Hello and welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim-John Payne. This week we'll be continuing on with this theme of spending way more time with our kids. Many children all around the world right now are at home due to school closings because of this crisis around the coronavirus.
And I wanted to share with you some ideas, some aspects of what we can do to make this time a positive, a good time with our children. Now if chances are, if you're listening to this podcast, you in some ways and perhaps a big way in your life are following this simplicity parenting path, this pathway of balancing children's life and balancing family life. And because of that, you are really in good shape with this possibility of your children being at home a lot more.
You're in really good shape for this to be okay, for this time to be, feel more natural, feel fine. If your child hasn't been used to a very, very fast paced life, if you've managed to dial back the scheduling so that it's not an activity every day after school or even sometimes two or three activities after school, then chances are that you've already given your children the gift of boredom. They're used to it.
They're used to turning boredom into creativity. You haven't tried to edutain them at every moment. You haven't tried to fill every, every little gap with some kind of activity or some kind of class, a play date, some kind of other sporting club.
The children have gotten a little bit more used to being able just to be, to self-create, to self-motivate, to not feel that whenever they're bored, they need in some ways some kind of stimulation. If you followed the path of simplicity parenting, even in a modest way, the children will be used to being able to be at home, create, and not be rushing about to nearly the same extent as has become so normal for so many other children. In a sense, what you've done is that you have built your family's arc before the social flood.
Other families right now are scrambling, bless their hearts, but the kids are home and they are really finding it difficult. One mom said when she rang, I hadn't met her before, but she rang and said, my kids are going crazy. They're climbing up the walls, quote unquote.
My heart really went out to her because she was starting from scratch. She had her kids in a very high-velocity, high-paced life and their adjustment was huge. This brings up two things.
Firstly, the benefits of doing what you've been doing, and again, even in a moderate or modest way, the benefits are huge when these kinds of things sweep across the world. This is one of the big events, but also smaller, more personal family crises. Same deal, same thing.
In giving your child a simple, balanced life like this, in allowing them time to decompress, not only will they know how to self-motivate, but crucially, their anxiety levels will be lower, so that when something like this happens, it doesn't overwhelm them. There's space, so to speak, in their little cups for more stuff to come in, like even scary stuff, but they're not already filled to the top with just a very fast-paced, too much, too soon type of lifestyle, so that when any little thing happens, their cup can't hold it and it becomes spillage, and that spillage becomes anxiety, that spillage becomes difficult behavior. So just the fact that you're listening to this podcast, that you're a conscious parent, that you've been interested in giving your child a simple and balanced life, very likely means that they're going to be able to cope with this time at home and the news that's coming up for them in a way that is healthier than, unfortunately healthier, than many other children who have been pushed right to the edge on a daily basis.
I don't mean that in any way for us as a Simplicity community and people interested in this to feel smug, that would be awful. What I mean is that we have prepared, and that even if you've only made the first steps in this preparation over these last years, this may well be a signal to dig in a little deeper and to make more steps and to take action just that little bit more and to say, you know what, we are going to declutter more. We are going to have more rhythm in our lives.
We are going to dial back the scheduling. We really are going to have less screens, less adult information. We really are going to connect in a deeper way as a family.
And so it might signal to you that one needs to dig in deeper on that even if you're doing okay to say, this stuff is going to happen more and more. It's fairly likely. So we have to get our ship in order, so to speak.
So, having said all that, one of the first things that a bunch of parents have started doing, and I mentioned this just in passing in the previous podcast, is they're actually using this time to declutter. It's been over the last week or so since the last podcast, I've had a bunch of emails come in, various postings on forums here and there, that have had parents whose schools now actually have closed and those that are about to, the word is this is quite soon, that they have been decluttering. Decluttering basements, decluttering garages, decluttering kitchenss, pantries, and most of all, decluttering children's rooms.
If your school is on the cusp of a likely close, this might be a perfect time to declutter your children's toys, books, clothes, and just create some space for them. Because when they come home, if they come home and they're going to be there for a week, two or three, who knows, some people in here in the Northern Hemisphere are actually talking about schools closing right through to what would normally be the end of school year. So if your kids are going to be home for this amount of time, even a couple of weeks, how great would it be if they step into a space that is spacious? Because their little beings, their little cup, as I mentioned before, is going to be pretty full, right? They're going to have a lot of information.
It's going to feel really weird that they're home from school like this. And wouldn't it be amazing if they could step into an environment that gives them space when all around them that hasn't been the case? It's been, the world is sort of pressing in. It feels like a lot.
It feels like a lot. And what a great thing if a child could, when they're home for these coming weeks, have less books, less toys, less clothes. And in a world that seems to be very disorderly at the moment and disordered and chaotic, how great will it be if your child's bedroom, playroom, if the kitchen, if things are orderly? This is not nothing.
It's a really big deal. It signals for a child at a deep neurological, social, emotional sense, right at the sort of bedrock of their nervous system, that all is well. It's orderly.
My parents have ordered this house and they've ordered it in a way that they are in a sense taking charge, that all is well. There is nothing like a simple space to help children experience not just the words that you are okay, but the feeling and the visual field that they are okay. Added to that, if they're going to be home for several weeks now, simplifying toys and decluttering and creating this toy library that is well known in the simplicity parenting world will help your children play better.
And that's one thing that we've noticed over many years now with our over 1,000 simplicity parenting coaches and group leaders all around the world is this feedback that when you have fewer toys, your children play better together. And some people have commented how interesting that is and how they wouldn't have thought. But actually, it's not so difficult to understand because when there are fewer toys, when there's just less stuff and the toys that are there are simple, are not the toys that are battery operated, you know, that do stuff that are complicated, that leave a child passive, but they're simple toys, construction material, big cardboard boxes, lots of cloths that they can build cubby houses out of.
This is for more younger children, of course, but just simple stuff like that. What happens is that their creativity is peaked there. They have space to sort of move into that.
Now, when when a child is creative in that way and they're creating all kinds of things with their play, that also is a part of the child's system, their brain that is responsible somewhat for collaboration. So by giving children less toys, having them be more creative, they will be more cooperative and the sibling issues will be easier to sort out. And that's got to be a good thing in these coming weeks when children are going to be together so much.
So an ideal opportunity to declutter, to simplify and have children feel and see that all is well. OK, I again sure hope that's helpful. Bye bye for now.
