Hello and welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim-John Payne, the author of Simplicity Parenting. This week, I've been finally emerging from doing many, many talks in schools, community groups, parent groups, about how to parent in a time of health and social crisis. So forgive me for not getting a podcast out a little earlier on this.
I've been very, very busy speaking directly with people about this, both in my private counseling practice, but also in the schools and community groups that are addressing and struggling with this. And I've learned a lot, listened a lot, thought a lot, like us all, about the times that we're living in. And one of the images that comes back to me over and over is what one mother said when she said, you know, on one hand, our anxiety can drive us to being very, very nervous, taking steps that would normally be outside our regular parenting values.
And on the other hand, we could turn away from this and try and not talk about it at all with our children, not to expose them to anything that's going on. And it reminded me of an image I've been using for years now of a harbor. That, you know, in our family life, we have a harbor where there is a harbor wall and children sail into that harbor where the water is calmer.
But they sail out again after replenishing, restocking, and out they go again into the turbulent waters of life where they meet life. And their little boats don't go far from the harbor, but as their boats, their metaphoric boats get bigger, as they get older, they go further and further and then come back and then further and come back. One mother even said to me, her two 20-year-olds recently had to decide, or a while back, a few months back, decide where they should be during this time of self-quarantine.
And they came back home. And it was a long journey away. They were in different countries and they came back.
Who knows how that will work out? But it's a lot of what we're wrestling with has to do with what do we tell our children? How do we work with this? And whilst I'm not suggesting in any way that there's a dam, that we don't tell our children, that we dam up those headwaters and we tell them nothing, no water is coming over the dam wall. On the other hand, of course, none of us want to throw our children into super stormy waters where they just can't navigate, can't make sense of it and feel very unsafe and very stressed. So what is the middle path? This is something that another dear mother said, you know, what is the middle course, the middle path in this? And for me that middle path is this metaphor that I certainly have tried to live out for years with my own children of preparing them for going out into the world.
They go out. The harbour wall is not a gate. There's an opening and out they go.
But as much as possible to have them go out prepared for what they meet with a developmental sensitivity as to as to what to tell them, how much to tell them and how soon. There's there's, of course, the health crisis we're facing and the social crisis, the social crisis born of institutional and long term embedded racism. And when our children are almost inevitably hearing about this, but even if they don't hear about it, how can we prepare them? Because the way I see it, and please, this is just, of course, one person's opinion, but I do not feel that children are colourblind.
They there is a universality to childhood on one hand, which I think we need to hold. But on the other hand, in terms of race, it's it's study after study and very reliable studies tell us that even even toddlers, infants are able to categorise race in very, in very simple, almost simplistic, perhaps ways in at a very young age. Also, I think it's important to understand that research has really disproved that popular belief that children only have racial biases because it's they're directly taught to do so.
That would be the kind of a blank slate thing saying, well, if we don't, if we don't teach that, it's all going to be OK. The other thought that has challenged me for years or reality, really, is that children's racial beliefs are really not not only and not reliably related to that of their parents. I mean, we may think that because we are not racist, anti racist, that our children will grow up that way.
But that discounts what it is that they are going to receive through what one writer said. I remember back almost 20 years ago, talked about the smog of racism. We're breathing it even if we don't know we are.
And so on one hand, it's very important that children will model themselves on our attitudes, on how on what we do and what we say and the stands that we take. And that's terribly important. I don't want to underestimate that.
But there's also a social aspect which they are bound to pick up. Otherwise, perhaps not directly related, but interesting to consider that children, you know, of second generation folk that come to perhaps an English speaking country can speak with a perfect American English, whatever accent in an English speaking country, whilst their parents speak with a strong accent. In other words, they're picking up social influence.
And I think it's very, very important to understand that as parents, there is a kind of an almost an unasked question that is going to arise for young children because their cognitive structures are relatively immature when they're little. And that makes stereotyping the sort of being overly simplistic in looking at issues of race very, very likely and very understandable. And to add, to be able to speak about that and add layers to this and subtlety to it and soften that at times very harsh.
