Welcome back to Simplicity Parenting Diaries with me, Kim John Payne. So glad you're able to join us again this week. I've been thinking about the kind of optimizing of our parental energy as the days and weeks go on, and also about how to create a climate within the little things that we do every day that have that feeling of spaciousness, that we can help our children feel that home is not being pushed and rushed and moving so fast.
And in order to illustrate this, I want to tell you a funny little story really, that come from my own biography. When I was in the early days of my teaching and school counseling career, I was fortunate enough to be in a school that had a kindergarten training for early childhood teachers. And I've always been so in admiration of these people that can just move a day along and structure a day for so many children, like herding beautiful butterflies.
But my goodness, I was just wanting to figure it out. So anyway, I took this training part time over a wee while as a kindergarten teacher. So my first practicum, I was busy getting everything ready, wanting to be as helpful as I could scurrying about.
And the teacher told me later, like almost everywhere I went, I was creating turbulence that she would try and settle down. And in one of these particular turbulent moments, I was wiping down the table of elevenses of snack and it was quite, you know, quite a lot of crumbs and such. It was bread day.
So there were lots of things to wipe down. And I was doing it rather quickly, not, I don't think, frenetically, but, you know, quickly because it was outdoor time and I knew I had to get all the outdoor boots and coats and such ready for the for the children to go out. So I had that in mind.
I was already thinking ahead. I wasn't, I was as much in boot land as I was in table wiping land in my head, right, in my thinking. And the children nearby me were playing in a way that was unsettled.
You know, it was rambunctious, but not in a good way. And they were rolling about. Other children were starting to get upset that I was going to get this table wiped and paid a little attention to one child who who needed some help, but then back to wiping the table and thinking about the coats and the kindergarten teacher came over and she went to the sink and she got a cloth and she must have noticed what was happening with with Typhoon Kim.
And she started wiping the table with me and she wiped it more slowly. But honestly, it was so much almost you couldn't notice it. But she just wiped it with intentionality, you know, fancy way to put it, but she wiped it.
It wasn't weird or anything. It was just she was being present in what she was doing. She wasn't thinking about much else at all.
She was wiping the table slowly, just a little slower than me, you know, probably achieving a better result, you know, with with the actual task as well. But the children's play nearby started settling down, you know, I could I noticed the noise levels dropping. And I looked around.
And sure enough, three or four children who'd been reading about rolling sort of tumbling on top of each other and just in a in a way that was, you know, not so great and was going to lead to some kind of problem fairly soon. They did three or four of them just got on up and went over to the sink and got their little cloths that were all there on their little hooks and just nicely laid out. Everything was had its place in this room, not in a pedantic way, but in a lovely structured way.
And they stood on their on their little stool and wet the cloth down a little bit and wrung it out. They knew just how to do it. And they came over and started wiping this lovely long table where all, you know, 15 children sat around every day.
And they wiped it and they were and they were quite engaged in that activity as well. And the whole emotional, behavioral, social temperature of the room coalesced. And the children started doing better.
Even the children who were not taking part in wiping the table started playing in a better way together. And the teacher just, you know, took the cloth and went to the sink and wiped it out and put it on its hook. The children flowed along behind her like ducklings.
And they put their, they washed theirs out and put it on their hook too. And my goodness, I mean, it was a real moment of awakening for me. And it's not, it's not overstating it.
I really thought, oh, I get it. Part of the magic of a really fine early childhood educator had been revealed to me in that funny little unexpected moment. Just go that fraction slower, be present in what you're doing.
And the children will imitate. They'll sense focus, they'll sense centeredness, which in turn centers and focuses them. And obviously, I've never forgotten that lesson that that teacher gave me that day.
But the same is true, obviously, for what we do at home. Whatever we're doing, if we can give it our attention, and just sort of be with what we're doing in the moment, magic things start happening. You know, and some parents have said to me, well, how can I do that if I've got three kids raging? And, you know, my thought is that parenting is not really not multitasking.
That we end up, that's like, you know, like playing sort of a, it's a little bit like playing, you know, parental pinata, you know, just swinging the stick around, you know, hoping to connect with something. What I mean by this is that parenting really is not multitasking. It's single tasking multiple times.
Yeah, does that make sense? It's single tasking multiple times, so that we single task, we do what we're doing, and we inhabit it. And with the other kids, when they sense this happening, it coalesces and brings them into a better space, because we are in a better space of what we're doing. And it might be that wiping down the kitchen counter only takes, you know, 15 seconds, but you're there when you're doing it.
And then you put the, clear it off and put the dishes on this, you know, on the side, on the counter, and then stacking them up. And it's done fractionally slower, honestly, if you were to set a time, you know, stopwatch on this, you'd be, one would be hard pressed for it to take any longer, maybe a few seconds. That is not what's going to make, like, almost any difference whatsoever, in getting out the house in the morning, let's say.
But being able to do what one is doing, and really do it well, and be and have good amount of, it's almost like serenity, really, that's way too big a word, I know, but there's just what one is doing, one is doing. And that works, you know, if it can work for 15 very active children in a kindergarten, it sure can work in our homes. And it does, you know, we have over, I think it's 1200 Simplicity Parenting Coaches and Group Leaders, Discipline and Guidance Coaches and Group Leaders out in the world.
And we continually get this feedback that this is one of the more appreciated, I was going to say tactics, it's really a whole way of being that they get feedback from, that has shifted the climate within a home. So, yeah, a fraction slower, and a whole different energy will permeate your home. Okay, I sure hope that's helpful.
Good luck with being present in whatever you're doing. Okay, bye bye for now.
