When my daughter realized that she had really hurt another child with a mean word, she cried and immediately wanted to apologize. That was a good thing, but I wanted her to know an apology can't always make things better. So I told her the story of Will, a 9-year-old boy whose father left his mom two years earlier. Will was angry, and he often hurt others with hurtful words. He once told his mom, "I see why Dad left you!" Unable to deal with Will, the mother sent him to spend the summer with his grandparents. His grandmother's strategy to help Will learn self-control was to make him go into the garage and pound a two-inch-long nail   into a four-by-four board every time he said a mean thing. For a small boy, this was a hard task, but he couldn't return until the nail was all the way in. After about ten trips to the garage, Will began to be more cautious about his words. In the end, he even apologized for all the bad things he'd said. One day his grandmother made him bring in the board filled with nails and told him to pull them all out. This was even harder than pounding them in, but after a huge struggle, he did it. His grandmother hugged him and said, "I appreciate your apology and, of course, I forgive you because I love you, but I want you to know that an apology is like pulling out one of those nails. Look at the board. The holes are still there. The board will never be the same. I know your dad put a hole in you, but please don't put holes in other people; you're better than that." The truth is that no matter how much we apologize to people, we can't take back what we said. The best thing for us to do is to try not to hurt people in the first place. Why did Will's mother send him to his grandparents'?
Because Will could hurt nobody there. Because she was afraid that other children would hurt Will. Because Will's grandparents told her they had a good way with children. Because she didn't know how to stop Will from hurting others.