815. Why do kids sometimes get defensive, shut down, or lash out after they’ve made a mistake, broken a rule or hurt someone’s feelings? In this episode, Dr. Nanika Coor explains how to compassionately help children notice their impact without shame, while helping them take meaningful steps toward repairing relationship ruptures through the action-based making of amends.
815. Why do kids sometimes get defensive, shut down, or lash out after they’ve made a mistake, broken a rule or hurt someone’s feelings? In this episode, Dr. Nanika Coor explains how to compassionately help children notice their impact without shame, while helping them take meaningful steps toward repairing relationship ruptures through the action-based making of amends.
Sources:
McCloud, C. (2018). Buckets, dippers, and lids: Secrets to your happiness. Bucket Fillers.
Sandland, B. (2025). Neurodivergent Experiences of Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria Expose the Environmental Factors too Often Overlooked. Neurodiversity, 3. https://doi.org/10.1177/27546330251394516
Related Project Parenthood Episodes:
Stop forcing your child to apologize
Repairing the Break: How to Fix Things with Your Kid
The First Step to Solve Child Behavior Problems
Dr. Coor’s Related Blog:
A Stitch in Time Saves Nine: Relational Repair After Parent-Child Conflicts
Find a transcript here.
Have a parenting question? Email Dr. Coor at parenthood@quickanddirtytips.com or leave a voicemail at 646-926-3243.
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You know that cringey moment where your child intentionally or unintentionally makes a mistake or a misstep that results in some kind of negative impact? Someone’s feelings get hurt, someone’s property gets damaged or someone’s body is injured - and afterward your child responds in a less-than-apologetic way. No “I’m sorry”, no “Are you okay?”, no remorse expressed. And sometimes maybe they even outright deny that they did anything wrong. Oof. I know - it’s so embarrassing, confusing, and frustrating! You don’t want to layer on the guilt and shame to get them to do it, but you do want your child to learn to take responsibility for their actions. So what can you do?
Welcome back to Project Parenthood, I’m your host, Dr. Nanika Coor. Each week I’ll help you raise kids in ways that are compassionate, respectful, anti-oppressive, and grounded in connection and community. Today I’m talking about why it can be difficult for kids to take accountability when they’ve made a misstep or mistake, and how to help them learn to own up and make amends.
Before I dive in, I want to invite you to check in with yourself right now in this present moment as you’re anticipating hearing more about helping kids take more accountability. If you can get still enough, see if you can become aware of your heart beat, and stay with that awareness for a few breaths. What else do you notice happening in your body in this present moment? Can you notice where your body is making contact with a supportive surface like the floor or a chair? Any tension or discomfort in your body anywhere? Any emotions swirling around for you right now? Just make a note of it without trying to change or judge anything. See if you can notice any shifts in your state as you listen.
Let’s get into it.
A common theme from parents in my practice is that their kids can have a hard time taking accountability for making a mistake, breaking a rule, or causing harm - even unintentional harm. Maybe your child is quick to become defensive and you hear a lot of “It wasn’t me!” or “I didn’t do it!” or they’re often blaming their transgressions on someone else. Maybe when you confront your child with a misstep they’ve made, they suddenly become emotionally overwhelmed and they lash out in desperate denial, anxiety or rage.
This is when you start worrying about their future and how the world will react to their inability to admit a mistake. You may request or demand that they apologize. Or you may try really hard not to react to their slip-ups with harsh shame, blame, or the withdrawal of connection, to create a more accepting environment for them to own up to their actions. Even so, when faced with the reality that they’ve messed up in some way, their nervous system goes into survival mode, and they frantically avoid taking responsibility for their part in any mistake made or harm caused.
Contributing Factors
Your child’s reluctance to take responsibility for their actions is usually about underdeveloped skills, or protecting themselves from an overwhelming internal state that feels impossible to tolerate.
Here are three ways this could be playing out:
There can be the intense pain of shame that involves a fear of being a fundamentally flawed or bad person - not just of having made a mistake. Shame can show up in different ways.
For neurodivergent kids, particularly those with ADHD and/or autism, defensiveness after a mistake can be amplified by Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD). RSD is an intense, crushing, and immediate emotional pain triggered by the perception of being rejected, criticized, or having failed.
Taking accountability is a complex, high-level skill rather than an innate trait. Avoidance can also signal that your child’s current abilities are a mismatch with your expectations.
