Almighty Dad | A stay at home dad blog

It’s a good policy even if you don’t have kids; always keep your promises.  There’s a big problem though.  Promises can’t always be kept.  Sometimes you try your best and you still come up short.  Kids notice when you flake out and let them down.  They also notice when you’ve tried your best and you never give up trying.  Unfortunately for humankind, and for some kids, there just aren’t enough people in the world who care about anybody except themselves.  Their definition of an honest effort is lifting a finger only if they have nothing at all on the docket already for themselves.  That attitude isn’t lost on me, and it’s not lost on kids either.  I know who’s sincere and who’s not, and I avoid the nots because they’re toxic.  How many times have you told your kid, “in a second… .”?  What you really mean is, “I’m sorry I can’t come right now, let me finish this.  I’ll be right there.  It’ll take me, hmmm – 10 minutes.”  You might think In a second is just a figure of speech.  To a kid you’re one of two things when you say that, an insincere prick or a liar.  I found this out the hard way.   

“You Lie, Daddy”   

The last time I told my kid in a sec he called me on it.  He said “You lie, Daddy.”  And what did I do?  I stopped what I was doing, thought about it and told him “you’re right. I’m sorry.”  I was sorry, too.  I was brushing him off because I was in the middle of thinking about something else and didn’t give him the answer he deserved, the truth.   

How Many People have Let you Down?   

It could be something simple like a friend telling you they’ll bring soda to so-and-so’s birthday party if you bring the cake.   On the day of the party they run late and decide to arrive on time rather than stop for the soda.  They probably think they made a smart command decision by choosing the lesser of two evils.  But what they really did was selfishly put the promise they made to you at the end of their list and dropped it when it became inconvenient, thereby causing them have to choose between the last two items on their list.  They may not realize that by acting selfishly they’ve put a nail in the coffin of your mutual friendship.  It won’t take long before you dismiss them from any future plans of any kind because you know that, at the end of the day, you’re the last thing on their list of priorities.  If that sort of scenario has happened with our friends, and we get hurt because of it, then the impact on a kid, your kid, from similarly selfish reasoning on your part is many times worse.  They admire us because we’re their parents and we love them.  To maintain that admiration requires more than just showing up every day.  It takes a concerted effort to follow through and put them first when you promise to get something done.   

Is the Solution to Make no Promises?  

Nein!  People rely on each other; that’s how human-beings get along in the world.  Individuals are never solely responsible for their own success.  We depend on spoken and unspoken contracts with each other to make our way to success.  By not making promises you are in effect refusing to commit yourself to a cause outside of yourself.  People notice non commitment, and they’ll learn that you aren’t interested in mutual success.  You’ll find yourself alone with the only sure bet being that success is out of reach.  If we want to participate in our kids’ lives we have to be willing to make promises and do what’s necessary to keep those promises.  They need to know there’s someone who’ll be reliable when they hit tough times, which they will.  A parent who doesn’t make promises has kids who lack the confidence to take risks.  People who can’t take risks, because they only have themselves to rely on as backup, tend to live mediocre lives.  

Following through on a promise is more meaningful than a nice random gesture.  Promises require commitment and completing them demonstrates your commitment to a relationship.  Think about impulsively buying a toy for your kid while on a business trip.  He didn’t expect the gift, and he’s happy about it; that makes you feel good.    But, what if he had asked you for a specific toy and you promised you’d bring it back for him?  When you arrive with his toy you instantly become a hero in his eyes.  You walked through frozen tundra and fought crocodiles for that toy.  Even if you just picked it up in the airport you still went through the effort of putting his request, and your promise, first.  It means much more than a random gift you picked up because it was convenient for you and you had nothing else on your mind.  In the case of a fulfilled promise you might as well have hiked through the tundra because that’s what it means to a kid.

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