Episode 239: Sorry, not sorry. Should parents apologize to their kids?
Feeding The Mouth That Bites You: Parenting Teens Into Adulthood
Kenneth Wilgus, Cynthia Yanof
4.8 • 801 Ratings
🗓️ 24 February 2026
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today we take on apologizing to our kids—or what psychologists call “repair”—and why it feels so hard for many parents. Dr. Ken and Cynthia discuss how older generations rarely apologized because authority was the priority, while modern parenting emphasizes connection.
They unpack why some parents struggle to say “I’m sorry,” especially high-achieving or strong-willed parents, and Dr. Ken explains that healthy repair isn’t pretending your child did nothing wrong or giving half-apologies (“I’m sorry, but…”). Instead, it’s owning your reaction while still holding boundaries and consequences—modeling emotional regulation without acting like you and your teen are equals or roommates.
Listen in today for a practical word on why apologizing matters and how to do it effectively.
If you have a minute, please leave us a review. We love hearing listeners encouraging other listeners.
You can order Dr. Ken's book "Feeding The Mouth That Bites You" here
You can order Cynthia's book "Life Is Messy, God Is Good" here
You can pre-order Cynthia's book "How'd I Miss That" here
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to Feeding the Mouth to Bight You, a weekly podcast guide on parenting teens and launching them into the world. |
| 0:15.3 | I'm Cynthia Yanov, and as always, I'm joined by psychologist and author Dr. Ken Wilgus. |
| 0:21.4 | Dr. Ken, how are you? Cynthia, I'm joined by psychologist and author Dr. Ken Wilgus. Dr. Ken, how are you? |
| 0:23.1 | Cynthia. I'm good. I shaved. |
| 0:25.4 | I know. It was bad. I was starting to wonder if we needed to get reinforcements. |
| 0:28.9 | Bad. Bad. Well, I did have people stopping me on the street and handing me a dollar saying, |
| 0:34.3 | I'm praying for you, brother. So the homeless thing was not what I'm going for |
| 0:39.0 | so had to yeah no I can appreciate that yeah I just look and I want to I want to apologize if that |
| 0:46.3 | insulted you in any way oh then I said that that's so great because I didn't like you until now |
| 0:52.5 | you apologized and everything's great why Why did you bring that up? |
| 0:56.0 | Mm-hmm. So today we're going to talk about apologizing or some of the nerds in your field. What do they call it? |
| 1:04.0 | Okay. It's not nerdy. It's part of our professionals. Yeah, it's called repair, relationship repair. And it's basically, I mean, it's not just, but it is the whole issue of saying you're sorry. |
| 1:15.7 | And I told you that one of the things that I find fascinating is if you ask people my age, my wife and I joke about this all the time, not all the time. |
| 1:23.9 | Our parents were good parents. |
| 1:25.9 | But we say, yeah, I think apologizing to your kids |
| 1:28.7 | wasn't invented until about 1980. Like, I don't remember, I'm sure they did, but I don't remember |
| 1:34.5 | my parents saying a lot of, I'm sorry, and they were good, they did a good job. So now, by the |
| 1:41.9 | 21st century, it's a big deal. |
| 1:44.7 | And I'm just curious, you know, are people wondering, is this essential? |
| 1:49.6 | Is it helpful? |
| 1:50.4 | And, you know, what do we think it will do with our children if we're apologizing? |
| 1:56.1 | So that's what I wanted to talk about. |
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