This month Lucy will make her promise as a Guide. It’s not the first time we’ve made a promise in Girlguiding. She made her Rainbow and Brownie promises with them programmed onto a single hit on her communication aid. I’ll do the same this time.

It has an image (thanks to Lisa’s Guirlguiding Illustrations Facebook Page) of a Brownie in a group making a promise. Symbols for Brownie and Help (from Girlguiding and Tobii-Dynavox) and a pencil sketch of two Brownies looking at a hand held communcaiton aid (Thanks to Drawn to AAC). The Text reads I promise that I will do my best, to be true to myself and develop my beliefs, to serve the King and my community, to help other people and to keep the Brownie Guide law.
I’ve been thinking a bit more though about what it means for her to make a promise that I have programmed for her to say and how to make sure the promise becomes something meaningful for her.
In the younger sections Rainbows where she joined aged 5 and Brownies aged 7 it didn’t feel like a complicated decision. Everyone else would recite the promise and so should she. In Rainbows it became a lovely way for her to be included in the group. They make the promise in unison at the beginning of each meeting and when Lucy was there she was the one who started this off each week, when she started the other girls joined in.
In Brownies she only made her promise once at the promise ceremony and once in unison with other girls at a county Thinking Day service.
In Guides she will make the promise at the promise ceremony and at other times in the future.
As she’s grown we better understand her communication and language skills. I also see that her peers in the older sections have a better understanding of the meaning of the promise.
This gives me pause… is Lucy really making this promise? I’m confident she doesn’t understand many of the words in the promise. (I think she knows some, ‘I, Guide and Help’ probably.) Some of the ideas are pretty abstract, belief, service etc.
The Guide Promise
I promise that I will do my best, to be true to myself and develop my beliefs, to serve the King and my community, to help other people and to keep the Guide law.
The Guide Law
A Guide is honest, reliable and can be trusted.
A Guide is helpful and uses her time and abilities wisely.
A Guide faces challenge and learns from her experiences.
A Guide is a good friend and a sister to all Guides.
A Guide is polite and considerate.
A Guide respects all living things and takes care of the world around her.
So as she moves through the sections and into Guides I’ve been thinking about what the promise means for someone who doesn’t understand all of the language that makes it?
For much of my adult life I have made this promise (or a very similar one as a member of the Scouts) over and over. It’s part of my identity and the ideas it holds about reflection, service and doing my best continue to be guideposts (pun intended) for me in life. As such it’s unsurprising that these are also things I think are important for Lucy’s life too.
I’m beginning to see Lucy’s promise as something shared. Lucy, like all of us, lives in a world to be shared with others, we’re all interdependent. The fact that she needs support with so many of the simple tasks of daily living many of us achieve without thinking doesn’t mean that she is not able to be part of her community, think about her beliefs, face a challenge, help, lead and contribute. She is already pretty confident in letting us know what she thinks of things (thinking about her beliefs), has had opportunities to be of help as well as being helped and joined community projects. All of these things can happen outside of language.

On her arm it says ‘Guides’ on a blue Guide uniform top.
So she will make her promise, surrounded by her Guiding peers (who she adores) and I will make my promise, as will her leaders. Her promise will be something she shares with Guides and Scouts all over the world. Those of us who get to spend time with her can make sure she has the opportunity to enact her promise in the way she is in that world, in a way that doesn’t need her to understand all of the words. In fact it’s beholden on all of us making this promise to make it into actions and not just words. In that way I think Lucy is already leading the way for me and making me think deeply about what making a promise really means.
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