Should We Take Our Kids’ Pinky Promises Seriously?
We sometimes don’t take our kids’ promises seriously but there’s a big story behind those pinky promises.
“Pinky Promises” may seem juvenile and silly to adults (since it’s not written as a legal document) but kids take these seriously. Since they don’t know what legal documents are, they take our word for it. But as adults, we know just how easy it is to forget or break promises due to circumstances beyond our control. One or two promises may be fine but to constantly break them is a different story — it can make them feel unheard and most of all, they won’t trust us either.
We all go through the psychosocial stage — Trust vs Mistrust
Although every psychologist has their two cents worth about how trust is built, psychologist Erik Erikson proposed that trust is built in the earliest stages of our kids’ lives. Coining it as the Trust vs Mistrust stage, he adds this stage teaches the virtue of hope first through the act of feeding. Since babies are 100% dependent on their parents, the quality and speed of the parents’ responses to meet their needs build a foundation for how trusting the baby will be.
Remember how the old way often insisted on letting babies “cry it out and self-soothe?” While it does build a level of resilience, it’s not something to try with babies. Because they lack the words, crying is the only way to go. Leaving their needs unanswered the majority of the time teaches them that they cannot trust their parents.
But this stage doesn’t end when they grow into toddlers. All the more when they reach their Terrible Twos and Terror Threes they start testing that trust. Remember how they throw tantrums or demand Pinky Promises? That’s their way of saying, “I trust you, mama/papa!”
In some cultures, these pinky promises are held in high regard. Japan is one such country and it’s where the whole “cross my heart, hope to die, and stick a needle in my eye” came from. Except the one in Japan is a little more gruesome and goes, ” 指切りげんまん嘘つたら針千本飲ます(yubikiri genman usotsuitara hari senbon nomasu).”
If translated (crudely) into English, it goes, “Cut off a finger, receive 10,000 punches, and swallow a thousand needles.” And to think kids in Japan sing this cheerfully too whenever they make a “pinky promise!“
Greek mythology has something similar too. Every deity “swears by the River Styx” whenever they want to vow to keep their promise.
But when we constantly break pinky promises, it shows when they grow older
While everybody’s neighborhood psychologist reference Sigmund Freud would say that kids don’t remember their memories below six years old, the result of constantly not meeting or inconsistently addressing our kids’ needs shows. We see it in kids who are not affectionate to their parents and could care less if they’re there or not. Teens show this by refusing to build their own circle of friends (Sneed et. al, 2006).
When these kids grow into adults, they develop into hyper-independent individuals — these are people who insist on doing everything on their own, refusing any help, and responding badly to any form of assistance needed. However, in the workplace, they are often praised for their intense discipline and ability to do whatever needs to be done. Not realizing that they can’t even tell if their body is breaking down or not. Because for them, they do things because if they don’t, who will?
But we can’t teach kids to be overtrusting either!
Encouraging our kids to overtrust is just as bad as breeding mistrust in kids. We often call that co-dependence; this is when, as parents, we can’t bear to see our kids struggle so we always swoop in to save them. But our inability to stop ourselves from rescuing our kids from every little thing can also stem from things we suffered in childhood because we fear the consequences (Willock, 2018).
In our heads, we’re just trying to make sure we don’t get hurt. But in the long run, it teaches them that they can make us do everything. They also learn that they can’t do anything for themselves either.
One example is many of the pandemic kids are showing a lack of reading and writing skills. It may be easy to blame screentime but it’s not easy to face the reality that we’ve been serving as their crutch all along. We may see it as an act of love to protect them from academic struggles by doing their homework for them or hiring a “shadow teacher.” But doing so means we’re depriving them of learning how to be resilient. Life won’t always be so kind to them.
It also breeds anxiety in us because now we avoid answering the question: what are they going to do when we’re gone?
A healthy balance of trust and mistrust
No parent is perfect so there will be times when promises will be broken. However, the only time they should be broken is if we know that fulfilling the promise will hurt them. Like, promising to take them out to their favorite restaurant on their birthday is one we should never break. But promising to do their homework with them, that’s something they need to learn on their own.
So before we swear to uphold our pinky promises to our kids, check first if it’s worth fulfilling or not. Some may be bad for their development to keep.
References
Sneed, J. R., Whitbourne, S. K., & Culang, M. E. (2006). Trust, identity, and ego integrity: Modeling Erikson’s core stages over 34 years. Journal of Adult Development, 13, 148-157.
Willock, B. (2018). Erik Erikson’s place in relational psychoanalysis: Discussion of “Some Thoughts on Trust and Betrayal”. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 28(5), 569-580.
More about kids and development?
“Tigas ng Ulo Mo!”: How To Parent Stubborn Kids Without Breaking Them
Developing Independence in Kids: “It’s Scary But, We Know It’s a Good Thing.”
Dear Parents, Are We Raising Our Kids In A Toxic Achievement Culture?
