30 Years of The Princess Bride, and More

that's right but the thing is what you think it means this month marks the thirtieth anniversary of the classic film the princess bride i'm j mcintyre and today on k pr present we talk to carrie elway's best known for his role in that film as the dread pirate roberts later this hour a novel that's a bit of a love story to kansas libraries specifically the carnegie libraries that sprung up across the country in the early nineteen hundreds including why nick in a fictitious town of new hope kansas it's a conversation with rommel in tillman author of through the stars with difficulties and finally apology is why they're so important and why we usually get them wrong harriet lerner of lawrence is a renowned therapist relationship advisor and best selling author her latest book is why won't you apologize healing big betrayals and everyday

hurts it's just come out in paperback we'll hear from harriet lerner later this hour on kbr prisons but first the princess bride is returning to the big screen this weekend with shows today sunday october fifteenth and wednesday october eighteenth it's a movie that most of us probably saw on the small screen it was a modest box office success when it came out in nineteen eighty seven but as a romance slash adventure slash comedy it had a little trouble finding its audience it's had little trouble finding an audience since and moviegoers will have a chance to see it on the big screen as it marks thirty years since its release of the many quotable lines from a princess bride one that is at the heart of the relationship between wesley played by kerry ellis and his true love butter cup played by robin wright is it's

busy today katz you ways inconceivable tales from the making of the princess bride is a look behind the scenes of the film written by cary l was this interview originally aired on k pr prisons in two thousand fifteen take us back to nineteen eighty six your working on it in the valdez in berlin and you get this call from your agent rob reiner want to come see along with his producing partner would you think well first of all i couldn't believe it because i had read the princess bride as a kid when i was thirteen and i loved the book and i loved wimbledon the author i just love his work and you know he loomed large in the family because both my father and my stepfather were both fans of his work so

he was kind of almost mythical to me growing up my father was a fan of which cast in the sundance kid so he made his watch that over and over again my stepfather was a literary agent at the william morris agency and actually the ncaa and the lew wasserman and when he left the company use of the first film he produced was william goldman script called moving target and so when i got to school i read a busy new goldman was but i also knew who rihanna was because my stepfather had brought us out to the states my family my brother's myself to the stage when we were kids and so we grew up on american television so i was well versed in a lot of norman lear shows including or the family and i'd seen this is spinal tap several times by that point so i was i don't know what was more exciting than that the head or market authority was coming to my suite and

i'm so anyways they came they came during a time when chernobyl had just happened so rob's producing corn and shaiman very fondly relates in the book how nervous he was about flying and berlin he says isis a river like iran from the cabin to the hotel like that was gonna make a difference arm and arm of offering him or her in the hotel room he wouldn't drink anything but it was very sweet and really fun and i thought wow this is going great mom that they would just it's delightful and sweet and wonderful as i'd hoped it would be and then rob pulled out a script and asked me to read for which you know my heart sank because as an it very rarely you know it's it's it's a the percentage of roles you get from readings as opposed to those or you get from lawfully is quite quite stark difference sunday in my career and so i thought well that's it are never see these guys get onto the best and i'm sure honestly i'm i read the scene

from modify swamp where west explains to the recovery became the drip i roberts and that rubs don't have with really goes ok that's enough and i thought wow that's it you know and he said and he was very nice he said you know we've got other actors to see and we're like you know and was nice things that directors say out the door and down i think i called my agent back before the role of a very rich reach the lobby and i said i want that so badly you've got a homey and she said just the time you know and it was about four five days later i got the call from her my my my agent harry robinson and she said are you sitting down and i said what she said yes i went no she said yes and it i let the joy i couldn't believe it and so i told him i said you can go in four twice in a trauma contradicted it quickly before the james a mine in southern states you mentioned that william goldman's script had been bounced around hollywood for years and it was sort of widely