Oh, harsh is the wrong word, but strict categorization that little children make, I think is also important. It's almost like, you know, what I mean by societal influences. Like if a child is, you know, out in the world and they're seeing people that have different hair color, different eye color, different hairstyles, they'll see those differences.
But when they see skin color, they almost certainly pick up that that's treated differently, that somehow something is going on there. And it's almost like a puzzle for children. They pick this up also through this smog, through picture books, children's movies, television, through message that white is preferable.
You know, just the whole image of white, what is white and what is black. And I've personally struggled with this because many of the books that I have read to my children, I must confess, have been that of white children. And I'm becoming more and more aware that I need to question this for myself.
And the reason I've read these books has not been in any way because of color. It's been because they are slower paced. It's been because they're from an earlier time in the 50s, 60s, 70s.
But in the 50s, 60s and 70s, many black authors, brown authors couldn't get their books published. So a special little request to listeners of this podcast. If you know of a minority writers, minority in the U.S. or African-Asian people of color who have written beautiful but slow paced books.
I'm a big fan of books that are a little slower for young children to absorb. If you know of any, please let us know. Get in touch.
Let us know. And we'll post those because I'm on the hunt for that. Very much on the hunt.
The process that I'm talking about, even back in the 90s, was called racial socialization. And many parents of color would socialize their children and teach them how to filter out racial slurs against them. But I think we can do that as majority.
If you're a majority parent, if you're a white parent listening to this, I know firsthand that we can do this as well. But not so much to filter out, but to filter in and teach a majority child, a Caucasian white child, that when they hear a racial slur, to stand up, to step in, to invite that child to join their lunch table, to invite that child to be a part of. You see, for years, my work has been in something called social inclusion.
And I prefer to talk about pro-inclusion rather than anti-exclusion only. I know the two things come together, but I prefer to be pro than anti. And I've taught tens of thousands, to be perfectly honest, children about pro-inclusion in the playground, because their inclusivity comes down to race, but it also is inclusivity in the middle and high schools about homophobic attitudes and slurs against people with different orientations to the norm, to whatever, you know, but minority in that sense.
And to be sensitive to that and not be tolerant, but be actively inclusive and go into the discomfort zone in order to do that. And I find children are amazing when given permission, given tools and given support to do that. I think it's very, very important to talk about this, to really talk about it.
Silence, in that sense, doesn't keep children from seeing what it is around them. They will see it. If we don't address it, then they will still be absorbing it.
And to be able to talk about things that are just simply unfair, using language of perhaps a 7, 8, 9-year-old, that it is unfair, that there is this bias, that there are these things going on in the world. One dad was saying over these last weeks, they've been lighting a candle every night and saying prayers for Mr. Floyd and his family because his younger children felt they needed to do something. Other folk may feel differently in that when they sail their children with their children's boats out into those stormy waters, you might want to have older children come with you on a peaceful, particularly peaceful rally that you know is going to be peaceful.
My personal feeling is that it does no good to expose children to violence. That is where I do draw a line. Perhaps others would see that differently.
Perhaps it is joining a silent vigil, as we did with our kids more recently. Perhaps it is, as we did, pause as a family when the funeral of Mr. Floyd was happening for those 8-plus minutes and all sit quietly together. In whatever way, I feel whatever we bring our children, personally when there is something that can be done age appropriately, then our children both hear from us but also see that some activity is going on about it.
If we say to children that systemic racism is not systemic, that it is just a few bad apples, and we are hearing this a lot, that it is just a few bad apples, I am uncomfortable with giving that message to children because then, for a start, it is not. This is systemic and it has been going on for a very long time. But it actually says, in a sense, we are okay.
If we are not bad, if we are not those kinds of sick people who behave like that, then we are okay. We are off the hook. It is fine.
We are not doing anything wrong, so therefore we are okay. We must be right. For me, I do not want to teach my children passivity in that sense.
Over the years, I have tried very gently to bring my own children, and Catherine and I, my wife, have tried very gently to do that around questions of global warming. We recycle, but we do not do it desperately, but the children have always been involved in that. We just do it because that is kind to our soil and kind to the planet we live on.
But it was active. It was something we could do. We plant gardens.
