This Week · Keeping a Promise

Keeping a Promise — what happens when a promise is hard to keep?

For littler ones: What do you do when you said you would, but it's really hard?

Anybody can keep a promise when it costs them nothing. But this week we're wondering about the other kind — the promise that means giving something up, or walking back into something you'd rather run from. When the door stays shut longer than you thought, when the harder road is the only one left, what do you do with a word you've already given? Three stories this week, and a promise hard to keep in each one. See what your kids make of them.

This week's stories

American

Eric Liddell Runs the Four Hundred

Eric Liddell was the fastest man in Britain, favored for Olympic gold in the hundred meters — until the schedule put his race on a Sunday. He had promised himself he would not run on Sundays, a promise rooted in his faith, and he would not break it, not even for a gold medal. So he did something stranger than quitting: he picked up a longer, harder race he had barely run, trained for months, and won it. A true story about a promise kept to oneself, and the harder road that came of it.

American

The Boy Who Rang the Liberty Bell

A small boy promised his grandfather he would not leave his spot by the great closed door, not for anything, until the men inside decided whether America would be free. And he waited — through the hot noon and the long, long afternoon, while up in the steeple the old bellman lost heart. A cherished American legend about a boy who promised to stay put — and how long that turned out to be.

Classics

Beauty and the Beast

Beauty gives the Beast her word: two months at her father's house, and then she will come back to him. But home is warm, and the days slip past, and the promise grows easier to forget than to keep — until a dream shows her what her waiting has cost. The beloved fairy tale, kept honest, about a word given freely and a return made just in time.

Talk about it

Each of these three kept a promise that turned out harder than they thought. Which one would have been hardest for you?
Eric Liddell gave up the race everyone expected him to win, rather than break his word. What's something you'd find hard to give up to keep a promise?
Beauty almost forgot her promise because home was so nice. Has it ever been hard to do something you said you'd do, just because something else was more fun?

A new question every week.

Listen together in the app — short audio stories for kids 4–10, at bedtime, on the drive, in the drop-off line.

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