dismissed as an impossible movie to make what could be so impossible even goldman admitted very early on two to those that he knew who were close to him and in the business that it was an oddball script mobile story was nobile script you know because this is this is the story that that that troubled many genres you know and this is a problem we had actually when the movie came out you know was a comedy it was a fairy tale was an action film with an adult movie was a kid's movie so the title made a lot of people think it was a kid's movie so a lot of studios were what hasn't because it's difficult for the first two years they've been the first things you think so when they sign on to a project is how how how the market is doing i'm going to make a sale and hollywood of course that which he cannot categorize and you know the year leaving sometimes blend a couple of

genres you know romantic comedies in but that i have all these genres and one is that i think was the first and probably just fifths of a half so i guess that's what made it unique so but you know there were a lot of things that happened so many directors attached to a wonderful directors robert redford was attached to acknowledge listen francois truffaut they had to be postponed i think all right rob and none of them could raise the money non them to get the street isn't interested or some strange things happen like a steelhead who was backing the film was was retired at our studios once did a folded i think in the middle of negotiations so i mean bill gorman and had tried to get used to disappointment but he was he bought the rights back from his trio which i don't think it's i

think i've ever heard that many somali writer donovan i said i know and he said i'm to do this because now only i can screw it up and so he was he was or tissue to let the project go because he had so many failures with it but we were lucky that eleven years later i'm rob him was just the right managed to become so we're very lucky well i think it's fair to say that it was just the right past the how it weighs wonderful cast a religious films that are immaculately cast rob he's saying you know i have ice i was a writer what i like to call a tsunami of talent and the annual these activists i knew them all i grew up with billy crystal and so i knew him from certain live with chris guest i knew chris honestly from spinal tap i knew chris around him from dog day afternoon i knew carol kane from taxi and the list goes on so i was i was overwhelmed by applying this incredible

cast that was roundly but the only me feel very very welcome one of the greatest challenges in filming this was how do you bring the greatest sword fight in modern times to life taught me about the challenges of doing that and the extra handicap that you went into that ok suddenly i don't really have any training and investing up to that point i think i've done a little bit but acting school but not enough to have any real proficiency faded but rob hi to the best trainers on in the uk at the time one of them was bob anderson was an olympic fans of great britain in the fifties and the other was a gentleman by the name appeared diamond who's an amazing so offensive and choreographer and stunt men and they were responsible for all i'd say the sequences in the star wars trilogy and so we had the very best of the best and these guys said to us at the very beginning to many and i you know within and we've asked the producers to

move the fight to the very end of the movie because we know we're not sure whether you guys and be deficient even right handed to get left by the time the fight comes up and so we have to train you every single day and even between setups which means unity between scenes when this moving sets of them so they would tear off camera even once we start shooting we were right there sort of hand the minute brumfiel caught and moving on me moving on to the next scene the huge crack us the matter where we were we be off the set training so we work very very hard at his arm about a week into their shoes i i had an accident and it was my own fault andre god bless him under the giant place that they can feel i am couldn't get around the surgeries we were filming in a very mountainous area called the district which was is as heavy as it sounds and so

production provided him with an all terrain vehicle to use to get around the set and he loved the city had one at home in north carolina as well and he would sit ins thing you've never seen him you know a seven foot five five pound giant loser first loved it would seem up to me on this thing and it would go you know you might go of those agreements graham it is full of you know you want to try to come on and it's amorphous i watch and zoom off at high speed of the mountains over everything and this went on for days you drive it was you wanted to know but during you know you won't cool and then zoom off and ends and this this i had some point it was on the fourth or fifth day came out to me once again was come on one time you want to oh i finally relented i went okay andrea shorter and this was right

before it was due to shoot the scene with brogan on the top of the mountain where we fall down i say it's three words and i'm like on this thing and his bodyguard is a funny lady needed bodyguards bodyguard conducting an oscar easy boss is a clutch touch panel is npr on off switch and it breaks and bells rung always was less lighting and that old frannie kelley went on this thing and i must have been quite amusing to arrest the gas what i go on the standing get more than two feet and i went over rock and i called my left big toe between the cup clutch pedal on a rock and it snapped instantly i felt a great mill no not not now it's why aren't you know i'm an assault i was good three weeks away home or more but not much

