Welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John Payne. This week there seems really an obvious call to be talking about events around the world to do with this coronavirus that is causing us as parents to really pause and things are changing now and they'll be changing looks likely more and more over the coming weeks and maybe even months ahead. Today what I wanted to talk about is preparing kids for this.
I mean they're seeing it in the news obviously, they're hearing about it and there's two aspects to this and I wanted to talk about these two aspects of preparation in this podcast and then be able to talk more in coming series with the whole question of so how do we handle more and more and more time at home with our kids because for many of us that looks likely that that's going to be coming up with school closings. Now handling that time at home with our kids and having them also be able to handle it is going to take a little preparation. Right now the school closings are starting.
By the time you listen to this podcast there might be more schools closed and the predictions are that's going to be happening quite a bit. So preparing kids for this is going to be very important. Now one aspect of preparing our children for this is on the emotional side, the psychological side.
There's been good information circulating around that. From simplicity parenting, from this kind of lens, there's a few things that that can be done in preparing them for this and one is to assure our children that good people are working on this, that doctors and nurses and lots of people who work in hospitals and clinics are you know working very very hard on this and that they know what they're doing, they are trained in this and that they're getting ready and they're taking good care of anyone who gets sick. That's what these people do and they do it so well and for younger children in particular who might be picking up on this, it's an important piece to let them know, to give them you know honest evaluation of the situation to say yeah there is a flu at the moment and oh gosh it does make us feel awful when we get the flu we get and even a little bit of information about their bodies you know we get a cough and oh all our legs get get achy and maybe even a headache and we just and and let them know that you've had that before that that because most people have had a flu and to say you know oh yeah mommy has had a flu before and if it's an older kid you might say yeah and you've you've had the flu before too and we get the right treatment we take good care of ourselves and we come through.
Now they'll hear that of course that some people have died and to say to them yep that's that's quite right people die of all different kinds of things and it really does depend on the age of the child how you pitch this but yeah that's actually true love but at the moment the people who get really sick with this is not not young people like you you are pretty sure to that if you even if you did get a little bit of a flu you would get over it pretty quickly and you'd be fine after that and that we'll we'll make sure that even if one of us does get the flu we go and see those good and kind people and they will make sure that we'll be okay and to give that kind of information I don't think it's fudging the truth because of the way this virus is affecting certain age groups and to give them that message I think it's important some people have been speaking to and I've been speaking to a lot of parents who have been calling in this and this week and last week about how to speak to their kids the question has come up about older people because some kids are getting the information that this is really affecting old older and the question comes up is grandma is grandpa going to die and that's sort of that that question is classic question particularly for a child between about the age of sort of five six up until about eight nine ten that question will come up a lot it will come up with maybe with younger ones but that's unlikely but certainly older ones might pose that question but in a more informed way those kids in the middle age group five six seven eight nine they have a they have a strong sense particularly around eight nine they have a strong sense of mortality that starts now they start becoming aware that that people you know die and that that life has a cycle and to be able to say to them you know Nana and grandpa are being very careful they are at home there they are careful of who they're seeing they're taking doing all the things that that the people who know about this stuff are telling them to do and if they do that then they the chances of them being very very safe are pretty good I think that that they're doing everything right and to be able to and some kids may even ask what that is and you can you know give them the protocols that we're all hearing so much about but to really let them know that Nana and grandpa are being smart that they're really got all the information they need and that they're taking good care of themselves and that they have people around them who are also know what they're doing and even if they were to get sick they they have people who help them stay well that's not denying the danger of this but it's giving the children actually the truth all all of that will be true the other aspect of talking to children or being with children within this crisis really is not so much to do with them but to do with ourselves one of the things that some parents have been saying to me is that they're limiting their their exposure their own exposure as adults to the news media to one or two times a day and I've been really impressed with parents who have got on to this because the way in which the brain works is that if we hear a newscast telling us something a little bit scary or quite scary the brain will of course as we know excrete a hormone hormones cocktail that largely largely sort of fire our fight-or-flight freeze or I would add flock to that the amygdala response that primal ancient survival brain and as parents I think it's even more likely that causes us anxiety because we're protecting our kids you know and and so our instinct to provide protect is very strong as a parent very strong so we're easily triggered into anxiety that that cocktail that hormonal cocktail gets released when we hear a report is much more easily released fact is though if we hear almost an identical report half an hour later on this with sort of slightly breathless news you know a way of reading the news that hormone will release again even though it's the same report and then we'll hear it again half an hour later it may have changed just a little bit to capture our attention and it happens over and over and we soon start our anxiety levels start to rise and rise and rise and our kids particularly when they're hearing this kind of news around them you know even though we might not be exposing them to that we'll talk about in a moment but they are going to pick up on it and they need us to be able to co-regulate they need us to be able to be as calm and as centered as we possibly can be it was in a lecture that I was giving years ago out on the west coast of the United States where I worked with a gentleman called Joseph Chilton Pierce and I've