Hello, and welcome back to the Simplicity Parenting Podcast. Lovely you could join us again. This is the second part of this small series of how to help parents navigate a world that pathologizes children.
And we'll continue on. This will wrap this one up. About eight minutes into this segment, you know, we start talking about a care professional seminar and that's coming up later in the month on January 31st, I believe.
And if you're interested in learning about the seminar, you know, continue on and have a good listen to that. The discussion runs for about five minutes or so. If you're not interested in the seminar, you know, go ahead and stop listening at that point.
About eight minutes in, just kind of shut it off. So that is this week's podcast coming up about how to help us as parents, also care professionals work in a world that wants to limit and label our kids. I sure hope this is helpful.
Okay. So I feel like I'm hearing a lot lately about, and this is a new term to me, neurodiversity as being a new approach to this problem. Is that sort of what we're talking about? Sarah, do you want to take that one? Yeah.
So it's similar. So the neurodiversity paradigm has been around for a little while and states that there is a naturally occurring diversity in the human brain. So there is no normal brain.
And to say that there is one is really a social construct. We are all wired differently and we have our own unique strengths and challenges. So it does move away from this pathology paradigm into talking about differences of brain functions from a strength-based perspective and understanding how your unique brain and how it functions can help you to overcome any challenges you may have.
So my work in supporting neurodivergent kiddos or kiddos who identify as autistic or as having variations in attention such as ADHD, I've seen a trend that they come in, their families come in for help and they get a diagnosis with no support options except for behaviorism and really no idea about how their child is seeing the world. So I like to use the simplicity parenting approach to help parents step away from pathologizing and approach these children from a truly understanding perspective of what is it that my child is trying to tell me with their behavior? What is it that I can do to connect more deeply with my child? And I've had just great success utilizing it. Due to the fact that it scaffolds the parenting approach, it changes as the child grows, the parenting approaches change.
It helps parents believe, acknowledge and ease their child's stress response to certain environmental stimuli. And it looks at behavior from a strength-based perspective so that parents can stay connected. That's really lovely.
Kim, can you say more from your perspective how simplicity parenting relates to the idea of neurodiversity? You know, it lines up so closely. Essentially, it's looking at behavior as what I think of as a signpost to deeper needs. Behavior is a signpost.
It's not a destination. And the diversity, the neurodiversity that we're all wired differently is something so beautifully obvious, but it just needs stating right out loud that we are different. We all have our own quirks.
We all have our own challenges. When we're under stress, we all default back to different places. It's not one place.
There's different places. There's different presentations. And with simplicity parenting, what we've been doing for over 30 years now is a principle that I think of as meet and move.
We meet the parent where he or she or they are at. Where are they at as a family in working with some of the feedback they've been getting from clinicians, some of the feedback they've been getting certainly from the school, from extended family? We just meet them where they're at and spend a good amount of time just meeting rather than often when someone comes in to see a counselor, to see a therapist, to see a coach. That's often a stage that gets skipped over.
We look very deeply at what is the whole system, the constellation that surrounds the child and then look for ways in which we can lower the amount of what I think of as cumulative stress, because it's the cumulative stress, the under the radar, just slightly under the radar that builds and builds and builds. And again, that quirky behavior starts to become inflamed and become problematic. So one of the first things we do is just lower, is just lower the degree of cumulative stress.
And that could be very different for different families. And we pull that back and make it simple, as I said, doable, simplify what's going on around, balance the child's life. It's almost embarrassing to say, give a child a childhood, but it needs saying these days.
And what I've seen over the years is countless numbers of parents and it never fails to move me of saying, I feel like I've got my little boy back. You know, I feel like they're back. I'm starting to see that side of them that I always knew that was there that would just peep out and go away.
And now I'm starting to see it shine. And, you know, when a parent says that, OK, that's beautiful, but the voice they say it with is so much more confident. That's the thing that is equally as moving, is the voice has shifted to that place of competency that I can do this, as opposed to I don't know what to do with this kid.
That it's quite a thing to experience. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right.
So let's get practical for care professionals listening to this, looking for ways to help parents navigate this sort of situation we're talking about. What's one or two things you'd recommend they do to start taking a more simplicity parenting type approach? And this for both of you. But, Kim, you can go ahead and go first on this one.
You know what? In some ways, I think, Sarah, you're just beautifully positioned to be able to answer that in such a great way. Do you want to do you want to just give us your perspective on that? Sure, sure. I think that one of the simplest things we can do as care professionals or clinicians is just to really help parents understand that that connection between them and their child really is the way that we get rid of the pathologizing paradigm.