more than your social now this is terrible just terrible icon icon of broken it now there's no way and i wanted to keep it from rob i thought i could twist i thought ok well i'll just work through this you know under the mend itself and you know i'll be fine and of course you know rob found out instantly because everyone has a walkie talkie on the sat you know and i'll never forget i took a ride up to this as limping but trying to hide the lender's best i could from the accident area and walk up to rub and his question is britney goes hey gary how you do an awesome find robin really goes i'm fine how you doing and i knew instantly of course sitting there and i just felt awful and rob i'm so sorry i didn't want to tell you i thought that he would find me you know and i am such a clock i was playing on day because i know what you would do when somebody on the wall people curious said it in his cd gary ghana will do good at night i said i'm so

sorry i feel like such a twig and he says don't worry about it will walk around and if we happened was such a mensch about and he was so sweet and i mean you know he am we really bonded over that actually because he he was like you know carried a matter of these things happen and walk around we do so he was great so luckily you know it was a good month a wave over the sword fight scene and i was fairly well back to normal by that i'm still a bit tender on that foot but lesson learned to lessons learned one always tell the truth it's easier and to don't get an all terrain vehicle if you don't know what you're doing this is not a toy you know andre was very profession and then right around this thing i had no business on it whatsoever to japanese fans when you're wrapped understand how special this was how special it would be well it was

very special to me obviously because i again i guess you can see in the book that you know i was twenty three when i started the film the magnificent i'm surrounded by my peer group and people admired a great deal so was very meaningful magical for me and i thought it was a pretty i thought it was very sweet and wonderful i mean you know it's a sad story about true love has great deal of comedy in it and i mean you were working with these two legends that bill goldman and rob reiner who ended up having an incredible career together after that so i thought we were in good shape i mean you just never know you know and of course just you know ended up i think it was only reporter that sort an early screening and actually printed a very favorable review but said yesterday's been a hard time selling this thing they were right and they were stomped on walking on and no idea of this week anyone ever her tv spot be complete that if we had the internet it would be a different story that

so the film came and went which was a great disappointment to all of this mean we were looking for her to success that that we thought it deserved that it disappeared into for a while and then eight it's taken on this life of its own it's been called one of the greatest love story is about time in american film and says he's one of the greatest screenplays what do you attribute to that enduring quality about this i think i think the inherent sweetness of the film that was made with a lot of heart it started out with a lot of heart i think we're in good shape on that front goldman came up with no idea but it was i think he was traveling to california with his kids and he asked his two daughters he said i'm a writer but if you both we wanted to be about and one daughter said princesses and yellen said bryan's so they were often did stop there because and that's the reason why this project is goldman's favorite

because it was puzzled hannah allam and then drop just had the right sensibility the rights of the human the right talent as attraction the right sensibility right pocket his heart was in the right place and i think that's what i try to share in the book is just how sweet took the whole experience was for workers it was very very much very special it's a family movie acting as the other thing i should mention this is a family felt when there aren't that many family films that i'm eve whole families grandparents parents kids who've watched it together and they all enjoy it on their own level and it's non offensive film it's a fun sweet family film and those are rare today and it's also really funny found it's funny isn't it pretty funny and he's got a fun is yeah i like the things the film came out in nineteen eighty seven here it is almost thirty years later

made you want to write a book about this experience in capturing well you know we all get asked by fans by the fans was as much fun to make the slums of port and you know i wish it would you just just that a couple of anecdotes of how much fun stuff that whole lot more in there of how much fun it really was and so i wanted to share that with fans at the end i couldn't pinpoint one day or one scene or into the whole experience was foreign so i wanted to share that with a friend i'll never forget i was in a restaurant in new york and i was ordering a hamburger or something and the waitress can't mean she said it once i cooked and i sat down medium rare and she goes as you wish i looked and i said what you say and she goes you know and she winked and walked off and i thought oh this is wonderful if i can believe that this film is having a resurgent and so it was a lovely blessing it was like having a president be we wrapped an open opening it all over

