Hello and welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John-Payne. This is the third part in our series, our small series, on sibling issues, tensions, rivalries, and how we can ease them. One of the ways that has proven mildly to remarkably successful, depending on the family, over the years is having kids work with you and having kids work together.
And let me just describe what I think is going on here and why this is one of the primary ways to help kids when they're not doing very well together, be able to feel a little bit more of a common sense of purpose, which is what work does. Meaningful work, work that contributes to the family. I don't just mean chores, but work such as baking together, gardening together, these kind of activities that can be at the core of a family.
If you live in a rural area, maybe like I do, my kids for years and years have been involved in animal chores together. And they've been involved in chopping and splitting wood and stacking wood together. It's whatever you can do, whether you're in a rural setting, a suburban or urban setting.
Step back and have a think. What could my kids actually do together? Build that sense of togetherness. And this can be established way ahead of time.
It can be used as a help right when kids are having problems. But most of all, it can be used ahead of time. What I mean by that is that when you're working with kids, what happens? Let's say you're engaged, you're doing some kind of baking, let's say, and they enjoy to bake.
And you have a couple of kids who have just been raised that way to contribute in the kitchen. I know a lot of families do that, including my own. So you're baking together.
One of the things that happens that I've mentioned in previous podcasts is that the mirror neurons of a child, very powerfully up until about the age of six, seven, eight, are at work. And then after that, they're still absolutely at work. Just in the early years, they're in a very powerful influencing sort of stage.
But you start doing stuff and the mirror neurons in the brain will mirror your activity. They'll mirror what you're doing. And little children will pull their chairs up beside you and get really involved in what you're doing.
And then the other one is beside you and they're, you know, cutting things out and handing it to you. And then you're handing it to the other one and they're putting it on the tray ready to bake and maybe glazing it. And you've got a real little production line happening.
And that's what you do on – it's particularly best when it's like rhythmical, when it's on a Saturday morning or a Saturday afternoon is what we do and we bake. In my family, we used to very often when the children were little and they still do it to this day, is that Saturday late afternoons when all the work was done, we would get baking for our dessert that evening. That's something they all took part in.
But in a sense, what you're doing is the children are imitating, the mirror neurons are firing. But they're not just firing on your activity, on your movements. They're also at work in terms of your attitude actually, just the way in which you're happy, you're baking, there you are.
And mirror neurons very much pick up on that as well. And the child's own inner world shifts to that attitude as well. We all know that well, don't we? Often kids pick up on our emotional direction and our emotional state.
Well, that's the mirror neurons, right? So as much as you can do things together with siblings, if you've got a small yard, perhaps, that you're planting together, that you're putting seedlings in, or it might be you're a part of a community garden in a very urban setting. And even if you're not, you might consider joining up, really, almost singularly for this reason. Because if this is going to help your kids develop a sense of shared purpose, and shared purpose is what it's all about, then it's going to be worth it.
It's going to be worth it on every level, but particularly on their relationships with others. Because these days, kids are so prone to not sharing and having a sense of shared purpose, because they each have their own devices, they go off to their rooms, and they can be masters of their own universes without really intersecting with each other much during a normal family week. And that's also one of the other drivers of a lot of issues with kids, is that they're doing so much individually where they're completely in charge.
And when they then come to interact with each other, it's very important, I find, that first of all, they do interact, but a way to have them interact is to have a sense of shared purpose, shared work, shared fun. Because that then counterbalances a lot of the more isolationist kind of development that surrounds so many kids these days. Likewise, you can do this through things like many families have Saturday night board game nights, where the board game comes out, or Saturday and Sunday night, or whatever.
You can also achieve this through fun, through doing things that are fun together. One dad was recently telling me that after we talked a lot about sibling issues, he had older kids, and they were not doing well, these two. And so he decided, we talked this over a bit, but he decided to build an obstacle course.
He had a small backyard in a suburban setting, but he and he had two boys, kids who were identified as male, they were boys, who got out in the yard and they built a ramp, which he actually sent me a photograph of. It was quite a construction, and the two boys got busy making that ramp. They made all kinds of things for their BMX bikes, these bikes where you can really do acrobatic things.
And they built all kinds of stuff, and it took them weeks and weeks and weeks to build it. And the dad said there was a lot of working together in that, a lot of disagreement, a lot of having to see things different ways, literally draw things differently, draw it out, build it. And the dad didn't have any particular building skills.
He was okay, apparently, by the looks of things, he could figure it out. There was probably a lot more screws and nails used than a carpenter would, I recognized that. But then the kids started playing with it, and they had ownership of it because they built it.