As little children, we talked a lot about the bees and pollinators, and we planted pollinating, and so on, and so on, and so on. But I will never forget the time when we were travelling across country and my children saw open-cut coal mines when they were 12 and 13 years old, and just tears streaming down their face as they looked at that, because they felt it viscerally. They felt it within their souls, within their being.
They did not have a bunch of just intellectualized information. They had been planting gardens for bees to pollinate the fruit tree, and so on. And then they saw that, and it was within them, not outside them, as an abstract concept.
Likewise, homelessness. I'll just give three quick examples, if I may. I certainly don't mean to over-personalize, but I also don't want to hold this away from, you know, no one wants to away from oneself and say this is not anything to do with me.
And these are just struggles, and this could sound good to some people and not so good to others. This is a very tender issue at the moment. But I remember my children having large questions about homelessness.
In our town, there's a very large number of homeless people on the streets asking for support, asking. And that's the way we put it to our children. They weren't only asking for money.
These people were asking for kindness, to be able to see them and not walk by as if they don't exist, because so much of society does that. But also they were asking for support. So when my kids were relatively small, they were, let's see, about eight and ten years old, around that age, they were talking to a homeless person one day, as we would quite often, and they got talking about making jewelry, because they were making friendship bracelets and all kinds of things, just simple beads and silver wire and just wire, you know, not valuable silver wire, just wire.
And so they came back to this homeless person, and they brought them a little kit and showed who was very interested in this. And they shared ideas about how they could do that. And then this homeless person, who did happen to be from a minority, but that in this case was a part of it, but not the entirety of it, they started making jewelry together.
They couldn't wait to get back. And then other homeless people from the street, and there were many, joined in. And so there wasn't enough wire and beads, and there wasn't enough thread to make friendship bracelets.
So my two kids got their dog walking money, and they used to charge a dollar per dog walk. People in the neighborhood were getting a great bargain. And they bought a bunch of materials and made up lots of little bags of materials that they then took back as soon as they possibly could for everyone to be able to do this, and then be able to sell.
And a number of those people started making friendship bracelets, making jewelry. And the girls really thought of them as their friends, actually my kids thought of them as people they knew that they would see. Now that might not be the right solution for everyone, but it was meaningful, very meaningful to my children.
And then there are issues around race. And I've been introducing, and Catherine and I have been introducing these issues very gently, right from the early days of having dolls and so on, of play objects of different races, different colors, being able to have, and taking as much care as we could to have play dates and friendships with diverse folk, if that's possible for you. But it was for us, and didn't make a big fuss about it, didn't talk a lot about that, not overly much, we just did.
We also made a point of the donations and so on and so on and so on. But where that led, and that would be as they grew, very often questions and conversations at the dinner table about unfairness, injustice, what we could do about it, why it happened, about how it wasn't just a few bad apples, but this was something that was just with us all and we needed to stand against. Asking the children where did they see it, how could they take stands against it.
So my daughter, she identifies as straight, that's the term she uses, but all sorts of other terms of course. But she became the coordinator and leader of her spectrum group, the LGBTQAI plus group in her school, and attended many conferences, many marches, many demonstrations about LGBTQ rights. And then decided at 16 to try to get an internship with the ACLU in their immigrant rights department.
And she would be at 16, 17 years old, right in the teeth of ICE raids, supporting mothers, supporting children, doing whatever she could, right as the raid was going on in the aftermath of it, they were racing cars. And she worked and continues to, she's 18 now and continues to work with the ACLU. But the interesting point is that that kind of activism gently came about, gently, gently, gently came about.
My older daughter, for example, is now very active in the permacultural movement and she sees ecology as where she can make a stand. Now, who knows where our kids make stands, some of them are more obvious, some of them are not. But it's this, and I wanted to give those examples, and not over personalise, but give those examples.
Some of you may feel that that is not the right thing to have done, others, yes it was. But essentially, I'm hoping we can all hold back judgement of each other, because this is a conundrum that we're all trying to work out. But to do nothing is on one hand not an option, but to overwhelm our children with too much too soon is also not another option, I feel.