again it was lovely thank you so much for having with me and i appreciate it terry always is the author of as you ways inconceivable tales from the making of the princess bride it's a look behind the scenes of this much beloved movie making its return to the big screen this week as it marks thirty years since its release check your local theaters from movie times today and wednesday october eighteenth this interview originally aired in two thousand fifteen i'm j mcintyre you're listening to uk pr prisons on kansas public radio support for kbr comes from blue cross and blue shield of kansas a non profit mutual insurance company made up of kansans serving kansans celebrating seventy five years of commitment compassion and service to community grows and blue shield of kansas if you missed last week's kbr presents my conversation with george saunders author of the bestselling linkedin the bardo and poets terrance hayes from his university of kansas

appearance that show is archived at our website k pr that k u dot edu there you can also find an extended version of my interview with george saunders look under news and then k pr presents warrior at our website to take some time to look around you'll find video from kbr is live performance studio the latest news and play list from this weekend's trail mix as well as our classical programming you can also pledge your support for programs like a pr presents locally produced programs are only possible because of listeners like you support them consider becoming a sustaining member where you contribute automatically on a monthly basis it's easy it's convenient and its grain that's a kbr directly you die or edu support and from all of us at kansas public radio thanks for the rest of today's k pierre presents a conversation with two more authors' later this hour we'll talk about the art of the

apology how to get it right and why we usually get it wrong but first a tribute to kansas libraries and the women who made them happen rommel installments debut novel is to the stars through difficulties rama one stop by the kbr studios recently while on a book tour in the area run thank you so much for coming in the cave yesterday us today is my joy to the stars through difficulties tells the story of three women in salina tracy ass and gail talk to me about the three women and those characters as you see them what they've come to kansas where they're in kansas for three different reasons i angelina has come to work on her phd dissertation which is on the carnegie libraries for fifty nine pretty high priest from kansas and the early nineteen tens and she's been fascinated by them she's been struggling with his dissertation for over ten years and you just have to get it done

tracy ashes and a very challenge to personality she's an artist she was found in a trash bin nine times square am as a newborn just hours old and was adopted out and has never really felt at home where i had any kind of loving atmosphere and then gail her house in fact our entire community has been wiped out by a tornado so they end up together at the new hope art center armed with a bunch of quarters and that's where they start interacting so the but as you say it opens with an ad five tornado that destroys the town of new hope kansas to extend was this story of modeled after greensburg kansas a lot but i have to tell you i was probably for years into it before the greensburg tornado happened and so it and galas was the newest character who has added about a secret now and get all of your listeners know i am but certainly that all of the information about the tornado came from greensburg

so talk to me about how how does that tornado act as a catalyst to bring this story together one other thing that was really important for me was to be able to show it as a contemporary story that even though it was these communities in nineteen tens that had fascinated me i wanted people to really interest dan that even today we all need to get together and build community and so that was the sermon part of it if you will and so i really wanted that component to end up and the most dramatic way to do that is with the crisis of course this week is worsening here with hurricanes all around us and we see the validity of that the town of new hope there's a quote in your book that some would say it's in the middle of nowhere but we prefer the center of everything i'm just curious without an allusion to laura moriarty spoke not consciously amabile it's really love her book and i read it on that i've seen a few other

references along the way and i think it's just such a wonderful comparison so tell me what that means to be in the middle of nowhere versus the center of everything i think it's my book is a lot about self esteem and how we think of ourselves and how we think of are places in the world and i think that sometimes kansans arm and i'm one of them can come across as being defensive about where we live and our decisions to be here and and other times we realized that we you know and i am not letting kansas now i'm in southern california but that we haven't rounded nurse that comes from having been raised in kansas that really does make us the center of everywhere the town's library which is a carnegie library is really at the center of this story telling how those carnegie libraries came about in kansas and what was the role of women in making that happen but that's the essence of the book

