Hello and welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John Payne. Oh gosh, I'm glad you're joining us again this week. It's so thrilling to hear when I speak with people all around in so many communities that these little podcasts are proving interesting and helpful.
It's lovely. This week, I wanted to talk about how to help kids who are melting down. And this question came in my family counseling practice directly from a parent who asked, like, you know, where do I take my child when they need to calm down? And it was a very, very good question.
It's one that I've thought a lot about over the years and kind of experimented with. Obviously, when a child's not doing well, really starting to melt down, or especially good if we can catch them on the way to a major tantrum or meltdown, catch them a little earlier. But traditionally, kids are taken to their bedrooms, right? Now, I've spoken before about how I'm not a real big believer in rejection-based discipline in sending a child to their room, sending them away.
I totally get the intuition, and I agree with the intuition that a child needs a change of space. And often the other kids need a break from that kind of behavior if there's more kids in the house. But sending a child to their room, I've over the years really recommended not doing that, but going with them so that it's not so much a time out but a time in.
You bring them in. You bring them closer to you. But it's not a question of bringing a child if they're not doing well at all and they're starting to melt down and tantrum.
Talking to them is of very little use. The listening centers, the speech reception centers in their brains have all but shut down. They clearly need a change of space, a change of gear, someplace where it's less stimulating, a little bit quieter.
Because most kids who are overwhelmed, that's when they melt down. It's really a question of overwhelm, a question of disorientation. So they need a quiet place.
One of the best places is actually our room, our own parent bedrooms, our own quiet spaces. Some parents have used their study, but studies, offices, are usually quite a busy environment, lots of visual stimulation. If we can take a child to our own bedrooms, there's a couple of big advantages.
One I've already mentioned is that visually that's usually low stimulation. And if it's not, you might want to think about making it like that. You might want to sort of prepare a little bit and think, OK, if and when my child melts down, and most children do from time to time, some very frequently, some not so frequently, but if you can look at your room and say, Look, if a child was to come into this room, would it be a place of refuge? Would it be a mellow place? Would it be low sensory impact in every way? So have I got a little light that I can turn on in the colder, darker months? That's not the overhead light, a little lamp.
Is it simple? Are the clothes picked up? Are things put away? You can pre-plan that. And in our own rooms where we have sovereignty, it's more possible to do that. It also has the advantage and the big advantage of being our space.
So on one hand, it's not visually busy like a lot of children's bedrooms are. I wish they weren't, and I would highly recommend making your child's room low sensory impact. But even if it is, it's a good idea sometimes to consider taking a child to our room, particularly if they're not doing well.
They're pushing back. They're shouting at you or siblings or whatever. It's a time when they need to go to a space that is ours, actually, that is our room where we have sovereignty, where we are the governor.
It's clearly our space. Now, some parents have asked me, well, yeah, but isn't their own room a cozy space for them? And that's true. Actually, it is.
But when a child has lost it and they're really disoriented, what I think edges that thought to being sort of second place. It's still there, but I think it's second place, is that in our own rooms, we have authority. We are the authoritative figure.
And when a child's not doing well, that is what they need most. They need the security and the safety that comes with knowing who's in charge. And particularly if we need to calm them down, when a child's feeling really elevated behaviorally, shouting, screaming, crying, it's a time when they're very vulnerable.
I know it seems like they're being aggressive, but right when they're being aggressive, they're also being very, very vulnerable. And to be able to be in a space where they really do know who's in charge, whose space it is, helps on that front. It also helps on the front of calming them down and having them know that that kind of behavior is not acceptable, whatever it is.
I don't mean that anger is not acceptable. Anger is just anger, and there you are. But all the words, the hurtful, the angry, the really nasty stuff, that's, of course, not okay in any family.
We always want our kids to do their best in that way. And I know, I know they melt down. But we need a space that really speaks of our genuine authoritativeness.
Other parents have benefited from doing this in the sense that if a child gets destructive, and some kids do if they genuinely lose the plot. This is not all children, of course, but if they do, then it's a very simple thing to kind of batten down the hatches, clear anything that's throwable off surfaces. Put a simple little piece of, one dad put a piece of dowel, just drilled a hole and put a little very simple, circular little round piece of wood up in the corner of the dresser, of the cupboard rather, the cupboard door, because the child was prone to swinging open cupboards and emptying things on the ground.
You can very quickly and easily prepare your own space because it's often more, there's less clutter in it. And this is a particularly good aid and good reason to declutter as well. And then just sit, just sit, usually in front of the door, right? Just have a chair near the door and just pop it across in front of the door so a child can't run out.
And there just, again, you can prepare your own space because you can have your mending basket, the clothes that you're mending. With kids, there's always things to mend, right? So you take out your mending basket and just mend or perhaps look at a children's book, something that a child might be interested in and brings them out of their tantrum a little bit quicker. It might be you get your knitting out or whatever it is you do.
One dad who had a very, very fiery kid deliberately took up whittling. Do you know whittling? You know, like wood carving with a little knife and would spread a little cloth under him and he would sit there just whittling because when children have lost the plot, they don't like to be looked at, but they also, it feels a bit strange just to sit there and stare at your hands. It helps them come out of their funk even quicker as well if we're doing something because it helps the mirror neuron, the imitation part of their brain, start to hook on to another activity so that they can see that we're doing that and even though there might be yelling and screaming and shouting and crying or being sullen and grumpy, if we're doing something, it gives them a little hook.
It gives them a neurological hook to come out of that sort of short-circuiting, that neural short-circuiting that's going round and round in the fight-or-flight brain. It brings them out of it a little quicker as well. That's just a tip on that front.
So having children go to our space, this is if we're at home, of course, is one way to, one option that might be helpful for you to consider. So it's going with a child and it's going to your space and in that way, I've been fairly convinced now it's a very worthy option to consider and to prepare for. Okay, so again, don't hesitate to reach out to me in my family counselling practice if you need a little more one-to-one support but for this week and for now, I sure hope that that was helpful and kind of hope you don't need to have a child come to your room, but if they do, I hope this advice might come in useful.
Okay, bye-bye for now.
