Hello and welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John Payne. Just wanted to let you know about a teaming up that we have done with our friends over at Sparkle Stories to offer a 30-day extended free trial. It's such a great way to enjoy the entire library of Sparkle Stories.
There's over 1,300 original audio stories from kids. It's about three years of age and up. Of course, the gold standard in stories is being able to tell our kids our own stories.
But being able to have such high-quality stories in an audio format is just wonderful, what the team over there have created. They're dedicated to making the world a kinder place by encouraging parents and children just to slow it down, really, sit and listen to a story, use their imaginations, and then, of course, talk about the story afterwards, which is where that human connection comes in. Sparkle Stories, as I said, is offering an extended 30-day trial subscription.
So you can sign up visiting sparklestories.com slash sign up and using the code SIMPLICITY. All right, so on with my thoughts for simplicity and balance in family life this week. Well, you know, it's a simple one, really.
I was speaking with a couple of parents just recently, and it reminded me of the number of conversations I've had over the years with parents who like to lay things out at night and anticipate the next morning. When I'm speaking with people who do this, I'm always struck by the feeling that I get from them, even imagining them doing this, of just that little bit of extra spaciousness. What I mean by this, and I sure did this with my own kids when they were very little, actually kind of all the way through, to be honest, even when they're in, you know, I still have a teenager, but, you know, when they're in high school and so on, we were still laying things out the night before.
And fascinatingly, they now, I have a young adult now, and she does that for herself. You know, it's, it's, there's a number of different things we can anticipate. What I mean by this is laying out clothes.
The clothes that we would lay out in my family were called the scarecrow, where there would be the hat at the top. And this would, this was laid out on a chair, there would be the hat, and then the t-shirt and sweater or jumper below that, and then below that, the pants or dress and underwear. And then below that would be the shoes and socks.
And it was all there, just ready to slip in. You know, each child had their own chair. And one of my daughters actually was quite a fashionista.
So we would spend, or she would pop up the stairs early and start choosing all her clothes, which actually always looked great, I've got to say. But she would lay them all out ready for the next day. Particularly having a fashionista as a daughter, it really did save a lot of delays and struggle in the morning with choosing the right kind of socks.
I'm not making that one up, that would happen unless we laid the stuff out. But then there's also laying out of breakfast. You know, so lovely when the table is set with all that can be set the night before.
And the children come down in the morning and there it all is. You know, it's almost like a little tiny mini party every morning. You know, even down to, we have always lit a candle for every meal we have.
So there'd even be the candle and the match beside it and so on. I guess it was creating a form. You know, the feeling of having a form that then the children step into.
There was just a lovely sort of feeling of here we are. You know, we're stepping into what's been created here. Your parent or parents have prepared this for us all.
Then there were also the getting out clothes, the getting out the house clothes with coats. They can also be laid out as well. Lunches already there.
In my family we had a tradition of the children sort of helping at times with lunches. But many parents will either prepare the lunch ahead of time and pack it or have all the fixings just laid out. And just the ones that can be, of course.
And ready to go. There's all manner of things that we can prepare the night before that give this feeling of form in the morning and allow the children to wake up and come into form. Because the little ones can take a while.
But, you know, tween ages and teen ages can take even longer. Some parents have said to me that they like their children to help actually make the preparations. I was talking to one parent that said the breakfast things that were set out on the table from the earliest of ages, they would clear off the table, clear up, the children would help, and then one of the children's home care tasks, you remember I don't really refer to it as chores, I always refer to it as home care, one of the home care tasks was for one child to set the table for the morning with the help, of course when they're very little, with a parent or a guardian.
And you can, of course, help them, as I mentioned, with clothes selection at night, you can lay all that out as well. It doesn't have to be that you're being the children's butler. They can take part in it as well.
And it gives that feeling of all is well in the world. As I start my day, I start it in a settled way, that something has been prepared in advance, that we're not just kind of, you know, winging it. I asked a parent once just how long they thought this took.
In other words, what's the cost-benefit analysis of this in terms of time, time saved? And, well it was two parents actually, and they said, you know, between us, this was in a two-parent home, the children helping out a little bit, they said initially it took maybe 15 or 20 minutes because the children were younger and it just was slower. But as they grew up and they would, you know, set the table and then get the coats ready and put the backpacks properly on the hooks where they should be, they said it was about sort of five to seven, at the most, ten minutes. And, you know, of course the obvious question was, well how much time do you think it would take if you didn't do that? And they knew because they said, well, you know, there are some times when it slips and we don't do it.
And they said it can take up to 30 to 35 minutes. They said, in other words, it's sort of a 25-minute swing, it's a 25-minute saving, which, you know, to some people might not seem a lot, but to us as parents, 25-minute saving in the morning, oh my goodness, that is golden. Other parents have said, well, we save time, we save so much time in the morning that we still get up at the same time, you know, and this is when they've introduced the getting ready at night regime.
They've put that into their rhythm that they've actually find that they can sit down and just have five minutes, three, five minutes or whatever, just a little short time of a story, something that settles the children before they get in the car, you know, or whatever it is, just building that little bit extra of a puzzle or not even maybe just having time to chat with a child and actually be able to sit and listen to their beautiful prattling long story without having to move around because we can actually ourselves, and this is the big one, right, we can sit down. We can actually have time to sit down ourselves. Okay, so that's it for this week, preparing the evening before.
Your temperament may just say, ah, I can't do that, you know, and that's just not the way I'm built, and I get that, of course, but for those of us who want to give it a go, or just confirmation for those of you already doing it, but getting ready the night before and creating that lovely warm form in the mornings. Hope that's helpful. Remember, if you want to chat with me personally and my private family counseling practice, just go right online to simplicityparenting.com, and you will see a link right there.
Okay, happy morning times. Bye-bye for now.
