Hello and welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kimjohn Payne. Today I wanted to revisit a theme that came up recently in a conversation with a couple of parents to do with how to give a direction that kids both understand and actually do will follow through and listen to us when we give a direction. The first thing to understand about directions in my book is to know the difference between a direction and a request.
And this, I covered this in the Soul of Discipline book, but it's come up many times since then and I want to give a few illustrations about how this works. Today many times when I'm just, you know, in the supermarket, the library, airport, just around the neighborhood, you know, I hear really well-meaning, kind, good parents giving their kids requests. It sounds something like, shall we all go home now? What about we get in the car? Or wouldn't it be nice if we all put our coats on? How about we? And it's lovely actually in many ways because what it does is that it models children politeness and when I ask parents about why they make these kinds of requests, that's usually the response.
And, you know, good for them actually. We need more politeness and respect in the world. However, could you sense the however was on its way? However, it leaves children sometimes or perhaps often unsure of what's going on because on one hand, they hear a parent making a request and so they get that, you know, kids are literal and that's the speech centers in their brain haven't developed to the point where they can really pick up a lot of the nuances of that language-based, okay, I'm making a request, but I'm really telling you something.
Many kids don't get that, for real, they don't. So kids hear us asking, but underneath it, they pick up that we're actually telling. We're telling them to do something.
Shall we all get into the car now? You know, and you're looking at your watch, you're, they've got that slight sort of movement towards the car, you're looking there, your body language is saying we've got to go. And yet the child is receiving a question. Many kids are really good at picking up what's going on inside us.
They read an adult, they scan an adult. It's one of their survival mechanisms. It's built into their sort of ancient survival modes is to be able to scan the people around them to know what's going on because they're just little, they don't have physical strength, they don't have, you know, they can't defend themselves, they're very, very vulnerable.
But what they can do is they can really attune themselves to the emotions that are flowing around them. Even though they might not put it into words, and it's not strictly speaking a cognitive ability. What it does for a young child is they're scanning their environment for emotions.
And what they're trying to do is sense whether they're safe or not. It really is a very basic function neurologically, but it's very, very well attuned. And when a child hears a question, which is a request, but that's the outer voice, but the inner narrative of a parent is get in the car.
Might be pleased, but we have got to go. And yet they hear, shall we get in the car? Or wouldn't it be nice if? Or how about we all? When they hear that, and yet they sense inside that something else is going on, that triggers a threat response. That triggers this good old amygdala response, the fight flight, freeze or flock.
Fight and flight are well known. They might fight us back saying, no, I don't want to, right? Or they might run. They might just simply take off.
Little kids will do that, but they also might freeze. And that means they just get really stubborn and saying, no, I won't. And there's a kind of a stubbornness.
Or the flocking is when there's a couple of siblings and they kind of get together and just kind of try and outnumber a parent. Out voice, outnumber, outgun, so to speak, the parent. And the parent is left standing there thinking, I'm trying to be polite.
I'm trying to be nice. And then comes the blow up. Would you please just get in the car now? And again, the children are not only confused, but that crucial piece of safety, which they're looking for in their life, just got eroded a little bit.
So the problem with requests is that it leaves children often unsure of what it is that they're meant to do. But more importantly than that, in my book, is that it starts to erode their trust in this parent who cares for them more than life itself. And it's a very bitter irony to see children who are raised on too many choices, too many requests, and the parent is just trying to raise polite, respectful kids.
But actually what happens is that you get a child who can read as being very disrespectful, and they don't mean to be disrespectful. They're just in amygdala hijack. They're just now responding out of a fear, a fear response.
So the alternative is to learn how to give kindly directions. To be able to give a child a direction gives a child, well, a direction. Directions give direction.
It gives a child a place to go, and it crucially matches the inside voice with the outside voice. Something like, now it's time to get in the car. We can say that perfectly kindly, but there is definitely there a clarity that a child receives.
A real clarity. Now it's time to get in the car. That kind of thing, we're all going to put our coats on now.
This is a crucial part of having a child feel safe and secure. Now here's one more thing. Is that for younger children up to about the age of eight or nine, we optimize giving a direction or an instruction, right? Because instruction gives inner structure.
Direction gives direction. Request leads to confusion. When we give a direction or an instruction to a child, particularly younger ones, actions should go first and words should go second.
What I mean by this is that if we're asking children, if we're giving a child a direction, let's say to get ready to go outside, so when we're at our best is when we go to wherever we keep a coat. Let's say we go to the closet. We get our coat out.
We get the child's coat out and we start to put our own coat on first, right? So we slip our coat on or we put our coat nearby us and then we take the coat and we put it on the child saying, now it's time to put our coats on. Because it's true, we're both doing it. We're both going out outside.
But what it's doing is, it's again to the brain science of this, it's firing a child's what's called mirror neurons, but which basically translates out as imitation. One aspect of it is imitation. Children swim in a world of imitation, right? We know that if we're doing something that is purposeful, let's say where we're washing the dishes or scrubbing the pans, they will very often, little ones will pull up their stool beside us and start helping.
