Hello and welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Ken John Payne, the author of Simplicity Parenting, Soul of Discipline, Being at Your Best, When Your Kids Are at Their Worst, and others. I hope it's not too distracting this week as I'm kind of moving around up in my barn with the animals and the goats are particularly vocal this morning, so if you hear some background noises you'll know what's going on. This week I've had an interesting bunch of conversations with parents, at least half a dozen actually, who have been living through the times we are, looking at play dates, social life and trying to make sense of it all and how much is enough.
Some of these questions have come out of folk thinking about homeschooling, others it's come from other directions, just more general direction with a question around social life, and just how much should kids be interacting, when is enough, when is not enough, when is too much, really good question and it's been coming up a lot. Now as I was thinking about this, the term social obesity came up for me, I've never thought of it before, actually never heard of it before, so it's not something you can google and find I don't think, it's just a term that came to me when we were talking. And I use this term with absolute respect, you know, of course, for all the people who struggle with this health issue, it's in no way meant in any other way other than to name this health issue just like any other issue that we face as a widespread health challenge in society today, and the use of it as a metaphor here again is with absolute respect and acknowledgement to the struggle that this issue brings up for so many people in society today.
What is in general I feel many of our kids are suffering from is just being overstuffed with social possibilities, social engagements, with school life and all the social complexity of school life, play dates, multiple play dates, clubs, all kinds of classes and clubs after school and on weekends, it's just this plethora of social engagements, some of them family oriented, extended family oriented, and then friends and going there, and it's just, it's almost like we are giving our children, just we're stuffing them full of social food. They've barely finished one mouthful before they're off to the next social engagement needing to take the next bite and try and get through that before they then are asked to absorb another bunch and it's just like they are overstuffed with social engagements and a certain kind of obesity of just too much of just taking in too much. And the social engagements because there's so many so plentiful tend to not be very well planned, they tend to not have much substance to them, there's just a lot of them, and it really reminded me of research into empty calories, how you can eat a lot of food, but if it doesn't have much nutrition, then you're taking on calories that are rather empty and it'll cause one to eat more and more and more, the body is asking for more, because what one has just eaten didn't really meet the body's need.
And the same thing is true socially, it occurred to me, is that socially we're so full on as a society in having more and more and more, that because the social life of the children is not particularly meaningful when we bring them together in this way, they want more and more and more, because nothing much is in it, nothing much of nutrition is in it, or alternatively, even if it is a good social engagement, and you'd look at it from the outside and think, yeah, you know, that's, that's pretty okay. But the child is still trying to absorb the last three social engagements and trying to chew on those, so even though the play date or whatever it is seems pretty good, or, you know, the little league practice, or the soccer practice, or the Aikido lesson, or the piano lesson, or whatever, it all seems pretty good. But the child literally doesn't have enough time to chew, to swallow, to digest, to absorb, and gain nutrients, you know, and pull the nutrients from one bite, one social bite, before taking another.
And so it reminded me a little bit, I hope this is not going too far, of these gluttonous feasts of the Middle Ages of the medieval time, when there was just this gluttony of food on the table, and, and forgive me, but, you know, bowls provided for people to vomit in and, and then eat again. And that's that, I'm sorry, that is a gross image, but it's true. And, but that kind of vomiting, I think that the, and the reason I, you know, wanted to mention such a, you know, horrible image, is that that is what we receive in the children's behavior.
Actually, that expelling out of what they can't process, often comes out in their really challenging, difficult, antsy, stubborn, sullen behavior, because they've just taken too much into their emotional life, and they're, and they're just expelling it out of their system. But that comes at us in terms of their really difficult behavior. Alternatively, obviously, if we, if we can limit social engagements, the children come to that, to that play date.
I mean, for many of us growing up, certainly for me, there was no such thing as a play date. Maybe younger moms and dads listening to this will have experienced it, but very few people over the age of 40 in their lives ever had a play date, right? It didn't, just didn't happen. And we're okay-ish, aren't we? So the, the having fewer, having fewer social engagements, play dates, fewer afterschool clubs, fewer extended family gatherings, fewer gatherings with friends, with their kids, fewer.
Our children will come to those experiences hungry. And they, and there's just nothing like looking forward to seeing a friend or looking forward to seeing a cousin, as opposed to, you know, whatever, you know, I've had so much, but, but really looking forward and dreaming in all, all through the week that on, that on Saturday afternoon, I'm going to see my, my two cousins and we're going to play this and that, and we're going to do that. And all week the child is, is, is savoring the flavor of that social food until finally it comes.
But through the week, there's plainer food. Through the week, there's just regular, you know, family, low level, just ordinary, nutritious, social food, and it's called family life, right? And the, the, the, the feast, the special food, so to speak, comes in that engagement. That's, that's the sweetie.
That's the special. Rather than having every day be a social dessert, to be able to look forward to that engagement and be hungry for it, what it means amongst many things, of course, is that the children will come into it with more space within their little emotional cups, more space within their being, within their soul, to be able to hold it, enjoy it. So what comes into that cup is far more likely to be held and be nutritious and not spill over the edge into, in, into difficult behavior and, and difficult, difficulty in playing together well.
Because the children, when there's fewer social engagements, will invest more heavily in it going well. It's not easy come, easy go. We can argue, I can walk away.
It doesn't matter because there's another, there's another play date this afternoon. Who cares about you anyway? The children will be invested in it. So when things go wrong, which of course they do, you know, all the time.
When things go wrong, there's just more, what is the, what is the term, skin in the game? Is there just more investment in sorting it out, in working through it, in, in making things better, in figuring out a way forward, which is crucial in a child's social, emotional development. We all know how important that, that thing is in terms of a child's brain development, in terms of their future success in life. And we give them just a beautiful flow into their teenage and into their adult years when they problem solve in that way.
Now they will problem solve in that way and have good grit and good determination to get through the issues that come up in play and all the negotiations that happen in play. If they're invested in it, do you, do you see the linkage? And so in this way, I so hope that we can avoid this real illness of social obesity, of overstuffing our children with social experiences, even though some of them might be perfectly fine. There's just too many of them and be able to bring them into social engagements, hungry and keen and eager, but most of all, able to draw the nutrition that they need from it and that that sets them up for future success in life.
Okay, that's a, that's a big theme, isn't it? It's a really a major, major theme. So I hope the goats and the chickens weren't too distracting. Not sure if you heard them, but this is a busy time of year on the farm.
So often I'm recording these podcasts whilst I'm moving about doing what, what needs to be done. Like us all in one way or another, whether it's a farm out there with fields and animals or whether it's out with a, we're just parent farmers, really just farming within our family. And to learn a little bit more about what we're doing, pop on over to the simplicityparenting.com website.
You'll see a free starter kit there, which has got a seven day membership to the Simplicity Parenting Community. With all these really great home practice guides on how to simplify someone's discipline, how to, how to just be at your best when your kids are at their worst. You can also get our e-news every month.
And if you want to talk to me personally at my private family counseling practice, you can see a link there too. If you just want to dive a little bit deeper into the challenges that you might be facing right now. So anyway, that's it for now.
Hope that was helpful. Bye bye now.
