Hello and welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John Payne. So glad you could join us. You know, this week saw a release of a new book that I co-authored with my dear friends Corey Wileczko and Valerie Badd.
And this book is kind of written with my other hat on, so to speak. I've had a long interest in games and play and the beauty of play for children and how we as parents and educators can relate to children through play. And this book is called the Waldorf Games Handbook for the Early Years.
Games to sing and play with children aged three to seven. So that's the name of the book. It's got loads of all kinds of little finger games for little ones, action games, circle games, clapping, beanbag, gosh, you know, we even put in some water and some chasing games, tumbling, lots of singing games, actually.
That was wonderful to be able to get those in as well. We also included sections of how to help children engage and play these games who might be finding it difficult as well, how you can encourage them to take part. So that book is out and around.
So in thinking about that, of course, I was thinking about games and play for children. And, you know, one of the things that strikes me, particularly at the moment, with all that society is going through, the whole world is going through, is how crucially important games and play are for children. And how, at the moment, it's so important to allow time for children to play, to allow them time when they can go down, down into that deep, creative space of play where they, in a sense, drop their little buckets over the well of daily life and just down they go into that cool, clear water at the bottom of the well.
And how they take some time to get down there. You know, it also takes some time to wind that rope up with the bucket at the bottom. And the reason that metaphor often occurs to me is that time is needed for children to dip down into that well.
You know, if we can give them time to decompress, to sit around, to hang out where we're not. We're avoiding turning on iPads and screens. We're avoiding trying to, you know, sort of edutain a child, where we're just letting them be.
In the Simplicity Parenting book, I call this giving them the gift of boredom. Just letting them be bored, letting them be, letting them know that if there's nothing to do, something to do is just around the corner. Particularly, you can speak to a child like that if they're little, if they're younger.
And then letting them be for a while. You might make a few little suggestions, but, you know, and they could be accepted. But if they're not, okay.
It's not up to us to come up with a long library list of things that they might be able to do. The more we do that, the more a child is like, no, I don't want to do that. No, no.
And in the end, we're actually just increasing their feeling of passivity in our attempt to be so active in suggesting all this stuff that they could do. Just let them be. Let them be.
And get on with your work nearby. Be moving around, engaging. That will help them see that you're busy.
And if they're little, that will encourage them to be busy in their own way themselves. And then out can come the blocks, the toys. If they're older kids, out can come the basketball or playing some hoops.
Or if they're in between, they can maybe start making any number of different projects. But the key to it is to give them the time to, so to speak, wind that long rope down, down, down that winch and let it wind down into that cool water of creativity, right down into that well, that refreshing, cool water. That kind of time that we give them to go down into deep creative play is so important now because of the need to, in a sense, process and digest what has been happening in the world and happening in their world, actually.
Just allowing them that time to go into deep creative play is where they digest, is where they play out the world, is where they, for younger ones, they can play a visit to the doctor if it was a bit stressful for them. Or they can play out the good things, the bad things. It's the, to us, seemingly insignificant things, but they can play them out.
And as they play them out, their nervous systems are resetting. They're calming, they're quietening their nervous systems. And in the doing of that, they are coming to a space within themselves ready to take on more in the world later that day or that evening or the next day or so on.
There was one mom who said to me she very deliberately gave a bunch of extra time for her children to play, leading up in the days preceding when they'd have to get in the car, drive to an airport, fly to grandparents who weren't doing well. So they had to fly every sort of two to three months. They would be on an airplane.
It was so overwhelming for the children that she used to bookend it with time to play before they went to the airport in those days before. And then when they would arrive at grandma and grandpa's, she would very deliberately have a lot of downtime, quiet time, for the children to play out all the, well, you know, stress perhaps, but at the very least all the images that they took in the airport and the airplane and so on. And they would get very busy playing it all out, and then they could settle down and have a good visit.
But prior to that, they were just, you know, pinging and kind of jumping around and being goofy and being crazy, and it was hard. And this mom said to me it was so much better for my own mother, for the children's grandmother, because she wasn't doing well. She needed them to be a little calmer, and this is exactly what brought them into that much more centered place.
She commented that before she did that, it was often a very difficult visit because the kids were too rambunctious and rowdy for a grandma who needed it to be quieter. But, you know, not just for that reason. I think it's just a very, very positive thing that we do for children when we can give them this deep creative play.
Now, just to finish off, the winching of that water from the well, yeah, that also needs to happen slowly. It's important when our children are in deep creative play that we don't just haul them off to the next activity, because they can get quite upset, and very little ones can be surprised, almost like a shocked look on their face. So when they're in deep creative play and you know you've got to transition, it's just life, you have to do that, a hint from me is just to sit alongside them, just come alongside them, sit right down beside them, and just sit quietly, just for 30 seconds, a minute, no big deal, just be beside them, and then they'll start, almost every child can't resist describing to you what they've been doing, or drawing, painting, playing, constructing, whatever it is, the trucks, the dollies, and they'll start describing this to you.
That means you've made a connection, so that the winch, so to speak, in that deep well, has started to winch that cool, clear bucket of water up to the surface. Just by being with them, metaphorically, you're putting your hand on the winch and winding it up, because when they look up at you and talk to you and describe to you, you're gently bringing them up, and then you can even describe to them a little bit about what you're transitioning to. But within that minute or two, you just be with them, and then move around, collect up the coats, or whatever it is you're doing for the transition, but that's a way to help children be able to move with you, and yeah, it takes a minute or two to do it, but my goodness, that is so much easier than a child pushing back or even tantruming and taking much, much longer.
It's a really smart investment of time. In another podcast, you can look back on, if you're interested in that transition tool, it's called Your World, My World, Our World. You can check that out.
So, that's my Simplicity Diary thoughts for this week, this beautiful, deep connectivity through play. Don't forget, if you would like to speak to me personally, that is the thing I love to do most, and do go right on to the Simplicity Parenting website, consult with Kim, you'll see it right there, and don't hesitate to make contact. Okay, bye-bye for now.
