Welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Ken John Payne. So glad you could join us again. This week, I've been thinking about older and younger siblings and all the many things that come up in a day between the two, and in particular when an older sibling tries to parent or mother, it's often called, mother a younger one, and the younger one kind of can get furious, you know, because they they just don't want to have their older sibling be the boss.
This comes up in in families very, very often, you know, and if it hasn't come up for you yet, and you're a parent of little kids, wait for it, because it probably will. Although you might have a, you know, a firstborn that that doesn't do that so much, or even a second born if there's if there's three or more children. What I'm grateful for when an older sibling or a firstborn, it's often the firstborns, you know, move in and try and correct a younger one is that they've often spotted something that isn't going well, something that maybe shouldn't be done, a family rule or value that's being transgressed, that something's going on that shouldn't be going on, you know, and they tend to spot it, right? And move in and try and correct.
This can often set off a whole cascade of arguments and difficulties, because the younger ones generally, well, you know, they'll put up with it for a while, some longer, some not so long. But sooner or later, there, there can be an explosion of you're not my mother, you don't get to be the boss of me or just a whack or a slap or a scratch or a scream or a shout. And then the older one fires back, and you've just got a whole situation on your hands.
And if we're not careful, we'll move in and say to the older one, well, you you are the oldest, you know, I would have expected more from you. And then the older child feels very harshly done by because they were just trying to help. And you just got this tangle on your hands.
So what's an alternative? You know, there are many ways up the mountain. But here, one alternative is to actually evoke this principle, some of you may remember, I've talked about on these podcasts of meet and move. And what I mean by meet and move, is that you meet a child with where their intention is, and you move them towards what they were trying to do.
So it's, so it's really, you know, considering the intention, rather than the action, because the action of children often falls very short of their intention, right? Well, you know, for us to as adults, right? But the this meet and move principle, in this situation would look something like saying to a child, Oh, thank you for for trying to help love. That was good. That was that was good.
I can see that something isn't quite going well. But you know what, I can take it from here. It's, it's, it's fine.
Now, you know, your mom or dad, you know, we can, we can, we can pick this up and take it from here. And we'll help your little brother or sister. And when we'll help and we'll figure this out.
And actually, sometimes, it's, it's good to say to children, and we'll let you know what we figure out. That's all right. You can, you can, oh, you could stay here with us if you want to, that's fine.
Or you can go and play now. I mean, either way, because sometimes kids will want to just stay around that they don't have to be, they don't have to be sent away. And they can just see how you're sorting it out.
That's, that's a sort of a judgment call, you know, when you're on the spot like that. But it's a lot better than then, then sort of, in a sense, cutting a child off and saying to them, you know what, this is not your job. This is my job.
Please don't do that. Because although, although it's true, it can be very jarring for a child because their intention was to try and keep the rules was to be first, particularly firstborns classic rule keepers, usually as it applies to other people a little more than it applies to them sometimes. But that is really what what you're trying to communicate to a child is that you were doing your best, you were really trying hard to, to help.
And good net now I'm here. Now I've I've arrived. It's very settling to a child or stands a much greater chance of being settling to a child when they're approached in that way.
And you know what, as the years roll on, and as situations come up, if you've raised a child with a thank you for what they were trying to do, as opposed to the way it was coming out, we have a much greater chance with our tweenages and teenagers of them not feeling judged, but feeling that their their mom or their dad is trying to understand what they were trying to do. You see, we're back to intention, trying to understand what their intention was not, not how it was coming out, because they're children, right? It'll often come out wrong. It really will.
But you're planting the seeds pretty young, when you try and move inside what they were trying to do, so that when they're teenagers, they feel much more open to approaching you about what it is that went wrong. If they've been raised on this steady diet of actually, it's okay that things go wrong. Let's see what we can do to have happen what you were intending.
You know, I'm your helper here, I'm going to try and help you realize what your intention was, because that went really wrong. Teenagers who almost unconsciously, you know, pick that up in the younger years are much more likely to be open with us, as the years roll on. But it begins young, right? It begins really young.
And this example, and it's a prime example, really, of one child trying to set the other child right, and it looks like they're trying to over control and be bossy and so on. It's a really good example of how we can meet and move to where a situation needs to be, rather than getting caught up in where it is. Okay, so again, as always, I hope that's that's helpful.
It's a little thing, really, but it's one of those little big things. And as always, if you want to reach out to me to discuss some of the challenges that you've got coming up in your own family, don't, don't hesitate via our website, request a consult with Kim right there on the homepage of Simplicity Parenting. And of course, I'd be delighted to speak with you.
Okay, that's it for this week. Bye bye for now.
