Hello, dear ones, and welcome to the Simplicity Diaries. This is Kim John Payne, the author of Simplicity Parenting. You know, this week, I've been thinking a lot about how to transition and the children and how tricky that can be.
I was talking with a teacher of an early childhood group, and I suggested to her, I guess a couple of weeks ago now, a way to transition kids that has always had great feedback. And she again reminded me of how much this changed the situation, particularly with some boys in her little group, but in general, how much this can ease things. So it's been on my mind a bit, and I thought I would just run this by you.
The principle is called your world, my world, our world. And I do write about this in the Soul of Discipline book, but I want to just dig into it a little bit and put it in a spoken form. The principle is based on what I think of as coming alongside a child, you know, like mooring your metaphoric canoe alongside theirs as you go about transitioning them.
And here's how it goes. Let's say we've got to transition a child into the car in the morning, and we've got to get them to daycare, we've got to get them to school, you know, whatever. And what I'm suggesting is that you come alongside the child just simply by sitting beside them, just 15, 20, 30 seconds, maybe maximum.
But you just sit right alongside the child and just notice what they're doing. You just kind of clue in with them a little bit, sit with them. Nine times out of 10, they'll look right at you after a while and just describe to you what they're doing.
If they're very little, they'll just sort of lean up against you, one of those sort of lean into you. And, you know, you might take over whatever you're doing at the time and just sit beside. So that's the first step.
Honestly, 15, 20 seconds, we don't have much more, but we do have time. And it also helps us a little bit just to sit and observe what they're doing. That's the your world, the child's world.
And you maybe just ask a little question, if you like, of, you know, gosh, that's if it's a young child doing a drawing, gosh, you're using a lot of red there today or hmm, and maybe just sit with quietly with love in your eyes and just watch what they're doing. With an older child, you might just sit right along the counter at breakfast time and just have breakfast with the child, just sort of calibrate in with where they're at. The second step is then my world.
And that's the parent's world. And you might say to a child or a young person, OK, gosh, that is a beautiful drawing. That, you know, I better get back to packing up all the dishes and just popping them away now, because after I do that, we do have to get in the car.
And, you know, before that, we'll need to I'll make sure to to clean your clean out your lunchbox and whatever it is. But you just give the the child a little bit of a heads up into your world. So you've gone from from the child's world to my world, your world, my world, and now our world.
And the our world is so much easier when we say, OK, now, Sophie, or OK, now, John or OK, Miguel, it's it's time to put on our coats and just a little tip here. When it is time to put on our coats or boots, if this is if it's a younger one, put your own boots on first or your own coat on first. In other words, do first, talk second.
Children have got these wonderful firings of mirror neurons in their brain. And if they see you doing something, they inwardly mirror it. They inwardly can digest it and make sense.
It's way better than just talking to a child. And I'll come back to that in coming weeks. But if you've done your world and then alerted the child, you know, to to to what to to my world, my my being being the the the the parent and now our world, so many children can come along, can get with the program, so to speak, and can come along with you.
They they sense that they're not being pushed to do something. They're not being pulled or pushed. They sense that they're moving with rather than being pushed to.
And this is it's really a gesture. It's not so much a technique. It's a gesture.
Now, does it work every time? No, not of course not. But what it does do over probably two or three months, if you continually do this little your world, my world, our world, what it does is it starts to alert the child to the transition means getting closer to a parent, connecting with a parent rather than the transition, meaning disconnecting to my interest of what I was doing. So in other words, you replace connection to the task the child was doing with connection to you.
And and that's just that just makes a lot of sense to it, to a child. And there's a much stronger likelihood that the transition will go better. And all you've done is invested, oh, I guess, two to three minutes.
And you might be thinking two to three minutes. How can I do that? I've got two other kids to get ready and so on. But honestly, that two to three minute investment is so worth the 20 to 30 minutes of of of sullen behavior sitting in the car.
So that was my thoughts in this simplicity diary of your world, my world, our world and helping with transitions.