and lamb they happened one by one arm interested women are interested people the community but they were mostly women would come together and approach on andrew carnegie for a grant to build a library in their communities but there wasn't any statewide effort particularly although that there was a kansas library association that would help them find how to do that but it was one by one these communities would determine that that's what they wanted they would write him a letter and thats the community itself had to pledge to provide the land and provide ten years' worth of operating expenses which those ten years would add up to the total of the grant that was given to the community and then he would only give two to three dollars per person so a few communities kind of stretch their population numbers to make sure they got the maximum amount of money from him but there are fifty nine of them don't you stay which i think is just you know incredible why was it generally women that were behind that effort i think for several reasons many of the women had

moved here from the east they had come out with armed to marry to have families and they missed some of the amenities that they were used to in terms of libraries and then i think there is something innate in women that they just wanna make their homes is good for their children's i can possibly do and that often includes a leopard and that often include library and then in my era because i worked here with the arts councils on it was women making art councils you and dissenters in my neck my next question many towns converted their carnegie libraries to arts centers or community buildings in the nineteen seventies and happened here in lawrence it happened in my own hometown of cedar rapids iowa why was that there were several reasons there was a big national push for a community arts and media arts movement that happened in the seventies and some of it revolved around the bicentennial and that pride there's a main street project at another number that they came into a lot of communities are so there was a real sense of

renewal arm in terms of taking towns especially small towns and improving them so that happened at the kansas arts commission here actually hired me to do i am our reach into some of those communities so we talked a lot like brace themselves were challenged by the new ad age regulations on but it's interesting to me the elbow the cramping and all of that that they had to do was very very challenging at the time very few of the buildings across the country were actually raised most of them found a way to accommodate and they found a way to find other uses for them even if it wasn't as a library you just mentioned your own work and throughout kansas in that era how does this story to the stars through difficulties how does that parallel your own journey of very much so and i think your notes for this book around for well over thirty years and they've moved i counted how many garages they've lived in since then and how many

states have to watch and then it never knew would be fiction that by working with the women at that time and as a very very young woman man and i was facing my own issues in terms of who i was and where my place was in the world at the same time i was doing i was meeting with women clear across the state who were also and grappling with those kinds of questions and i saw in nam and then eventually i saw myself away their own self esteem really grew and they took a lot of power in terms of building the communities by being involved much of the story takes place in a fictitious town of new hope there's another town prairie help kansas which also features prominently touch me about the divide between new hope and prairie hell ayesha rivalries that existed in the state based sometimes on where the county seat had ended up hundred years ago and continuing

through especially during consolidation of schools when people lost their football teams and so it was it was a riot built rivalries i knew existed and they provide a lot of dramatic action now i have to tailor got taken to task in western kansas and told that kansans are nicer than that an ah ha ha and that especially during twenty which i know is true at the end of my book after the tornado they all open up their arms that i do knows rivalries exist still the title of your book to the stars through difficulties of course of very familiar mano to those of us who are from kansas what do you hope to convey in that title to non kansans that read your book it's a big question or not kansas i find had no idea what it means and i wonder a lot about how i got their own but i think that it i do think it's universal in terms of our

need to push on no matter what's the before us and i really do believe in the human spirit and its ability to make improvements by using the state kansas state motto as the title for your book are you in some way i'm really grounding this as a cancer story white it's very definitely a cancer story but i have a reaction to that and that has some people said oh this is going to be big in kansas and i would put my hands on my hips and get a little bit defiant and say that you know i know a lot about africa and i know that from reading novels so now people care about what happens in kansas arm and actually the receptions been very good and throughout the country it's not on it's not just kansans who've enjoyed i think so that's been very very satisfying you grew up in kansas he attended yale but you know i live in california why come back to kansas for your first novel oh it's still in every cell of my body kansas is you know is very

