I Promise I Won't Be Scared: When Your Toddler Promises the Impossible
Lights off, after a hard drop-off. Your toddler's hand finds your cheek in the dark: "I promise I won't cry tomorrow. I'm not scared anymore." You say "okay," because what else do you say. You both know the door, the teacher, the hand that will not let go of your sleeve. The promise is sincere. The morning is also coming.
At two and three, a promise is often a wish said in a brave voice. Your toddler is telling you how they feel tonight, and "I won't be scared" means "I don't want to be." Nobody that age can decide the night before not to be scared, and most grown-ups cannot either. What a child this age can promise is small and made of actions: a hand on the heart, one step. After more than 20 years around people who make new things for a living, I can say that most of them do not promise to be unafraid. They promise to try while they are.
What Kit does
In Kit's Promise, Mia, the little girl in Kit's story, has her kite stuck on the roof and the wind is pushing. "Kit's tummy goes tight." He says it: "Sparks. I'm scared." The child listening puts a hand on their heart. Sparks is the tiny fairy made of gears and light who lives in Kit's old lightbulb, and her glow goes "soft and low." "Let's be scared AND try." Kit builds a pole and misses twice. The pole is long enough; Kit is not tall enough. There is a little stool by the door. "Kit has never climbed it with the wind blowing." "I feel scared," he says, and Sparks lands on the stool: "I'm right here." One hand flat on the wall, one foot on the stool, knees going "wobble, wobble, wobble," and he climbs one step. "I'm scared," says Kit, "and I'm up."
This coloring page comes from Kit's Promise. The full story (and the rest of the activities) is in the book.
What you can try
- Try trading the promise for Kit's version, together: "Scared, AND we try." Then find the one step, not the whole stool. Tomorrow's step might be walking to the door holding your hand.
- When the morning comes and the sleeve gets grabbed anyway, leave "you promised" out of it. Say what is true at the door: "You are scared, and you walked in. That was the step." Then go, the way you planned to. The promise was never the not-crying.
- Keep a hand-on-heart move for the hard mornings. It does not make the fear smaller. It gives your toddler something to do with it while the teacher takes their other hand.
Where the coloring page fits
The free pack has four coloring pages from the book and two games. What If It Flies? begins with Mia's kite and a box for where it flies. Kit's Promise is the seven lines of the golden paper with a circle for each move; "I will FEEL" is the one with a hand on the heart. On the night after a brave-voice promise, coloring the stool page together is a way to talk about tomorrow's one step without anyone promising the whole morning.
At the door, the hand goes on the heart. The other hand is still on your sleeve.
More for this book
- The book: Kit's Promise (Book 20)
- All 20 STEM picture books for toddlers and preschoolers
- Free coloring pages for all 20 books
- Blog: More parent moments
Sources
- Kit's Promise: I Will Never Stop Wondering, Book 20 of Kit's Little Sparks.
- Free coloring and activity pack for Book 20 (8 pages, PDF, no sign-up).
Chris Kuczynski is an engineer turned registered patent attorney, a preschool co-founder, and a dad. He is the author of Kit's Little Sparks, a 20-book STEM series that gives children ages 2 to 4 the social and emotional foundations of the inventor's mindset. It is the first of four age-tiered series for readers ages 2 to 12.
Written by Chris Kuczynski
