We Can’t Get over the Simple Beauty of This 3-Year-Old’s Explanation of Forgiveness
You can expect a lot of things from a toddler: picky eating, temper tantrums, fights over bedtime, you name it. But a heartfelt explanation of forgiveness was the last thing Mom Babble blogger Mary Katherine Backstrom saw coming from her young daughter Holland.
“Tonight, I was taught a lesson in forgiveness by a three-year-old,” Backstrom said in a now-viral Facebook post (below). “It was a gut punch, too.
The mother-of-two described how it all went down after a “knock-down, drag-out bedtime hour,” led her to put Holland to bed angry.
“I love you, Holland, but not another word tonight,” she recalled telling her daughter through clenched teeth. “You are going to sleep now. I’m done fussing over stuffed animals.'”
But the youngster had more to say. “‘Mommy, I FORGIVE YOU!!!”
“Then she laid down and cried and honest to goodness, for a hot minute, I didn’t know what to do,” Backstrom wrote. “The way she said, ‘I forgive you,’ made it sound like cuss words.”
So, she asked Holland if she knew what “forgiveness” meant. Her response floored her.
“‘It means you were wrong, and I’m tired of being mad, and now I’m going to sleep, and my heart won’t have a tummy ache.’”
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Backstrom concluded the post by noting that her humbling motherhood moment could also serve as an important lesson for everyone.
“I was reminded by my toddler to never go to bed in anger. Because when you do, your heart will have a tummy ache,” she wrote. “And you know what? I’ve been alive for 35 years, and I’ve got to give it to her: She’s not wrong.”