definitely there and like i said the story is just stayed with me i really that was a very important part of my life and i think that it's a very fascinating era i think the way kansans make things happen is unique and i really wanted to tell that story to read a passage from your book and could you set this up for us look at something at the very beginning it's in the voice of angelina and that another three voices on angelina is coming back and largely because she fell in love with his carnegie library as a child and a and that's been the inspiration for a dissertation so i'm reading from her very first entrance into kansas i've been fascinated by carnegie library since my first and only visit to kansas that trip to visit my father's mother over three decades ago what i remember most is reading little house on the prairie with my father we sat close look at the drawings by memory small sunshine because when we were in kansas my father was changed his shirt before you read to us and the church had always

spent the day flying on a clothesline outside what i remember most about the book or conestoga wagons conestoga wagons filled with families leaving everything behind to start a new back then more than anything i wanted to be or to wear pigtails play with corn cob dolls drink from a tin cup and when spelling bees the halloween after a visit i convince my teacher to help reconstruct a pioneer girls costume a bonnet made from around quaker neil hartman and a cal coast's kurt held in place with a hula hoop i could hardly walk and that's a hula hoop and i wanted to run run away from home when i dreamed of running away from home i dreamed of running to kansas it was grandmother told me andrew carnegie built fifty nine libraries in kansas in the early nineteen hundreds before he was done he'd spent eight hundred and seventy five thousand dollars in communities that donated the land i'm committed to raising ten percent of the capital costs for ongoing operations of a public library as i look at the wide open space it's hard to imagine how literary movement would've

taken hold here at the turn of the twentieth century grandmother described carnegie as a benevolent johnny appleseed kind of guy and i was only later that i discovered his speckled treatment of mineworkers including the murder of seven men in his attempt to break up the union a few kansas communities refused to take his tainted money even for the promise of a library should we or should we not forgive and forget was retained because he gave the country sixteen hundred and eighty nine libraries have served thirty four million people by nineteen nineteen i became fascinated by this man who was both a philanthropist and robber baron obsessed as if he'd been a bad boy a boyfriend on the one hand he believed the wealthy should live without extravagance give away their excess money to promote the welfare and happiness of the common man on the other hand he was shrewd to the point of ruthlessness my grandmother talked about the man as if she'd known him personally she was as proud about libraries if she'd built as herself when she thanked her journal and said the stories in here that you and let me read it not now she said it's a secret

that's romel until man reading from her debut novel to the stars through difficulties kansas public radio has an autographed copy of to the stars through difficulties to give away if you'd like a chance to win your website heap er doc hey you guys ed you look under extra and then available giveaways that's a k pr that k u die edu while you're there you can look through the k pr presents archives there you can find most previous k pr presents including my recent interview with him veteran john musgrave of baldwin kansas you can also find a complete program guide to keep e r n k pr to listen online again i think a pr decade you dot edu i'm kate mcintyre you're

listening to k pr presents on kansas public radio morning edition is everywhere shapiro reporting from bunkers streets alleys jungles and deserts but most importantly start your day with a trip around the world and wake up with morning edition from npr news and listen everyday weekdays from five nine am on kansas public radio stations we need crime oh i'm sorry

they may be that too hardest words in the english language and two of the most powerful for the rest of this hour the apology dr harriet lerner of lawrence is one of america's most respected expert on relationships and the best selling author of the dance of anger her latest book is why won't you apologize healing big betrayals and everyday hurts welcome dr lerner i'm delighted to be here you have forty five years as a practicing therapist under your belt why did you think that this book needed to be written the apology is so important because we're all connected we'll screw up where imperfect human beings we always will unwittingly hurt people just as we are hurt by them to serve the need to bark given receive apologies is with us to know our very last breath and if done correctly an apology is

deeply healing and if the apology is absent or it's a bad apology and actually can protect a crack in the very foundation of the relationship or you can and the relationship speaking about apologies one of the things you talk about in your book is that it's not enough to just say i'm sorry we have to get it right why is it so hard to get that right because it's so easy to get it wrong you may be we should talk about though the key ways that we mock up the apology because it's where where of that it can help put us on track so the number one offender is the word but i'm sorry i yelled to you but you were looking me right or i'm sorry that i forgot the meeting but i was