It's not particularly helpful, but it is awfully nice that they make that. You can tell when something meaningful is happening by the fact that a young child will imitate it. They don't imitate senseless stuff, things we're not thinking about, things that aren't particularly and sold or really done well.
But if we're concentrating on something, if we're creating something, doing something, then very often a child will imitate. Now, back in the 1990s, some professors at a university in Italy discovered or they really crystallized research around this aspect of the brain called mirror neurons. Now, in these diaries, we've mentioned this a little before, but in this context, what happens is that if a child sees us, their mom or their dad, their caregiver, teacher, whoever it is, putting our coat on first or indicating that this is what we're going to do, symbolizing it, it could be now it's time to get in the car, right? But before that, we pick up the keys.
The keys are the symbol, the car keys are the symbol of going to the car. It doesn't have to be we walk out to the car, you know. But very often, actually, there's symbols of things or there's the actual thing, right? Now it's time to set the table for dinner.
But before we do that, we might get the tray out and put the glasses on like we always do. And that symbolizes to a child, but they also see it really practically, and they register the action. So, in other words, if we want a child to move along with us and not go into an amygdala hijack and fight, flight, freeze, or flock, if we stimulate the child's mirror neurons, if we stimulate the child's imagination, that stands a very good chance of preventing the child going into refusal, right? Then they don't refuse the direction so often.
And even if they're a little bit reticent, it makes the situation more malleable because you're putting your coat on. Maybe a little sister is getting her boots on. We're in going outside-ness, going outside-ness.
There's a gesture of here is what we're doing. And we're not just saying it, we're doing it. That's the water our little children, their little fish selves swim in, so to speak.
That's really what they're doing. So, try it out before giving a direction. Make an action.
Do first, speak second. Okay, now, there's one more thing. When you do speak, okay, make it a two by two direction.
It actually is two by two by two. What I mean by this is when you give a direction to a child, make sure your two feet are firmly planted on the ground. In other words, you're not moving.
You're not going places, dashing about. For that, you know, let's say it's coats and you're putting on your coat and then you turn to a child, put your feet on the ground, two feet down, stop moving, bring your whole body language to bear with the child, gently, of course. And now it's time to put our coat on.
You're not doing it on the fly. You're not doing it as you're turning around. You're not doing it as you're moving off in the other direction.
Because a child will imitate that. They'll imitate your distraction. The mirror neurons don't just work at good times.
They work all the time. And they're going to be, if you're moving and you're darting about, doing things, getting ready, putting things in the basket, putting things in backpacks, their mirror neurons will be imitating that. Now, you've said put your coat on and they're not and you get mad.
But what inwardly their imitation is doing is that they are imitating, inwardly living through a whole bunch of movement. And they can't take on board what the direction actually is. And you think, well, I told them.
But actually, number one, you haven't shown them first. And number two, you haven't stood still and avoided a whole bunch of inner neurological mixed messages. So that's the first two, two feet down.
Second two is two feet away. Don't be 10 or 15 feet away giving a direction. Two feet down, two feet away.
And with your eyes kindly and softly, two eyes softly looking at the child. Not look and you might say, no, but I always do that. And actually, think about it and check it out through the week.
Because so often we give directions to children and we're looking here and there. And our eyes will move in that one sentence in three or four directions. And a child knows that they pick it up.
They don't cognitively, intellectually know it, but they pick it up. So two feet down, two feet away, and two soft eyes looking at the child. Two by two by two.
So rounding off now, if you want a child to creatively comply and just move along with the day, first of all, avoid requests. Really become aware this week of trying to dial back the number of requests you make and replace them with kindly instructions and directions. A request goes up often at the end of the sentence.
Shall we all get into the car? It goes up. A direction is, now it's time to get in the car. It goes down at the end.
I don't mean to be too sort of reductionistic about it, but a direction very often goes down at the end of the sentence and a request goes up at the end because it implies a question, a choice. That's number one. Number two is act first, wherever possible.
Move and act first, then give the direction second. And number three is two by two by two. So move to the coat, stop, give the direction, and then put the child's coat on.
This is this three-step sequence of how particularly younger children can stand a much, much greater chance of being able to just simply move with the day. And it's a lovely thing to do. It really is beautiful to see a parent master this because there is a bit of mastery involved.
There's a little bit of practice involved, consciousness, because we're so used to making requests or slightly harsher directions when we get fed up. We're so used to moving all over the place and where most of us are pretty unaware of this mirror neuron stuff whereby we don't show a child what we're expecting them to do. We just tell them.
And that's one of their weak points as little children is the speech centers of their brain development. So I hope this is helpful. It's been helpful to a bunch of parents.
It's really creative. It's very elegant. And it just feels plain right.
Okay, bye-bye for now.
