Welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John Payne. This week I wanted to talk about the elegant exit. You know, how many of us have been in situations where if we have younger kids, we take them to a party and it just, it all gets a bit much, it gets goofy, it gets noisy, kids are starting to melt down, it's just not going well.
And we just look at it and think, well, what do I do here? I don't want to just embarrass anyone, but this is not great, this is not going well, and it's ramping up and maybe a couple of parents are looking at each other nervously and a bunch of others just are oblivious to the behavioral explosion that is going on or just about to go on around them. It's awkward, right? It's really awkward. And what do you do in terms of managing a situation like that? One of the suggestions I want to make is that we kind of anticipate it a bit.
If we're going into a party or a gathering of friends, extended family, celebration at some festival time for our family and other people are gathering and we know that there's going to be a chance that our kids' little cups are going to be overflowing, so to speak. It's going to be a bit, the risk is it could be a bit overwhelming for them, and I don't mean just little kids either. This happens at every age level and it happens for us too, right? So one of the strategies, let's just start at the younger end, right? And we'll, in a moment I'll mention things about, you know, teens and how they can be helped as well.
But one of the things I want to suggest is doing a little bit of pre-planning and saying to a younger child, you know what, when things get really busy and noisy, you know, I'm going to call you right on over and we can sit and have a little snack, you know, if it's a gathering at the park or whatever, or, you know, you can come right on over to me and we will just sit together and have a read of your book. We'll find a quiet place, or we'll just go for a little walk together outside in the garden and just see what we can notice, or we'll go somewhere quiet and do a little drawing or play with our Play-Doh or our modeling beeswax, or whatever it is that you, and it might be as simple as just come on over and have a little cuddle, it could be that simple. But you're doing it ahead of time and you're giving your child a little bit of a heads up that either they can call it, you know, when it's all getting too busy, they can come right on back to you and check in with you, have a little bit of a cuddle.
You can, you know, if you've brought a little bag of nuts and raisins or whatever, it doesn't look weird, you know, to have that with a child, you know, just to have a little snack with a child. But what it is, is that you're resetting the child's nervous system, you're just allowing it from going to, from amber red to amber green, you're just doing a little reset. And that rule of thumb is generally the age of the child into a plus or minus a number of minutes.
And what I mean by that, if you've got a five-year-old, then the reset, if they're not too hyped up at the time, is five minutes minus a couple. So it might just be two or three minutes that you need to do the reset. If they're seven or eight years old and they're just, and you catch it early and they're about to ramp up too far, then it could be just, you know, seven, six minutes.
If they're highly, you know, elevated, it could in there and they're five years old, it's five plus a couple of minutes, it might be seven or eight minutes that you need to go for a little walk outside and look around and just reset, just do a bit of a reset. In that way, when you pre-plan it like this, and a child can feel free to just come on over to you and quietly say to you, Mummy, can we just, can we have a snack? Or can we, you know, or Daddy, can we go for that little walk that you said, this is really, really noisy. Or if you haven't got a child who would easily do that initially, initially, because you can coach them up.
You absolutely can coach kids up to do this for themselves, to self-monitor. But initially, if you don't think that's going to happen, you can call them over and say, how about a little snack? Or you know what, I've been, and you can just tell them a little story. You know, I've been thinking about Grandma today.
Hang on, let's just go, let's go for the walk and I'll tell you about something I've been thinking about, because, and you just, you know, you're just holding their hand or just moving out with them. And you're just telling them a little story. Whatever it is you can come up with to help them reset, that's what's needed in these situations.
But what I've found over the years is that it's good to actually involve the children in the planning of that, so they don't feel punished by it. They don't feel embarrassed by it, because it's just normal. It's a little bit the dance of attachment, right? You know, kids go out a little bit and they play and they come back and they go out and they come back.
It's very normal for kids to do that. In fact, I would put forward that it's really not normal to not do it. If you're in a busy situation, a family visits, parties at the park or whatever, and you're not bringing a child back in to reset, then I think we're missing an opportunity there.
And we shouldn't be in any way embarrassed by doing it. We're not being helicopter parents or overly involved. It's just bringing our kids back in for a reset and then back out they go.
Now I mentioned before the significance, like what is the significance of this for older kids? You know, with older kids, if you do this enough when they're little and they know to reset and they know sometimes things are getting a bit overwhelming, you can plan with your older kids. Let's say they're 15 years old, 16 years old, let's really go to, you know, like an older teenager and they're going off to a party and communication is fairly okay between you and them. And you know the party is, it maybe is a bit edgy, you know, and I remember doing this with my own kids, you know, and just making a bit of a plan and saying, look, if it gets really rowdy, what is your walk-off point? You know, in all expeditions, when you're climbing a mountain, there's, you plot where the walk-off points are, where the escape routes are, you know, so there's one there if we're running, if there's really bad weather blows in and it gets a bit overwhelming and it's not safe, there is one possible walk-off point.
And then a little further up the mountain, there is another. And they are, you know, a good expedition guide will actually plan those ahead of time and he or she or they will plan them with the folk going on the expedition. The same is exactly true for our teenagers.
Those of you who have read my book, The Soul of Discipline, will know that I use the metaphor of the governor, gardener, guide, and I talk about the guide at the time where our gesture as a parent is much more the guide, you know. And so we're guiding our kids. Now a good guide will plan walk-off points.
So back to the party. Your daughter or your son is going off to a party and you plan with them. Like if it gets a bit wild, if, you know, older kids bring in alcohol, if there's pot there or other drugs and you're not comfortable with it, or if those kids that are being a bit, like a little bit edgier, even mean towards you, you know, do that again, or if you're feeling lonely and there's no one to talk to.
Like there's all these situations. What's your walk-off point, sweetheart? What is it? Where's your walk-off point? How can you do that without being embarrassed? And just talk to them about their exit points. And it could be as simple as, well, you know, me and Sophie might just, I don't know, we might just sort of find somewhere and just sit and talk because she'll always do that with me.
And you say, okay, so you'd go find Sophie's going to be at the party? Yeah. Okay. So can you talk with Sophie about that and get that organized that if, you know, oh no, she'll just do it.
I know she will. Okay. So that's your walk-off point that you would find a quiet place with Sophie? Yeah.
Okay. What else? Like if it gets wild, what can you do? And so on and so on. Now, if you've coached your kids up from an early age, then it's not unusual.
It's a very normal thing to be talking to them about this whole, you know, principle of the elegant exit, you know, that you can exit somewhere and you can do it without embarrassment, without seeming to, you know, draw attention to yourself because that's been happening for years and years. They're just, they're used to it, right? And really importantly, it doesn't then allow things to escalate and get out of control because your kids are used to, and by now, if you've done this elegant exit, you know, in the earlier years where they come back, they reset and they can feel inwardly when things are getting overwhelming and they know to reset. When they get into their teen years and things are getting overwhelming and really a little bit dangerous sometimes, they know to exit and reset.
It's no big deal because they've developed that as a healthy habit and it doesn't set you up as a killjoy. It sets you up as a guide to their lives. It's a point of connection, not a point of over-controlling.
So that is the elegant exit and I sure hope that aspect of that might land with you and good luck, if this makes sense to you, good luck with talking to your kids and just being a part of helping them be able to self-monitor when they need to calm. Okay, bye bye for now.