totally snowed under with work it doesn't matter if what you say after the bike is true it makes the apology thoughts so get your but how does your have a holly no pun intended and then another way we ruined apologies which is a little more subtle as we apologize for the other person's reactions rather than for our own behavior on like if i said i i'm really sorry that you were upset that i corrected your stories at the party that's not an apology i'm sorry you feel that way it wasn't my intention to hurt you that's not an apology i'm sorry if i hurt your feeling it right empty apology would be i'm sorry that i corrected your stories at the party you had told me that you didn't like that i was wrong and i won't

do it again and then of course you know here's a very obvious thing but if we apologize with the grand flourish and then we repeat the very thing that we apologize for of course it's totally empty its income and no surprise to any male female couple that there are real gender differences on how or when whether we say i'm sorry i catch myself saying i'm sorry all the time many of my emails start out i'm sorry for the delay getting back to you sorry i missed your call i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry what if that all about well i was you know my generation of women were certainly raced to feel guilty if we were anything less than an emotional service station to others and guilty for using up valuable oxygen

in the room and it is true that one risk factor for being an under apologize sir is to be raised male and the greatest risk for being an over apologize sir is to be raised female so many women will identify with what you're saying like oh i'm so sorry it is you're about to speak it mean to interrupt you and o you're gonna sit here i'm so sorry and and the problem with the endless streams of i'm sorry says that on whatever the cause it's get to tell it tan so if you've forgotten to return your friends tupperware don't apologize numerous times as if you've run over her kicking over apologizing creates distance it interrupts the flow of normal conversation it

will irritate your friends who have to stop and reassure you like no no don't worry about it rather than talk about what they want to talk about and i will say you know that this sort of over this her bid to offset of self effacing girls thing on this is not it's not at the heart of what we're talking about because when it comes to a real apology for a serious injury and what that demands of us on the demand to really accept responsibility without a hint of inflation or excuse making are blaming the capacity to listen without defensiveness this challenge crosses gender and culture and age and all of the air filters through which we see reality so it's

really a basic human talent my kids are grown now but when they were young and i remember breaking up disputes between them and usually ending with a tell your sister your sorry what's a better way to teach kids how to apologize well there's nothing wrong for asking for an apology comic its narrative so so if we think an apology is due this absolutely nothing wrong with saying to our child's you know i'd like you to apologize the problem is that parents do not know how to say thank you for the apology i really appreciate it and stop they are so what parents did that make children absolutely allergic to apologize saying is they say thank you for the apology but i really wish that i didn't have to ask you for three times or thank you for the apology but i don't feel

he's really sincere and you're looking at your feet and you go to your room and you think about how you hurt your brother's feelings and you come back and you have a really genuine apology and i've done the research on this and it makes kids one is stick their fingers in their ears and just get away and it's really interesting how difficult it is for parents to say thank you for the apology i really appreciate it keep in mind this is true for kids or adults the apology isn't the end of the conversation and other words the parent we're talking about can open up the conversation again if there's more they want their child to think about the apology isn't the end of the conversation the apology is what lower is the intensity and creates an emotional climate that further

conversation can occur later and to have you know i always anyone he gets music therapist peggy it's me as say i'm an editor and i always tell people to say it short or because we tend to over tuck things and done i mean i was certainly guilty of that i remember a conversation took my younger son ben i'd that cleaning up the public space and high you were just be lecturing him i would go on a nine and his brain waves would be flat in his eyes which rolling back in his head and even though i didn't have his attention i would keep going so it sounds like a very simple and tries to save your children thank you for the apology

nothing more it's actually very difficult it's very difficult not just in your relationships with your children except in apology in a way it's almost like accepting a compliment it can be very hard to just open yourself up to that moment and just accept what the person has to give you hear an example of that is my friend was having a dinner party and one of her friends who she invited and had just come back from a trip around europe and talked endlessly and cc easily about his travels without leaving space for other people and without asking questions to other people and to me and my friend by the way after the dinner party was ever told me how obnoxious she felt this was but when he called her when he had the integrity and maturity and courage to call her the next day and

