I’ll just be a minute… We will do it later… I will buy it the next day

I’ll just be a minute… We will do it later… I will buy it the next day…

I have very strong feelings about making promises to children.   I believe that it is important that we keep our promises.  Perhaps, having a child who has the memory of an elephant and who always reminds me ‘later’ of the casual promises that I made early in the day, I have become very aware and sensitive to casual promises.

I am sure that most parents can picture the scene.  You are in the supermarket and your child wants sweets/chocolate etc., and you say something like “you can have some after dinner”.  You may forget, but will your child?

Equally you are busy and your child asks you if they can paint and you say “we will do it later” but you really mean, I am too busy and I hope that you will get distracted and forget all about this.

Or perhaps in order to get a few minutes peace you promise them a trip to the cinema, or the beach at the weekend if they are quiet for now.

So what is the child actually learning?

They are actually learning that there is no connection between what you say and what you do.

There are learning that the words that you use bear no relation to what they will actually experience later.

Over time this may reduce their trust in you.  As they get older their reliance on language increases, but their association in their head is that your language of promises does not match up with action.

So what can you do –

As the parents we can choose to be more mindful of how we are using language around our children.  When we make a promise of a treat or an activity we can make sure that we keep that promise.

In doing so we are teaching our children a very clear connection between language and action and those association build over time and can equally be translated to the whole are of discipline.

Now you may argue that these are not real promises but rather they are intended as distractions, to deflect the child away one set of actions towards something that fits with our immediate needs.  And yes distraction can be a very useful tool with small children.  However in making promises, no matter how casual we are associating specific elements of our language with  expected outcomes.  the greater the match between these two things the easier it will be to build trust.

However as young children are learning to make the connections between their experience of the world and the words that they hear then those connections are learned more effectively when the words and the experiences match.

Mary Corbett is a founder member of  Parenting Club,  author, life and business coach and mother of 2 busy children aged 12 and 17.