Hello and welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John-Payne. So glad you could carve out a little bit of time this week to listen to this. Sure, I hope it's worthwhile for you.
This week I've been thinking about what to do when we lose it with our kids, when we get angry, we shout, or perhaps we just go into that steely silence which, you know, in my Being at Your Best book I talk about the fifty shades of silence. You know, maybe we've expressed frustration, we just haven't acted in a way that we want to. You know, we just absolutely haven't been at our best, far from it, and it's just we know it, you know, we've lost it and it's just not okay that we behave that way as a parent and we don't want it and we don't want to sort of leave the reverberations of that echoing around the house or the car or wherever it is that you are at the time when you lost it.
So, welcome to being normal, but what can we do to put it right? Well, you know, for me there's a couple of key things here. One is that when we get it wrong, of course it's important to put it right, and we can model that for our children so that they know that likewise they'll get mad, they'll shout, they'll get frustrated, they might even throw something, whatever it is they do, and okay, that's happened, we wish it hadn't have happened, but now how do we put it right? One of the things that's important is that when, let's say you've shouted at the kids in a way that was intense, you wish you hadn't have, there's a couple little steps. One of the first steps is to say to the kids, just give me a minute, please, just give me a minute, and if we can almost train ourselves up and train the kids up to just give each other a minute, in this case, give me a minute, because a minute or two is sometimes all we need to shift gear a little bit, so to be able to say just give me some space, just give me a minute.
Now, as time goes on and the kids realize that if they do give you that minute, you come back, you know, they get their mummy or daddy back, not that shouty monster, they're very willing, like, yeah, have a minute, I have two or three, mum. They normally will do this at the very, very beginning of it, they might struggle with this because they don't know the process yet, but just give me some space. It might be for younger children when you say that, it can seem scary because it seems like you're walking away and you're mad.
So some parents have said what they've found successful as well is to say just give me a minute, I'm going to unload the dishwasher, or I'm going to do the dishes, or I'm just going to fold the clothes, and then I'll be right back, or I'm just going to walk out and around the garden and just be outside just for a moment, and then I'll be right back. I think that's a pretty good thing to say, because a child's not just sensing off you're going and you are really angry, and they can't help but feel, you know, are you coming back? What's going on? So it's good to give a little time associated with it, because a very little child, a minute doesn't mean very much, and to be able to do something practical, even that they can see, and just say, look, while I'm folding the clothes, I'm just going to go upstairs, fold the clothes, put them in the basket, and then I'll be right back down. And I think that's pretty great if we can train ourselves to do that, because we're frustrated, and right in the midst of an emotional storm, if when we've shouted, we can say, look, just give me a minute.
Another thing that I've found can come to our rescue is something has got out of us, we've shouted, we've been frustrated, something's come up, and just to say to the kids, oh, that came out wrong, just give me a minute. You can even preface it with that, it came out wrong. Now this will come back in a moment as well, and I'll mention it again, but you could mention it right at the get-go, that came out wrong.
It's a way to signal to the kids that you didn't say what you meant, but it's also speaking their language, that came out wrong, any child, really, from the age of two and a half, three, is going to understand that. Okay, so now hopefully you've got your minute. Now some people who have done our Being at Your Parenting Best Masterclass, or who have read the Being at Your Best When Your Kids Are at Their Worst book, the last book I wrote, will know that there's a compassionate response practice embedded right at the heart of that book, and if you have had access to that and you know of it, that is exactly the thing to do at this moment.
You've got one minute, a couple, that practice, that meditative practice called the compassionate response is a complete fast track to being able to recover, to have your respiration come back to normal, your heartbeat come back to a regular heartbeat, and it is specifically designed actually for use in making a repair, recover and repair. So those of you who have access to the compassionate response will know all about this. Now others of us have different ways of doing it.
One mum I was speaking to recently goes out into her small backyard, a very small backyard in a sort of an urban setting, and goes on a very slow and brief, mindful walk, just noticing the plants that are around the garden, noticing the way the patio, she has a little patio, the patio furniture is arranged, noticing the patterns on the table, just noticing. That is also another way to do a fairly effective brain reset. I don't think it's as effective as the compassionate response, but perhaps that's just my bias.
But a mindful walk. Other people have said they just need to sit quietly for a moment and just have that quiet. Other folk have mentioned doing something really mundane, like I was saying before, like folding the clothes, putting in a load of washing into the machine, something.
One dad recently said to me, tidying up does it for him, just getting things back in order. Outwardly, in his office, when he loses it, he just goes to his office and tidies up for a minute or two. He said somehow putting things in order on my desk and such helps me put things in order inwardly.
