Why We Need Families for Forgiveness Education

Dr. Robert Enright - March 2026

A 35-year-old woman recently suffered grave injustices when her husband 

suddenly and without warning abandoned the family. He took the family’s money, and now she was left with raising two children on her own. She had to get a job to support them. She proclaimed, “I want to forgive him, but I don’t know how to forgive.” 

Do you see the added tragedy here? She has a new task, a hard one: to forgive her husband so that her resentment does not consume her and does not transfer to the children, hurting them emotionally. She certainly did not want to pass her resentment to them, and this was one central motivation to start a forgiveness journey.

I asked myself this question: What if this broken-hearted person, now so emotionally wounded, had forgiveness education as a 6-year-old, a 10-year-old, and an 18-year-old? What if she learned about forgiveness and how to practice it long ago so that she has mastered it, as she has other vital issues of adulthood, such as how to read and write, how to balance a checkbook, and other necessities of adulthood that are so characteristically taught to children and adolescents? She now would be able, when she is ready, to start the forgiveness process with wisdom, confidence, and proficiency, so that it is not an extra huge challenge for her. 

We need to take the learning of forgiveness very seriously in our troubled world, so that adults are already schooled in the practice of this heroic and vital moral virtue. This is why we started Families for Forgiveness Education: to assist adults in families in passing on forgiveness to their children, and to equip them with the readiness to tackle the serious injustices they might face in adulthood.

The central points of Families for Forgiveness Education are these:

1. We are interested in the development of appreciation and practice of the virtue of forgiveness within the family as a whole, as well as within each person.

2. Forgiveness needs to be established as a positive norm within the family for its members to have an appreciation for and practice of it. This means that the parents must cherish the virtue, have constructive conversations about it, and regularly show it to the family by asking for and granting forgiveness.

3. Forgiveness needs to be taught in the home using age-appropriate and engaging materials for both parents and children, for every member of the family to develop an appreciation for and practice of forgiveness. This is why we have forgiveness curriculum guides for ages 4 to 18, all free of charge for you. This is why I have written self-help books on forgiveness for adults.

4. If children are to grow up to be strong enough to pass on the moral virtue of forgiveness to their own families as adults, parents must continue to teach, practice, and appreciate forgiveness.

5. In the end, Families for Forgiveness Education may prove to be a gift of love that is passed first to the children and then down the generations for years to come. Perhaps this forgiveness might extend to one’s local communities, reducing interpersonal friction and fostering more peaceful encounters.

What about you? Is it your turn to give this gift of love to your family?