Many of white parents that I've been speaking to, and I am a white male, have been saying it doesn't feel right to have our children be safe and be secure, and have people, children of colour and families of colour not be safe and secure. And I totally get that feeling, when I personally experience that, this may not be the case for others, but for me I can trace that back to feeling somewhat of shame born of privilege. And there's a question, you know, should I not have my own child feel secure, because other children don't have that privilege? It's a very delicate question, but the world does not need more traumatised people, it needs children who are going to grow up and take that on.
And through the simplicity parenting movement over the years, and all the people listening to this, you dear simplifiers, we've been trying to go through these famous four layers of simplicity of having our homes decluttered. But what that means when you really look at what decluttering is, is it's not buying in to materialism, it's not buying in to essentially white dominated marketing practices, trying to sell our families and our kids stuff that we don't need. It doesn't take any money to not buy more toys and books, and that's available to anyone, any race, any colour, any socio-economic standing.
Also, with having more rhythm and predictability in a home, again, that's available to anyone. We have over a thousand coaches now, simplicity parenting coaches in the world, in Africa, in Asia, as well as white majority countries. And these strivings that we have are available to anyone because they're so simple, so basic.
At what level they can be applied is different according to our home lives. For example, I've noticed often that people of white privilege, now I do mean not just white privilege, but I mean extreme economic privilege, really struggle with simplifying. This is a universal issue.
What they don't struggle with, of course, goes without saying, is a life based on that kind of privilege, of course. But the third layer of not over-scheduling our children, particularly with underserved communities, is very interesting. I've done countless workshops in very underserved communities.
And this conversation around how much do we need to do to have our children get ahead when everything's stacked against them? But how much is too much so that it stresses them out? And this is a very individual conversation according to communities and according to families. And everyone can find their own level. And then finally, there's this difficult question about filtering out adult information.
And I've spoken about this before, and I wanted to clarify that a little bit more today, as I have, is that to be able to put things in the way I've been talking about, to talk to children about unfairness, to have them be active in dealing with that at school, in the playground, and be able to talk about that with them in a way that's appropriate to their age, and not stressing them, not having them develop that cumulative stress which ends up in a trauma response, but actually has them feel active, has them feeling that their parents are seeing this, and doesn't have a silence around the issue. But on the other hand, doesn't have the world shouting at volume to them within their ears, but that individual decision that we make when we speak to our children about it. Because, as some of you know, there's four mantrams of is it true, kind, necessary, and securing.
That is tilted to each individual's own way of wanting to raise their child. And I respect, of course, every choice made around that. In terms of when children are dealing with issues around real puzzles around homelessness, and the question my daughter asked was, why are so many black and brown people homeless? There's not so many white people who are homeless, at least on our streets.
That's different on others, I know. And to be able to talk about that, to talk about the injustices, to talk about what we would call systemic racism, to be able to deal with that in that way, talk about it openly, and then to be able to take action that is age appropriate. I come full circle back to this lovely way of putting it that Adir Simplifier, part of the Simplicity Community, talked about the middle path.
I've been also using that term, the middle way, the middle path. I hope this has been helpful. Again, I want to say in wrapping up, because this is one of the longer podcasts that I've done, but necessarily so, that I hope this has been helpful.
I don't in any way mean to put out anything other than my own way of seeing it, with all the biases that I have, that each one of us has, but I, of course, personally have as well. Again, I think the individual decisions that we make around this, of is it true to our family values? How do we speak to our children and keep our family values intact? Is it necessary to speak to our children? And it's not only necessary, but how? If it is necessary, I hope some of the leading thoughts today will give some ideas of how, or at least some examples. Is it kind? Do we put it in a way that isn't just aggressive, violent, and angry, but can we reach out into the world from a place that we wish to do kindness in our family? And will it have my child feel safe within this harbour, and deal with the guilt of that? I understand that, but enable them to go out into the world and become little social activists, to then bigger and larger and larger, until the point comes where, when conversations come up like this, when they're perhaps mummies or daddies, that they will in turn be able to lean in to the conversations that we had with them when they were that age, and hopefully be able to see the wisdom in that, and be able to talk to our grandchildren in a way that through our small little step in that way, we can start, through the generations, to make this stance for activism and genuine inclusion.
I hope that's helpful. Okay, bye bye for now.