What I'm basically saying here is that get your strategy. Think about what is it that helps me recover before I can make the repair. Because making a repair truly and authentically means we need to do a little bit of recovery for ourselves.
It begins with us, of course. So after this podcast is done, have a think about it. Like seriously, have a think about what is my recovery strategy? What do I need to do to recover? And if you don't come up with anything, do access the Compassionate Response Practice either in the Being at Your Best book or on the podcast.
Right on these podcasts, you'll find it, the Compassionate Response. But you might have your own. You might have a way that you can do it perfectly well yourself.
Okay, so that's really step two. Step one is just give me a minute while I... Step two is your recovery process and have it pre-planned. Don't leave it to be random.
Have it planned out because we can all pretty much guarantee we're going to lose it at some stage this week. And then the third stage is making the repair. So now coming back to our kids, saying again, repeating, if you haven't already said it, look, that really did come out wrong, statement number one.
Statement number two, what I meant to say was, and now who knows what that's going to be. It might be what I meant to... That came out wrong. I didn't mean to use those bad words, but what I meant to say was, please don't put your backpacks down in the doorway because the days are getting dark now and we can easily trip over them because you did and the groceries went all over the floor and you said a bad word starting with SH, you know, and something like that, who knows, right? But something got out of you or maybe you just yelled at the kids, would you please not leave your stuff I've told you in it, really, you've been intense because you tripped over it and you told them not to do that.
That's one example perhaps, but coming back and some parents have said to me, well, shouldn't I apologize? And for me, the issue is not the apology, although that's perfectly fine, of course, you could say, sorry, but it's what I meant to say was, because there is almost always something in the intensity of you losing it that needs to be spoken directly and truly without the rage, without the anger, but something usually needs still to be said and it's showing the kids that you can go away, you can be really, really angry, you can go away, you can gather yourself, you can come back and you can reframe and say what it is you wanted to say, speak your truth, but speak it in a way that's respectful. And that is so much more important than an apology, really, if you want to, if it feels right to mix an apology in with that, of course, you know, that's fine, but coming back to saying I'm really, really sorry, kids, I somehow feel that's incomplete, because what you were frustrated with still needs to be worked out, hey, it still really does. So, here's the final thing, research in the late 1990s, early 2000s, unveiled something that I've mentioned before in other podcasts, it's part of a child's brain, which is very, very active, or not a part, but neurons called mirror neurons, like a mirror on the wall, right? And mirror neurons are responsible for a child inwardly, absorbing and activating and doing the same thing as you're doing.
Now, a practical example of that is if you're raking the leaves, a very little child, three, four, five years old will come and start raking with you, teenagers, it's a little more unlikely, maybe, but as you rake, they rake, as you wash the dishes, they'll pull up their chair, their stool beside the dishes, and they'll be helping, of course, it takes three times as long, and there's several liters or gallons of water all over the floor, but they're helping, right? So, that's the mirror neuron activity, because inwardly, as you do something, the mirror neuron clusters in the brain mirror, literally mirror back, and inwardly, they start doing it, and then they'll start outwardly imitating you. And it's a very healthy thing. But more recently, mirror neuron clusters have been found in the limbic system and found in the slightly higher emotional centers of the brain, and what this means is that children can actually mirror back inwardly, they mirror your emotions, they mirror emotions of people around them.
Now, can you see where I'm going with this? This has beautifully got to do with, if you're angry, they will inwardly mirror that, and they'll become frustrated, angry, or scared, or just simply elevated. They will elevate because you elevated. The mirror neuron activity can't help it, but here's the thing, is it also can't help it if you call for time out, you call, just give me a minute while I go and wash the dishes or whatever it is, and then you come back and reframe, and you're calmer, and you're more together, but you're also able to speak what it is you needed to speak, that will also be imitated inwardly.
And what a beautiful thing that a child is actually imitating. They're not just imitating the perfect parent, no, no, we can all lose it, but they're actually inwardly exercising their ability to then de-escalate, come back, get things lined up emotionally, and be able to speak. And as you do this more and more, as you're able to recover and repair, they will learn this ability, and children will start doing it themselves, and that is a day of real celebration when you catch them having an argument, they call time, they say, let's just not do this now, this is really not, this is so stupid, and then off they go, and then they come back and say, well what I think we should do, it came out all wrong, what I think we should do, and then they do it themselves.
And gosh, any parent's got to smile when that happens, right? So again, a little reminder, if you want to speak to me personally, don't hesitate to go to the request to consult with Kim on our Simplicity Parenting website, I love to speak to parents about their hopes and dreams, and what's getting in the way of that. But more than anything, I hope this podcast of how to recover and repair when you lose it has been helpful. Okay, bye bye for now.
