Family Promises

A few months ago my daughter was puddling, complaining and wallowing in the tears of difficulty, and I as a parent was struggling. She was having difficulty with simply getting started, trying, and it seemed like at every corner she was faced with a tough moment for her to reject. My son was following her lead and although I had hoped he would be a simpler number 2 he was adding to my tumultuous feeling of: this is hard. I wanted my children to try, to have the growth mindset which I try desperately to model and adamantly preach however it wasn’t happening. I knew I couldn’t force them, I had to invite them.

In this moment of the dip I turned to my husband and said “This can’t go on, we have to do something.” It was in this moment that we turned to the Acton mechanism of promises. Promises which begin every school year’s journey and are the foundational covenant for our learners. I decided to wait for when my children weren’t “puddling” and then verbally asked them about our family’s effort and values. Who do we as Chmura-Moore’s want to be? Together we came up with one core value of our family: it’s important to try even when it’s hard. With this promise I started to fall back on this commitment when my children refused food (they are so picky) and when they hit walls during the session and during Quest. I reminded them of our agreed upon value and magically, to my surprise, they bought in and started to hustle and all extreme reactions dissipated. With this simple reminder life seemed easier and their puddle turned quickly into momentum.

Creating Family Promises are core to the journey of an Acton family’s experience and quite honestly I, even as your Director, was falling short. Two week’s ago I rallied and my family committed to a formal document of our family plan. If you are wanting to commit faster than me I highly recommend you either start now with conversation or explore the Family Plan badge in Journey Tracker. Here’s the play by play.

My family has had many conversations since the big dip yet we had no formal piece of paper to refer. My husband and I would often look to each other and think “when will they call our bluff?” So, to play offense we sat down with simple snacks and decided to brainstorm family promises. Each person got to share ideas of what was important to them and others riffed. We had a long list, voted to combine, voted to eliminate, and then settled on a small set. What also came was an added list of our family’s core values. Things that didn’t seem necessary to be promised but important to declare were a core part of our family’s identity. Once all was decided I found a fancy frame, we printed a copy, signed it with our greatest penmanship, and we placed our promises in our family room. Last week we decided to add an extra copy to the kitchen as somehow the kitchen stirred many pots and promises were needed to reference without climbing the stairs.

Here’s my nuggets to share. Tackle this earlier than me and answer the call to action and start your family’s plan of promises right now. It doesn’t have to be final or elaborate, it simply needs to start. Just like at school, these documents are living along with us, and are ready for change, edits, and amendments. My advice is to begin with mini conversations of what’s important, what’s the life we want to live, if people were to describe our family what would they say kind of questions. From this, act as secretary and start. If you want to over achieve consider your family’s motto and even get creative and create a family crest (I’m not here but these are my current goals).

I invite you to join me and revel in the magic that is the power of family promises. You can do hard things, hard things are worth it!