Michele H. was 10 or 11 when she was asked to babysit for some neighbor kids. The parents said she could eat anything in the house. There was ice cream in the freezer, so after the little kids were in bed, Michele had some.

Yay, sweet gig.

A day or two later, Michele’s mother told her that she’d talked to the neighbors and learned that the freezer door had been left open. All the frozen food had melted or had to be thrown out.

Now, Michele’s mother had always told Michele that if she did anything wrong, she should tell her parents, and she wouldn’t be punished. And her parents lived up to that. If Michele told her parents what she’d done, she didn’t get in trouble. Even in the case of the slingshot incident.*

This created a certain fearlessness.

So Michele immediately went to the neighbor’s house to say:

I thought I closed the freezer door, but I must not have closed it all the way. I’m really sorry.

The neighbor was amazed. She said, “That’s a very grown-up thing to say. A lot of adults wouldn’t apologize like that.”

Ice cream sandwiches. Nothing but trouble. Hand it over.

That surprised and pleased Michele. She remembers the compliment with pleasure, and gives the credit to her mother’s stated policy of not punishing confessions.

SorryWatch thinks that’s a very intelligent child-rearing practice. Our take: a good apology, and VERY GROWN-UP.

*Oh, the slingshot incident? We will pass over how Michele got the clandestine slingshot and just say that the consequences of amusingly shooting pebbles at the tires of cars driven by passing adults are far less dire than the consequences of accidentally shooting a pebble at the windshield of a car driven by a passing teenager. Teenagers can be scary. Nevertheless, Michele told her parents, who handled the matter. They neither punished nor reproached their daughter, something she’s still grateful for.