And then they played with it for hours and hours. Now, I really admired this dad because he was getting into a very frustrated, almost shouting-like stage where he was on a short fuse. He'd had enough with all this sibling stuff.
He knew that kids would fight, but for him, this had gone overboard. And so he took this advice about having kids work, but I also spoke to him about fun. And he went away and came up with this really great idea.
And what a great dad to actually do that. And I said that to him, and he said, no, not really. It is just so much better to channel their energy into doing that than it was just to hear them going at each other.
So kids doing work together. It's such a beautiful thing. Now, there's one last thing I wanted to cover, and that's mixed ages with kids working.
And this can be a really lovely thing, is that when you have, let's say you've got a nine-year-old and a six-year-old and a four-year-old. Just saying, you know. And one of the things that nine-year-olds often comes up for them, is they get really frustrated with the lack of ability, fine and gross motor skills and such, with younger kids.
But here's the thing about work, is if you set this up, if you're, for example, imagine this dad building this stuff outside, building ramps and building little jumps and all kinds of things. Then you could have a four-year-old out there, no worries at all. But what would the four-year-old be doing? Well, he, if it was a he, would be holding the beams in place.
Or maybe he would be on his little tricycle bringing the materials over, riding backwards and forwards providing the materials. Maybe he'd be holding it in place so the big one could drill in, could screw in the screws. So he's got his job, you know, to his ability, the four-year-old.
The nine-year-old can do more, but now they're cooperating. And I've suggested this to countless numbers of parents over the years, is that when you have mixed-age kids, plan out some work and then have them do what they can. If it's a baking project, for example, a 12-year-old is going to be able to do way more, read the recipe, come up with all kinds of other ideas and be able to do a whole bunch more.
But that five-year-old, four-year-old, they could maybe still paint the tops of the scones and glaze them, you know, and then put them on the tray carefully. So when you do work and you're designing, you know, meaningful, purposeful work, have also a thought to how can you break this down according to the gross and fine motor skills that children of different ages have and then just completely compliment and affirm everyone for doing it, that that's just so helpful. And then to the little one and to the bigger one, turn almost a wink and say, you know, that was really, I love it when you say that to your little brother.
You know, he feels so good. Well done, you. And a nine-year-old, a 12-year-old is just going to grow a foot when they have a parent recognize that kind of tendency and notice how kind they can be.
That kind of working together is something that's very important when kids start going at each other, to be able to say to them, you know what, you were perfectly kind to your little brother yesterday when we were baking. You really helped him and were kind to him. What you just said was really unkind.
And I know, I know that's not really you. I know I've seen you, I've really seen you care and be kind to your brother. Now, in order to be able to say that authentically, you have to have been able to see it.
And so, if you're setting up situations where you do see it, then when kids do come into conflict with each other, you can remind them, you really can remind them how well they did in previous situations and how, okay, we're not doing so well now, but that's not the whole world. Because when kids get in conflict, it's almost like the whole world. They become very subjective and they get very involved in winning the argument.
But if in that moment you can bring the big picture, the objectivity, then it's almost like you're the holder of the line. You know, you're the holder of the truth. They're involved in this skirmish right now, but you're holding the bigger picture and kids will hear that.
It's almost like soul anika. It's almost like a balm to a bruised, angry soul that kids are fighting each other, that you just remember how well they were doing just on the weekend, how well they built that fort together or whatever it was. When we went cycling and your little sister's bike needed repairing, you did so well.
You stopped and you helped her put all that back on and it's that. It's that kind of thing. But we've got to be doing that kind of thing, right, to be able to authentically say it.
So this working together both helps kids when they are having difficult situations and beforehand as well. Because when they're in an argument, allowing 10, 15, maybe 30 minutes for the kids to calm down a little bit, but if you then say, Come on, let's just get out the baking. Come on, let's just go out to the garden and see what we can do.
Then the kids are into a groove. They're into a slipstream and they'll come out and work together again. And so much, I find, of the way kids make up is through doing things together.
I'm not a big fan of forced apologies where kids say things like, Well, sorry. It's not great, right? But if a parent, rather than forcing a child to apologize, says, You know what? I just think we need to cool on down and then it's a nice day today. We're just going to go outside and see what we can do to finish off getting the fort ready to have a sleepover.
Then the kids are on board, much more likely to be on board, because they're entering into a practical, doable slipstream. Okay. Hope that's helpful.
Bye bye for now.
