If you want to teach your children how to say sorry, you must be good at saying it yourself, especially to your own children. But how you say it can be quite tricky.

If you say to your children “I’m sorry I got angry with you, but ...” what follows that “but” can render the apology ineffective: “I had a bad day” or “your noise was giving me a headache” leaves the person who has been injured feeling that he should be apologizing for his bad behavior in expecting an apology.

Another method by which people appear to apologize without actually doing so is to say “I’m sorry you’re upset”; this suggests that you are somehow at fault for allowing yourself to get upset by what the other person has done.

Then there is the general, all covering apology, which avoids the necessity of identifying a specific act that was particularly hurtful or insulting, and which the person who is apologizing should promise never to do again. Saying “I’m useless as a parent” does not commit a person to any specific improvement.

These pseudo-apologies are used by people who believe saying sorry shows weakness, Parents who wish to teach their children to apologize should see it as a sign of strength, and therefore not resort to these pseudo-apologies.

But even when presented with examples of genuine contrition, children still need help to become a ware of the complexities of saying sorry. A three-year-old might need help in understanding that other children feel pain just as he does, and that hitting a playmate over the head with a heavy toy requires an apology. A six-year-old might need reminding that spoiling other children’s expectations can require an apology. A 12-year-old might need to be shown that raiding the biscuit tin without asking permission is acceptable, but that borrowing a parent’s clothes without permission is not.