Forcing kids to apologize can lead to the parrotting of the phrase “I’m sorry” without your child feeling authentic remorse or a desire to make things better now and in the future. Forced apologies can also activate shame in ways that further entrench the very avoidance of taking responsibility for unfortunate actions that you’re trying to build. Instead, try introducing the idea of “bucket refilling”.
Bucket-refilling: A shared language for repair
Consider creating a shared language around emotions and impact. I recommend the framework from the book “Buckets, Dippers, and Lids: Secrets to Your Happiness” by Carol McCloud. It breaks down like this - first of all, everyone, from the moment of birth, has an invisible bucket, dipper and lid:
The buckets, dippers and lids metaphor gives your family simple, non-shaming language to talk about impact: the cause and effect of their words and actions.
Daily bucket-checks
You can also implement regular bucket-checks where both grown-ups and kids rate their bucket-fullness. That could sound like: “My bucket was feeling low today at work when no one showed much appreciation for all the work I did for a project. But then it really filled up again when everyone helped clear the table after dinner. How full is your bucket right now? What would fill it up a little bit?” You can use quick conversations like this to find out the kinds of actions that feel bucket-dipping and bucket-filling for your child, and for them to learn the same things about you.
You can also fold bucket-filling language into the daily rhythm of your family life. When your child tells you about an interaction at school, a playdate or with a sibling, you can translate it into bucket-dipper-lid language: “Oh - it sounds like Sam’s bucket was low when they threw the ball at Alex.” or “Wow - when Sophie made that bracelet for you, she really filled your bucket, huh?” or “I hear you. It was hard not to dip into your little brother’s bucket after he knocked over your block tower. Now both of your buckets are pretty low, huh?”
Once buckets-dippers-lids language is commonplace in your family, you can use it to repair with your child after a relationship rupture. This is where your child sees you taking accountability for your actions that may have caused harm. This is where you’re being the change you hope to see in them. You can do this in five steps.
Step 1: Take the lead
After you’ve dipped into your child’s bucket - whether intentionally or unintentionally, circle back to them only once you’re steady, calm and capable of connection again. It’s important that your child doesn’t have to be the one to bring it up or be the brave one - that you’re the one opening that door.
You might say: “Hey love, earlier I dipped into your bucket when I snapped about your clothes being on the floor. My own bucket was low and I wasn’t able to stop myself before I dipped. Is now a good time for you to check in with me about that moment?”
Here, you’re naming exactly what happened without self-shaming or assigning blame to them. You’re sending the message: I noticed that I made a mistake, I know my mistakes can impact you, I care about you and our relationship and I’m ready to work with you to try to make things better when you are.
If they say they don’t want to talk about it - respect that. And also let them know that you’ll be bringing it up again later because it’s important to you to refill their bucket.
Step 2: Actively listen
Once your child has given consent to revisit the incident, invite them to share their experience. This invitation could sound like: “Can you tell me what it was like for you when I snapped at you about the clothes on the floor? Did you feel the dip in your bucket? What feelings did you have about that? What do those emotions feel like in your body?”
Then you just listen - while you keep your own “lid” firmly in place. Protect the contents of your own bucket! Extend the length of your exhales if it helps you stay calm, curious and non-judgemental. Try to understand their experience from their point of view. No rebuttals, no correcting details. Allow any differences of opinion to simply exist in the space between you.
In this step your active listening skills are sending the message: When I dip in your bucket, I want to hear about it and try hard to understand your internal experience of it. I can tolerate and make space for your strong feelings of anger, injustice or disappointment in me without shaming myself or shaming you.
Step 3: Validate
You reflect back what you heard your child say, especially the emotional truth of their experience.
This could sound like: “So when I raised my voice, it felt startling and harsh, and it automatically emptied a lot of the happiness out of your bucket. Your shoulders felt tight and you just wanted to get away from me as fast as you could. That makes so much sense. Anyone would feel like that if someone they love spoke to them in a loud, harsh way.”
You don’t have to agree with every detail. When you repeat back to them their emotions, body sensations and thoughts, you’re communicating: I can acknowledge your perspective even when it’s different from my own. I’m able to see things like you see them. Your inner world is real to me.
Step 4: Take accountability
You name your part in a clear, direct, and grounded way. Not “I’m sorry but…,” not “sorry if you felt…,” not “I’m sorry I’m the worst parent ever.” Just ownership and clarity about what you wish you’d done differently.
