't say, you know, "I'm sorry, I need notes," right?

Rachel: Yeah.

Christina: Right. Exactly. Start with thank you, and then state as a fact what it was that you needed.

Gretchen: Yeah.

Christina: Right? It's not like an open for debate, right? It leaves open to interpretation this idea that like maybe I shouldn't be asking for this.

Gretchen: Right.

Rachel: Right.

Christina: When that is not the case, right? So, yeah, absolutely.

Gretchen: And I think we all just need to probably, too, understand that this is hard to change. And we're human, and we're not going to be perfect at it. And habits are so hard to break, right?

Christina: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Gretchen: I mean, there's scientific evidence behind that, right?

Christina: There is, there is. And you know, and there's also scientific evidence around this idea that when you have accommodated so much new information, so this is a psychological term here, when you have, from cognitive psychology, you've accommodated so much information that you change the way you see things and you change the way you know things, that is these new glasses, that is that new way of seeing things.

And so, you know, in the book, I talk about it as, whether it's, you know, the glitter on your heart, like that persistent glitter that never goes away. Like if any of you have children who play with glitter, it shows up year after year, it's always there.

Gretchen: Always there.

Christina: It never, you know, but once it's there, right? It's, and this is from a neuroplasticity standpoint in your brain, like once you've made that change, like it's always there, and so you're always going to see it. And so, as we work as human beings across the life span, to focus our attention and our intention to attend. So, intention and attention. So, our intention to attend, because again, remember our brain can trick us as we age, like it gets into these patterns, and then you stop seeing things and people as they are. You just see them as like just the way it is and the way we do things, right?

And so, we can continue to evolve and grow and use that new vantage point, but it takes work. And it's something that I work at every day, and everyone around me does as well, and my support system, we hold ourselves and each other accountable to doing that good work in ways that will support our kids and all kids to thrive, but it's not easy. This is not an easy Band-Aid of advice.

Gretchen: I mean, this was all so helpful.

Rachel: Thank you so much.

Gretchen: Thank you so much, and thank you for writing such a beautiful book.

Christina: Thank you. Thank you so much.

Gretchen: Keep an eye out for Dr. Chris's new book "Be Unapologetically Impatient."

Rachel: Thanks so much for listening today. If you have any thoughts about the episode, we'd love to hear from you. You can email us at init@understood.org.

Gretchen: And check out the show notes for this episode, where we have more resources and links to anything we mentioned.

Rachel: This show is brought to you by Understood.org. Understood is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences like ADHD and dyslexia. If you'd like to help us continue this work, donate at Understood.org/give.

Gretchen: "In It" is produced and edited by Julie Subrin with additional production support from Cody Nelson and Samiah Adams. Justin D. Wright mixes the show, and Mike Ericco wrote our theme music. Briana Berry is our production director. Neil Drumming is our editorial director.

Rachel: From Understood.org, our executive directors are Laura Key, Scott Cocchiere, and Seth Melnick. Thanks for listening.