Apr

How I keep my promises to my children

When I worked in the corporate world the companies I was employed by were big on promises. My last employer had a favorite cliché they would use and I’m sure you have heard it before, “under promise and over deliver”. I always disliked that phrase being my interpretation was “I’m lying to you right now and we both know it because, I know we can do better than what we are saying we can do.” Confused? I always was. I never really bought into that whole corporate culture and never took it home to practice their methods.

Could you imagine applying that silly phrase to raising children?

“Now look kids, Santa is coming in a few weeks and I can’t promise that he is going to bring a lot of presents this year, in fact, he might not bring you anything so don’t get your hopes up. Now go out there and make it a great day.”

While in my closet I have ten toys a piece for them already wrapped. Can you imagine the shock and confusion on their face Christmas morning? How do you think the morale would be like around the house until Christmas? I know with my ladies, I would have some explaining to do.

Then there is the other cliché, “over promise and over deliver”. Everyone stayed away from that one at work too; it was like the “kiss of death” – to apply yet another cliché. I never bought into that one as well. I always tried the truth, keep it real, and that has worked pretty well for me so far.

The truth has always required a lot of dialogue between my ladies and I. For instance, the other day Isabella asked me what the lights on the street meant. Have you ever had to explain to a five year old civil engineering? I explained to her what green, yellow and red lights meant and how everyone takes turns stopping and going for each other – it’s all very polite J

She told me that yellow must mean to go faster because that’s what daddy does. Kids are so observant.

I told her that yellow means to slow down considering soon the light will be red and red means to stop. She was confused since, sometimes and not all the time Mom, I speed up when there is a yellow light. I told her yellow means to slow down and I promised her that I would try to be better at adhering to the yellow lights. She smiled and went to looking back out the window. It would seem to be a simple promise but, for me, a difficult one to keep. After all I have been running yellow lights for years. How can I change a bad habit like that? I found it to be an easy one to break; after all, I made a promise.

I always tried a simple two step approach when making a promise. The third bullet is the result of the two.

· I try to always tell the truth

· I always admit that I am human

· Therefore, I base my promises on the truth and realism

I always try to tell the truth to them and it requires quite a bit of explaining, for the reason that, you are explaining how the world works and I’m still trying to figure that out as well. I also acknowledge that daddy is human and he makes many, many mistakes. For these two reasons my promises are always based on the truth and they are not unrealistic. Going forward if I speed up at a yellow light, for some unlikely reason, in the far distant future on the account of there are lanes and lanes of traffic, arghh, and I have no other choice but to get through this one light, arghh, or my entire day will be ruined – arghh! I can calmly look in my rearview mirror, apologize to my children, admit I made a mistake, remind them I’m human and my ladies will look at me and say, “silly daddy” and they’ll know I didn’t break my promise – I was just being human.

“Make a promise and then deliver”