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So our DS9, school spelling bee champion, got caught cheating on a spelling test. He was afraid he might miss one. He saw it on TV (Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide, goodbye to you) and apparently thought it was a good idea.

Aside from the pink slip from school, we're starting with an apology letter to his teacher and his principal, and that's where we're stuck.

He doesn't understand why he needs to write an apology letter. He seems to grasp that it was a bad thing he did, but when I explain that he needs to apologize because he let them (and us) down, disappointed them, he says that their disappointment is their own fault because their expectations are never going to come true. Every time he tries hard at something, he fails (not true anywhere but inside his head). My disappointment is my fault because I made him be born the way he is.

I'm banging my head on the wall here. I cannot have discussions like this with this child. I have to simply walk away, and then he says I don't care.

I think I have one of those 9 year old psychopaths.

I should add, we're also grounding him in various other ways, after the letter.

I understand where he is coming from, with being afraid he'd miss something -- I am a total perfectionist freak myself. And I know that the worst cheating is the smartest kids who are afraid of missing something, not the kids who are just hoping to pass. But I just can't get it through his head that we're not upset if he misses something. He does not get in trouble over grades, except for the Unsatisfactory that he got for not turning in homework. I have told him that if he goes all the way through school without ever missing anything on tests, all that means is that he's not learning at his level, but he just doesn't get it. And my head hurts.

I have to keep explaining to my two girls it is ok to make a mistake. Have you tried showing your son that you make mistakes? That is what it took my girls 6 and 5 to get it. If I mess up I tell them I am sorry. If they see me make a mistake on a paper or I do something wrong that I can fix then I show them it is ok by just fixing it. It took a long time to get it through thier heads. After about 3 years, my 5 year old was a super perfectionist, we are finally seeing results. When they dont get a hundred they still ask though, Mommy its ok right cuz I tried my best. Good luck.

I'm sorry to hear that happened. It sounds like you guys are handling it as well as you can.

Your conversation with him sounds like mine with DS7. He often says "I don't care" and acts nonchalant. We've had MANY discussions with him and his psychologist about his lack of empathy.

I like trinaninaphoenix's idea about showing that we make mistakes, too. Not sure if that would work at this age, but good info.

This is what I have found works with my 12-year-old captain literal - I define things in black and white - right and wrong. What you did was wrong because you deceived people into thinking you could do something when it wasn't really your effort. Cheating is wrong because it keeps us from actually learning the skills we need and it causes other people to not trust us when they find out we are willing to deceive them to get what you want. He is likely to understand this because it is about his own actions and the consequences to himself because of those actions. When we want our very literal children to "care" in the sense that we define caring, I think we just confuse them and get ourselves hurt because we think maybe they really don't care. They do - they just process things a lot differently.

This past week, my son finished his part of a group presentation and then started a game of "air basketball" with the other kids in his group who had finished. When I spoke to my son about it, he was more amused than upset. It was after he'd finished his "job" and wasn't that big of a deal. I then asked him if some part of his brain told him it was wrong, he said that, yes, that was true. So I asked him what was more important than listening to that part of his brain. He was honest - having fun. So then I explained that once his teachers and his parents understood that he would choose fun over not doing what was right, we couldn't trust him. He wouldn't be allowed to drive when he was 15, because what if fun was racing another car instead of following the rules of the road, etc. It was only at that point that it seemed to click. He said he had no idea why it was such a big deal but now he could.

With my daughter, I was able to talk about disappointing others, etc. and she understood that. For my son, it's like speaking a foreign language. Your child's response could have been from my son. Hang in there - it's more about adapting your parenting style than anything being "wrong" with the kiddo. At least it's helped for me.

DD8 has had a couple of cheating episodes, all confessed to me, none caught by the teacher. She always picks someone who doesn't know the answers, which is how I catch her after the fact. For her, it happens when she feels most insecure. Cheating-related discussion doesn't seem to have an impact, but "you know what would happen if you got a zero? Absolutely nothing" appears to help.

I have a bad attitude towards school, which I can get away with because I have a rule-following kid, but she is *such* a rule-following kid that she could use a little bad attitude now and then. Plus, it helps her see that doing well in school is something she chooses, not something she's stuck with, and there's a huge mental difference between those things.

In our house, the school doles out punishment for school-related things, and that's the end of it. (Plus, "you aren't responsible for anyone's emotions but your own," is a useful life skill I'd like my kid to learn, but I have a girl, and girls are different.) We talk about how cheating doesn't further her enlightened self-interest (usually because it results in a lower grade, but it also erodes her confidence in herself to compare her answers to someone else's, and gets in the way of her learning), maybe.

Nine-year-olds are not fully-developed moral beings - they don't have the brain architecture or the life experience to be. That doesn't mean that they won't get there eventually.

