Stop Apologizing For Your Kid's Personality

A good parent is one who builds their kid up, who makes them feel confident, who loves them deeply for who they are.

But even good parents who do all of those things find themselves in the middle of a summer barbecue, apologizing to neighbors they don’t know very well, because their loud, energetic, life-of-the-party 7-year-old keeps taking over the karaoke machine and belting Hamilton tunes to the adults. “I’m so sorry,” they say. “She’s such a ham.”

When their kid keeps an adult stuck for more than five minutes, listening to them describe the latest Pokemon card they found, a good parent — who takes them to Pokemon drops and trades cards with them and loves their kid’s hobby so much — might still run up to the adult, apologizing, saying things like, “He’s just so social and obsessed with Pokemon, I’m so sorry about that.”

Even the best of us, the parents who don’t want our little ones’ light to ever, for a single second, dim even the tiniest beam, will find ourselves outwardly apologizing to friends, to family members, to strangers, telling them how sorry we are... for our kid’s personality.

And it’s not a good feeling.

Because good parents don’t want to apologize for their kid’s personality — but they know how the world is. They know what it means to conform. Sometimes it’s a way to keep ourselves safe, small, hidden. Sometimes adjusting our weirdness or our quirks or our loud mouths helps us avoid getting our feelings hurt.

You aren’t rejecting your kid’s personality; you’re trying to save it. Because the last thing anyone wants is for their bright, happy kid with the fun personality to be scolded for being themselves or to be made fun of for their light and joy and suddenly feel like they have to dial themselves down.

“These parents are responding to a culture that treats difference as a problem,” says Dr. Rachel Loftin of Prosper Health. “A child who is loud, expressive, emotionally intense, or socially unconventional isn’t doing anything wrong. They’re simply not conforming to a narrow definition of what’s considered acceptable in public.”

Our intentions are good, but even the most subtle apologies can do the exact damage to our kid that we’re trying to avoid. “Kids may absorb the message that who they are is inconvenient or embarrassing,” says Loftin. “Over time, that can shape how they see themselves far more than any stranger’s reaction ever could.”

She says a more affirming approach is to shift from apology to “context and confidence.” So when your kid has a big reaction to the ice cream cake at the birthday party or gets emotional in a way that you know other people may think is different, you can say something like “They process things a little differently” or “They’re really excited, this is how it shows up.”

Loftin even says, if needed, you can say, “I’m not concerned about their behavior” to set a clear boundary with other adults that you don’t find your child’s personality to be a problem... and this can model self-acceptance for your babe.

“Letting go of the urge to apologize is hard, because many parents are also navigating their own fear of being judged or excluded,” she adds. “But it helps to ask: Is my child actually causing harm, or just making others uncomfortable? Discomfort often comes from unfamiliarity, not from something being wrong.”

Honestly, your kids are going to build confidence by being themselves, fully and unashamedly, over and over again, by knowing that you aren’t embarrassed by them or apologizing for them. “The goal is to raise someone who knows they don’t have to shrink to belong,” says Loftin. And if they find themselves being judged for their behavior or made fun of or treated differently, seeing your reaction — the way you remind them that their personality doesn’t warrant any kind of apology or disclaimer — will stick with them more than anything else ever will.

And they’ll just keep going.