mentioned this analogy once before in one of the earlier much earlier podcasts where he said something quite striking he said that if you take a cell out of a live heart and put it in a certain solution and look at it under a microscope the heart cell will keep beating at the same pace but sooner or later we'll start to fibrillate and then expire however if you take a cell from a completely different heart and place it proximal nearby that fibrillating that expiring heart cell the fibrillating cell will actually recover and start beating again and the two will beat in unison that was really a beautiful not just metaphor but reality that so explained for me co-regulation that when our children are nervous and a little anxious and what's going on in our school is closed and life is shifted and changed can we as much as possible come alongside them with a steady beating heart with a steady beating presence so that they can then co-regulate with us and have their hearts their emotions their sense of security and safety increased and and that feeling of okay this is a bit weird but all it's okay all is well I'm gonna be fine we're gonna get through this so that they don't go into fight-or-flight themselves what's really important about this and I was mentioning this just yesterday to one of the many interviews I've been doing my phone has been ringing quite a lot lately with requests for interviews from various magazines and newspapers about this very subject is that one of the points I think is crucial and perhaps one of the major points of this podcast is that if we can secure our children in this way and stay as regulated as we can then their behavior while they're at home will be much easier to guide they won't be on an adrenaline cortisol fueled anxiety driven behavioral bend they won't be pushing back against us they won't be refusing to do stuff they won't because we're going to be spending a lot of time with them chances are for many of us we're going to be spending a lot of time with our kids coming up and if we're going to be spending that amount of time with them we can use that time to co-regulate we can even go one step further and the silver lining in this tragedy and let's not forget it's such a tragedy for the people who have have died as a result of this of course but the silver lining in it is that it offers us a chance to really connect on a deeper way with our children it offers us this this chance to move in close to regulate our own emotions to really dial back the amount of screens that and the amount of radio that we are listening to about this of course we've got to stay informed but once or twice a day that's kind of it and this offers us a chance to get closer to our children to connect with them and in that way you know we're really able to come out of this when it passes as indeed it will when it passes we'll come out of it just like in a way I was describing this to one of the people who I was doing this interview with is that when you've been sick and when you have a fever when a child has a fever very often they you know they'll be they'll fight off the fever and gosh it's it's hard but they'll come out of the fever on the other side almost like having grown developed six to twelve months they are much stronger now I don't mean I don't mean to relate that to the corona virus and the fever for children I mean that as a metaphor that when when something hard has happened but it's being well handled one can come out of it stronger and what I'm suggesting is that this very difficult time just like a fever is difficult this very difficult time that we're in right now if we move in close to our children connect with them be able to be with them and use this time to deepen that connection when in the coming weeks and months this begins to fade and and life resumes as normal we may well have a much deeper connection with our with our child one parent said to me that in terms of their own emotional regulation that they're trying not only very hard to have less radio less TV they want to stay informed but she was very practical about it she actually said she is getting her news of course away from the children but in the morning and she's avoiding any newscasts or anything remotely to do with media in the run-up to her own bedtime and she also said she's increasing the amount of what she's doing that feeds her that gives her a feeling of groundedness now for this for this young mom it was exercising working out and doing yoga at home all of this was happening at home because her school had already closed and she was using the time she was spending at home to actually be able to do the things that calm and center her more I've mentioned this to a number of a number of parents over the last week or two and some of them said other things like I've got more time at home so I'm gonna get that pantry sorted out I'm gonna sort out the cupboards I'm gonna sort out the basement that was one mom's I'm gonna do a simplification of the house I've been meaning to do this well actually she said I did it some time ago and now I need to do it again as we know you know it all sort of creeps up on us but she was going to use this as as a way to do it do a simplification regime another dad he talked about just doing more reading that he loved to read and he was going to be doing that he was going to be doing more reading out loud with his children and had that already planned another mom actually said to me that she's planning and doing more artwork and plans on doing it more but that's one of the things she loves to do and last on my list because I made a list of all these things parents were telling me is that one mom said she's going to do a lot more journaling and I said I suggested oh gosh well another mom said to me that she's not going to be listening to media of a night time only in the morning to get informed and then setting that aside and this other mom was grateful for that she said perfect I could do the same but I could journal in the evenings rather than listening listening into the media and getting scared I'm going to journal about all the things that I've been meaning to write down for a long time I was so pleased to hear so many parents get onto this need for our own regulation and what will regulate us it could be for you it could be very different for you it could be getting baking you know and doing if you love to do that cooking baking it any number of of different things will work and what's particularly a benefit for this is that when we do that we calm our own nervous systems down we we we really do in on a body based way but also an emotional way we calm things down and that's going to become increasingly important for our children so it's not only really about them and the information that they're hearing it's I feel as much if not more this is to do with what we can do with self-care eating well getting enough sleep doing the things we enjoy to do that that nourish us that will enable us to more our emotional canoe right alongside her child and say I've got you I'm with you you're safe here you're okay here in next week's podcast will be talking more about about what to do when our children are going to be home many of them are going to be home a lot more okay I sure hope this was helpful bye bye now