My dad told me if your kid only understands 1/10th of what you're telling them then you only have to tell them ten times, or a hundred times, or whatever.  Don't take it to heart that your 9 year old questions his responsibility even though you've already told him.  If you want to get all fancy the apology letter can include his side of the story, why he did it, then add what's at least one thing he's changed his mind about since making that decision last time.  (dishonest? don't learn as much? lost credibility?  Or the other direction: I need to take it easier on myself to try hard and make honest mistakes.  I've learned that's part of the learning process.)
I've been reading this comedy website called cracked.  I just read a piece called

"6 types of apologies that aren't apologies at all"
"I deeply regret " means I'm sad it happened without taking responsibility.  (end it with "if I've let you down).
"mistakes were made" (was there even a culprit?)
"I think you misunderstood what I was saying and for that I apologize"
(a passive aggressive way to shame anyone you offended)

And I just got this off of FB:  "saying I'm sorry doesn't always mean you're wrong.  Sometimes it just means you care about the other persons feelings and your relationship is more important than your ego."

Just some recent thoughts I've read regarding apologies.  Don't read too much into it that your kid doesn't see this situation the same as you do.  You have a lot more years of context clues giving you a lot more meaning on how his choices have affected him and other people including you.  

There's a lot of rambling mish-mash in this post so now I feel the need to apologize for the bad formatting and not putting forth the effort to edit it pretty for form or content.

It seems to me that there's more than one idea that needs to be addressed. Maybe the problem is that you're seeing it all as one thing. I know I do that when I get stuck in a quandary.

I see:

* Cheating (one test; small problem);

* Perfectionism (larger problem that seems to be driving the cheating);

* Blaming yourself for things beyond your control (parent's disease; a common condition felt by responsible parents);

* Thinking something is worse than it is because you're wound up and can't see the forest for the trees (cheating on a spelling test when he felt scared makes your son human, not a pscyhopath ).

Try to see each piece of the puzzle for what it is: its own piece. They fit together, but not always perfectly, and picture can be fuzzy, especially when you're up close to it. So don't worry so much about trying to fix everything in one bit. Start where you think you can have the best impact and move from there. Try to address each problem on its own as best you can. Remember that you aren't perfect either.

Personally, on the cheating issue, I can see that it might be derived from lack of challenge. It's important to get used to getting small things wrong so that you develop a thick skin and aren't afraid to try something even though you might fail. Challenge is also important for developing healthy study habits and healthy expectations. Perhaps this idea could be brought up with the teacher.

I hope this makes sense. I'm kind of sick and it's a bit late.

I agree. Also, if the school already gave him a punishment, as they should have, I don't know if I'd have made him write apology letters, although I'm not suggesting you're doing something wrong either. In my opinion forcing him to write the letters may do little from his point of view except to further humiliate him. I also don't think he should have to apologize for the disappointment of others; it seems like double punishment to me. What he did was break the rules, which I guess constitute a social contract with others not to cheat, but if he is already punished for cheating then breaking the contract is covered. I'd focus on conversations with him about why rules against cheating exist, how winning by cheating isn't really winning and doesn't make us feel good in the end, how disappointed others must feel, etc.

The expectation is that he does his own work.

period.

You can't let him argue this with you. It's the line in the sand. It has nothing to do with perfectionism, or failure. Don't let him muddy the waters.

The apology is because he broke the trust that exists between students, and also between students and the teacher.

You break something, you apologize.

I don't agree re trust, nor do I. Believe in false apologies. Will reply at length later.

ETA: I think there's not really much trust to break, although a rule was broken. In law school I was aware that cheating went on, and didn't trust people in general not to cheat. People act according to their lights. That's why even at schools that have honor codes, there are anti-cheating measures. Anti-cheating rules exist based on inherent agreements about fairness, but that doesn't mean that a child needs to apologize as if he's personally broken a trust with specific people-- and I don't really think that it's true to say that that's occurred here, either.

I don't think that much is gained by having a child recite an apology which doesn't come from the heart. The real reasons that people apologize when caught range from trying to increase the chance of clemency, to embarrassment, but rarely in a case like this (where, remember, the child doesn't seem to really understand or admit yet that he's actually done much wrong) to a full realization of the moral wrong and an empathetic feeling of the impact to others-- which really doesn't exist here at all, since cheating comes up fairly regularly in schooling children. (I also don't think shame is the best reason to apologize, although it can certainly be one motivation.) I'd wager that the school people involved are probably more worried about the impact to his personal growth than feeling wronged based on a breach of trust.

When a child is caught cheating and the parent forces her to apologize, the reasons for the parent doing this can include wanting to train a child in the right behavior (but this has the problems of the child giving an empty performance and perhaps learning that appearances are what matter, as well as not learning a deep appreciation for why the misconduct was really wrong), and the parent's own embarrassment. I don't think either of these is a good reason to force a child to "apologize".

Even if I had an AS child and believed as DeeDee does, that emotion follows action even or especially in AS people, I would work first on trying to help the child understand why cheating was wrong and not a good strategy in the long run, instead of forcing the child into some pat agreement that it was wrong.

Here, it's obvious that the child was trying to protect his own self-concept and/or that of others about him; there's no valid dispute over whether perfectionism is involved. In this case, what's happened is that the child acted out of weakness, likely already knows it was wrong on some level and may feel bad because of the moral aspects of it, and has been punished in a way that can be hardest to bear for someone with perfectionism: he's been proven to be imperfect not only in task performance but morally.

The OP's kid probably feels like everyone is viewing him as a total fraud and as possibly less intelligent than he's been made out to be. Shaming him further is really unnecessary and is just going to add to his heavy burden. The only way he should be forced to apologize is as extra punishment, but I don't think that's a good reason in this case.