apologize for being a conversation hike as he put it she said oh no no you know we were all very interested in your stories don't worry about it it was fine and out of her own discomfort in the moma and she canceled the apology that indeed he knew was too and that's why he called to apologize so it can be hard in your book by what you apologize you are away a really powerful story of a woman who accepts an apology from you on an incident involving some an anonymous which i found i finally got to the heart of that can you really that's where it was i was at the airport and this is back when my kids were little and there was a problem with the car rental and a lot of the senate up in the airport floor and i gave a bag of candy happened bag of candy for my two little boys and i saw this little girl next to me looking

longingly at it and i simply handled through the open bag and offered it to her and she took a handful and i became slightly uncomfortable because it occurred to me that i hadn't asked her mother and at first i wasn't going to apologize because the mother seemed to have no reaction then time passed it seems silly to apologize but i decided to apologize and i said i'm sorry that i offered your daughter candy without asking you first and i was sure she was going to say don't worry about it it's no big deal it's nothing and instead she looked me in the eye and really helped the connection and said in a very present way thank you for the apology i really appreciate it and what she didn't do was

equally as important she didn't lecture me she didn't say don't you know that your boys and thirty have considered on the floor and then in the candy she didn't say you know my child could been diabetic i mean all of these things are true and it was the simplicity and her grace of simply saying thank you for the apology i appreciate it that really made me realize that i did have something to apologize for and also became my my role model but i try to teach parents of how to accept an apology in that way that i wonder is there a the statute of limitations on apologies for that at some point it something that happened in your past is past are you worse off bringing up an incident that

may be painful between you and the person for home you should apologize or that owes you an apology well there is some intuition and some discretion involved because some people really don't want to hear from us again when the relationship matters it doesn't matter whether the offense as twenty or thirty or forty years ago and i have many examples in the book of parents going back in time and really apologizing to an adult daughter for some kind of neglect or insensitivity and parents are afraid to do that they're afraid of being in case said and they say well you know if my daughter isn't bringing her that i shouldn't bring it up a few people suffer twice they suffered because they've been through something very difficult and they suffer because the parent or other family member hasn't really wanted to hear about it

or hasn't won if you listened to all of it and hasn't been able to say you know i i really screwed up there and i left you alone with what happened and i wish i could go back in time and do that differently and i can't but i want you to know that i have never forgotten it and it carries some of the pain and the parent might also whoever does might also have the courage to ask questions you know what was that like for you twenty years ago when you're dead and i divorced and i basically was not there for you you know tell me what you remember of that time so there's no statute of limitation when something is important and that matters dr lerner in your book why why you apologize you gave two pieces of advice that really stuck with me the first say it's shorter you've heard about wright's a sackett

was your apology is not about you write a real apology is not a real apology is to sue the hurt party it's touche it's to help the hurt party feels safe and soothed in the relationship again and to let them know that we care about their feelings and that which were capable of taking responsibility for what we've said or done or not said or done it's not about getting something back like forgiveness although we might hope for that end it's not about lowering their own guilt crush an oboe that happens and it's not something that we're only going to do if the other person and set to their part because of weave apologize for our forty percent

then they should really apologize for their sixty percent that's not what an apology is about it's about the eu take unequivocal clear responsibility for your own behavior because you that that is the highest ground that you can stand on even if the other person is defensive about their part fb dr harriet lerner is the author of why won't you apologize healing big betrayals an everyday hertz which has just been released in paperback if you'd like a chance to win a copy of harriet learners book go to our website to a

pr that kay you die or edu click on extra and then available giveaways while you're there you can also register for a chance to win rommel and summons debut novel to the stars through difficulties we have copies of both books to give away this week again that's a k pr that k u dot edu click extra mm available giveaways and j mcintyre k pr present is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas in those nice now nice nice

tired thanks nina

any crime sue says