If we focus our work with the parents and their connection with their children and empower them to really be the experts on their children, then they'll start looking at their child as holistically and we can meet them where they're at. So something as simple as that, I think, can make a world of difference. It's almost like, Sarah, you know, I think anyone claiming to be, you know, a parenting professional, particularly a parenting expert, should come with a health warning like on the cigarette packages.
You know, it's just a parent needs to be the primary person in a child's life. And the more we as therapists and counselors, care providers can give the confidence and competence to a parent, the more that can be alive within the family group, as opposed to a once a week meeting with a therapist. It's not that that doesn't have value, but if we can be able to coach the parents in how to coach their child, the effectiveness of that is so much greater.
Yeah, yeah. So, Sarah, if someone watching this wants to learn more about this simplicity parenting approach and how to incorporate it into their work, what's a good next step for them? Yes, so the Simplicity Parenting Institute holds a care professional seminar a couple times a year. It was created for clinicians, social workers, teachers, really anyone who works with children and their families.
As the presenter of that seminar, I give strategies for making small changes to ease the stress response in a family's life, disciplining guidance, as well as how to help parents with their own self-regulation. We will also discuss how to implement the simplicity parenting approach into your work with children and their families. Nice, Kim, anything else you want to say about the seminar? Yeah, it's so great that it's, Sarah, you have this spanning those three really important pillars.
You know, one is the simplicity parenting work itself, which is simplifying and balancing the environment. It's not much can happen until that happens. If we start throwing therapies at a child and then immerse them back into an environment that's just moving too fast for them, that's like throwing therapies into a container that can't hold it.
So that is right there, means the efficacy of our modality is going to be so much greater, so much greater. Over the years, that's something that has been, that there's a real pattern of feedback, is that when we, as therapists and people caring for children, can help that vessel of the family be stronger, whatever modality that we're working out of therapeutically is going to be held in a better way and not become part of the spillage, because just too much is coming into that cup. That's daily life, just too much is coming in.
And what you present in the care professional so beautifully is to not have our modality be part of the problem, part of the spillage. It's all good stuff, but it just doesn't have any space in the family's life to be held. That's one thing.
And then the other you mentioned was the boundaries, the loving limits, the guidance that we can give children and being able to understand that our creative discipline moves according to the child's age. And that is a wonderful thing. So we don't get stuck in parenting an older child like they're little or a little child like they're older, but we can help parents and we can say to them, OK, so you really got a natural tendency to be a great guide, to be able to guide kids.
And that's going to be brilliant when your children are teenagers. Don't let that go. It's such a gift that you've got.
It's really natural to you. But if you do that when your child's five, they're going to run the show. Right.
So that piece. And then that third piece of our own emotional self-regulation. I don't know, Sarah, David, I'd say of all the inquiries we get into the Institute, that's got to be towards the top of the list.
I don't want to be this angry, shouty parent. It's just not the person I want to be. And so, Sarah, it's so great now in the in the care professionals seminar that you bring information in how we can help parents not, yes, be better self-regulated.
But actually, I hope it's not too much to say be the parent they've always wanted to be. It's really I don't think it's overstating to say that. So those three main streams, it's so great that's being brought in to the care professional seminar.
Yeah, that's excellent. All right. So thank you.
This has been a great conversation. I hope you found it helpful. Again, to learn more about the care professional seminar, just click on the button.
It takes you to the information page, shows you everything you need to know. You can add your name to the interest list and we'll let you know when registration opens up for our next class or if registration is open now, you can register right away. Either way, thank you.
Kim, Sarah, any other thoughts you want to have for providers before we sign off? Just a big thank you for Sarah for for being in the driver's seat of the care professionals course. It's it's so great you're doing this, Sarah, and, you know, talking to you about your plans for it. And it's always evolving.
We've been running this care professionals for a long time now, and to see to see it shifting and changing and evolving to meet current needs is just thrilling. So, yeah, that's it for me. Thank you, Kim, I'm very excited to be running the care professional seminar.
This is something I'm deeply passionate about. I've used simplicity parenting methods in my own home and seen how successful they can be, along with putting them into my private practice with families. So, yes, I'm very excited to be helping get the word out from this great approach.
So thank you. All right, thank you both. Thank you all for joining us.
We hope to see you in the care professional seminar. Either way, we wish you the very best on your parenting and professional journey. A big thank you to David and Sarah for that.
These are just some of my very favorite people, as you probably could tell. So that wraps up this little mini series. And as always, don't hesitate to be in personal contact with me.
Go right to the simplicity parenting homepage, request to consult with Kim. It's just the thing I love to do most of all, is to speak to parents personally about your hopes and dreams for your family life and, you know, what's getting in the way. OK, that's it for now.
Thanks so much. Sure hope that was helpful. Bye bye for now.
