Hi! We're not fully doing TSG anymore – this question will make that obvious. But I'm curious on your thoughts.
Say a child does something wrong and gets a correction, but won't accept their consequence and are asked to take a break in their room until they're ready to accept the correction and the consequence. Our kids are 6 and 8. When they are ready and we ask them what they did wrong, the answer is often a quick "I don't know" or "I don't remember." We call that "lazy thinking." We want them to fully understand what they did enough to be able to explain it, plus confession is an ideal in our home.
Sometimes in an effort to encourage full-hearted thinking, my wife will ask the kids to recount the situation and their wrong in it without prompts. So, there's no leading questions from us. i.e. "You and your brother were working on project together, right? It sounded like you had a disagreement." etc.
At times my daughter has went very long periods of time insisting, sometimes with tears, that she cannot remember and that we are, in no uncertain terms, brutes for not believing her. Now, sometimes it's almost believable because it was maybe a very intense situation and she was in mid or back brain, and even I have trouble remembering things after a situation like that. My wife tends to hold her ground firmly on the "tell me without me helping you" rule. I have often questioned the value of it, thinking that with all of our kids' challenges, this just not a hill I'm trying to die on – but I'm wrong about lots of things, so wondering if this is one of them! Our kids do have trouble in general with confessing wrong and getting corrections. It has always been that way.
Obviously with a 'proper correction" you just explain to them yourself what they did, why it was wrong, and you do the role play and redos, etc. What do you think about the idea of asking the child to tell you themselves, without help when they're showing a hesitance to think much about the situation. Like they want to be spoon fed and don't really see and understand the problem with what they did, or at least are too hesitant to look the situation in the face and see what they see.
Thanks for your thoughts!