You might say: “When I got angry about the clothes on the floor, I didn’t resist the urge to dip in your bucket and that wasn’t okay. You didn’t deserve that. I wish I had paused, taken a breath, and used my lid before speaking. Next time when I’m angry like that inside, I’m going to stop and think first before I say or do anything, and that will keep me from dipping in your bucket.”
This step shows them what accountability looks like. The underlying message your words send is: I can take responsibility for my actions without judging myself as being “bad” or blaming my actions on anyone else. I can make a plan for resisting bucket-dipping in the future.
Step 5: Collaborate
Work together with your child to come up with a small next step - something realistic that supports both connection and prevention.
This might sound like: “How about thinking together about what might help us when something like this comes up again. Do you have any ideas? One idea I have is that we can choose a clean-up song together and everyone picks up clothes and toys and books and puts them away before the song is over. What do you think?”
Once you agree upon a future solution, always wrap up with: “Is there anything you’d like to do right now, or anything I can do right now to help refill your bucket?”
Collaboration after a conflict helps you reestablish your connection and gives you the opportunity to proactively prevent future relational ruptures. Sometimes the collaboration itself is bucket-filling for a child, but if it isn’t, you’re explicitly inviting your child to check-in with the state of their bucket, express aloud whether or not it needs a refill, and what could be done to refill it.
Help kids learn about refilling buckets
Once you’ve consistently modeled what it looks like to make amends through bucket-refilling, start pointing out bucket dipping during not only their interactions, but also when you see it happening in the world around you and in the media your child consumes.
Here are some bucket-dipping nuances you can help them look out for:
If you notice your child bucket-dipping, a non-shaming way to draw attention to this might be: “Oops, let’s look at Sally’s face and body language - I see a sad face and some tears. Sally was playing with that train and then you took it out of her hands. That seems like it dipped in her bucket. Let’s check in with her and see if she’s okay.”
And then you model listening to and reflecting back the other child’s feelings: “When you took Sally’s toy, she didn’t like that and now she’s saying she feels sad and angry. Even very kind kids sometimes have a bucket-dipping moment, and that takes away a bit of someone else’s happiness in their bucket. The good thing is that when you know you’ve dipped in a bucket, you can find a way to refill it again, right? Do you have some ideas for how you can help Sally feel better?”
You can offer a “menu” of ideas in the moment:
A proactive step you can take is to make a “kindness menu” that you keep displayed at home in a central area - like on the fridge. This list can serve as a running list of bucket-filling actions people can do to fill someone else’s bucket (and their own!) whether or not they are doing it as an amends-making measure. These could be things like:
When you have a shared language like buckets, dippers and lids, and then practice relational repair using that framework, your child begins to experience the taking of accountability after mistakes as something safe, collaborative, and rooted in connection rather than shame. Over time, your child learns that repairing harm is less about never making mistakes and more about transforming mistakes into opportunities for nurturing the relationships that matter most.
So let’s slow down and have you check in with yourself again. What sensations are alive for you after hearing about the ins and outs of making amends and ways to model and scaffold this for kids? Whatever reactions you’ve had - see if you can just be with them rather than push them away or try to change them. I invite you to be curious instead: What’s this feeling trying to tell you? What does it want you to understand about yourself, or about your child?
If there’s one thing I hope you take from today, it’s that the skills for taking accountability grow in the soil of safety and security, not shame. The likelihood is that your child isn’t avoiding responsibility because they want to be difficult or disrespectful - they’re doing their best with the nervous system, the emotional skills, and the developmental stage they have right now.
If you’ve found this episode helpful, I’d love it if you shared it with a friend who’s also feeling challenged by a kid who shuts down, melts down, or doubles down instead of owning a misstep. Remember, you’re not the only parent navigating these moments - modern parenting often isolates caregivers in ways humans were never meant to live. Other listeners tuning in right now are just like you, moving through old conditioning and imagining new possibilities for raising children with intention, respect, and connection.
How are you finding your way through those moments when your child resists taking responsibility? Let me know! You can contact me via Instagram @bkparents, or via my email at parenthood@quickanddirtytips.com. If you’re feeling alone in your parenting journey, head to my website at brooklynparenttherapy.com, where you can join my newsletter to learn about upcoming community parent events. I’m Dr. Nanika Coor. Thanks for listening. I’ll catch you next week.
Project Parenthood is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Thanks to the team: audio-engineer Dan Feierabend; Holly Hutchings, director of podcasts; advertising operations specialist Morgan Christianson; marketing manager, Rebekah Sebastian and thanks also to your contractor, Nat Hoopes.