Tagged: “Barriers to Forgiveness”
If teachers of elementary school children teach forgiveness education and then the child goes home to parents who discourage forgiveness, what is your opinion of the effectiveness of the school-based instruction?
It is difficult to know the answer to this because each situation will be different. Yet, it seems to me that if forgiveness education is consistent across years in school, the student will have a chance to understand accurately what forgiveness is and is not. The children then have the opportunity to choose forgiveness for themselves as they see the norm in school that forgiveness is worthwhile.
Do you think that forgiveness is something that should be taught formally in schools?
What is the purpose of education? Isn’t it to prepare children for adulthood? We prepare children to read. We prepare children to balance a checkbook. Why do we not prepare them for the injustices that likely will visit each child in adulthood? Yes, I do think we need forgiveness education in schools so that, when the students grow into adulthood and experience cruelty, sometimes unexpected and deep cruelty, we will have equipped them with how to recover from that through forgiveness, if the person now chooses forgiveness as a free will decision. Further, it would be important to teach the teamwork of forgiving and justice-seeking so that the child does not equate forgiving with giving in to the other’s unfairness.
How do you correct a child who equates forgiveness with revenge? I sometimes hear my son saying to his friend that they can be buddies again only if he can hit him back.
I think you need to first ask your son this: If you hit your friend, do you think he will feel pain? Then you need to ask this: “What is forgiveness? Is it gentle?” Try to get your son to see the large difference between causing pain and giving tenderness and love. Once your child sees this difference, he likely will abandon the idea that hitting is equated with forgiving.
If I forgive a narcissistic person, doesn’t that just give that person a free license to keep abusing me? Doesn’t this make forgiving toxic?
The issue here is not with forgiving itself but with a failure to see that as you forgive you can and should seek justice from the one who is hurting you. Forgive and ask something of the other person.
If others keep pressuring a person to forgive, doesn’t that make forgiving a bad thing?
The problem here is not with forgiving but instead with people not being gentle with those who are hurting. Putting pressure on others is not the fault of forgiveness itself.
