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Making Promises
to Your Kids
By Mark Brandenburg MA, CPCC
I was bringing my kids home from a
long day of play one summer night not long ago. It was a difficult ride
home, and they were tired, hungry, and whiny. I wanted to get them home
as fast as I could.
As we neared our house, my son
exclaimed, "You said you'd take us for ice cream!" I cringed when I
heard this, because I remembered that I'd promised that I'd take them
for ice cream. I began to give excuses concerning why we needed to go
home.
They would have none of it.
I turned the car around, and we
went to get ice cream.
We got home past their bed time,
and they were tired. But there was something that felt good about this
ice cream trip. I kept my word to my kids. And my word is something that
I always want them to be able to count on.
Your kids will have an incredible
memory for the promises you make to them. In fact, you can assume that
any promise you've ever made to your kids has been remembered.
It's important to know why this is
so. When kids are younger, they have very powerful emotions that
dominate their lives. Can you remember how excited you were as a young
child when you went to a ball game for the first time or went on a trip?
Kids live in their emotions, and
when they hear something promised to them, they get very excited. They
can picture the promise happening and keep it with them in a way that's
much more powerful than we're able to. For this reason, they won't
forget what you promise them. Ever! So don't even think about making a
promise that you might not be able to keep.
It doesn't take too much for kids
to begin to lose trust in you. A few broken promises can have a big
impact on a child. Very simply, one of your jobs as a parent is to keep
your promises. Treat them as sacred, and do what's necessary to keep
them.
Some day your kids may grow up and
have their own kids.
Wouldn't it be nice to see that
they've learned the importance of keeping their promises with them?
Mark Brandenburg MA, CPCC, coaches
men to be better fathers and husbands. He is the author of "25 Secrets
of Emotionally Intelligent Fathers"
http://www.markbrandenburg.com/father.htm Sign up for his FREE
bi-weekly newsletter, "Dads, Don't Fix Your Kids," at
http://www.markbrandenburg.com. |
