Hello everyone and welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me Ken John Payne. This week we released my new book called Being at Your Best When Kids Are at Their Worst. Quite a few of you probably have heard about this, we've been letting people know.
It's a real celebration, you know what it's like when a big project finally gets out there and you just fingers it crossed that it's going to help the people that you always intended for it to help. And so this week a little bit of a celebration of the release of the book, something I don't do a lot, but I'm going to read from a book, from this book, probably one of my favorite sections in all the book, you know, you're not supposed to have favorite kids, right? But this is one of my favorite sections and it comes early on in the book and it's, it's, it's called The Balcony and the Playground. Let's just jump right into it.
My students pulled open the door to a little shed. Yes, they shouted, it's a really big tangle. The rope they stared at was no ordinary rope.
It was bright orange and a couple of hundred yards long. It used to mark out our play area for a games class. I'd learned early on my teaching career that some elementary kids playing tag would rather run to the next town than get caught.
So marking a boundary was a professional necessity. My colleague also used the rope, but often ran out of time at the end of the lesson. And rather than store it neatly, he dumped it into the shed in a spectacular tangled mess.
Bless his disorganized heart. So my class became expert at the heart, at the, at the art, I beg your pardon, of untangling. In fact, they even looked forward to it.
They timed themselves to see how quickly they could do it. They devised two ways to go about it. For the first, they'd send a couple of children up to the tower attached to the old schoolhouse building.
This little tower had a balcony from which you could get a great view of the playground. The kids would look down and from their bird's eye view, they'd call out helpful instructions to the scrum of untanglers below. The second detangling trick the children learned was never pull on a knot.
If you do so, the knot gets badly matted and becomes nearly impossible to use. Instead, they made sure to open up each tangle and create more and more space. With time and effort, the jumble unraveled.
The children would let out a triumphant and collective hoot. The kids called this chore, which they transformed into a fun activity, the knotty game. The metaphor of the kids untangling these techniques is striking, right? You know, we can apply the same principle to all our relationships and in particular to parenting situations.
When we find ourselves in a tangle of emotions with our kids, what do we do? Well, step one, climb the tower and get out onto the balcony. First of all, we need some objectivity and that is never easy to find, I know, but it's essential. It's helpful to climb out onto our own parental tower, stand on the balcony and witness what is playing out.
What needs are not being met that are causing tensions to flare up? This does not mean we detach ourselves from the activity below. Instead, we guide it with a more expansive perspective. From that vantage point, we can be more helpful.
We can identify the snarl that may be forming and call down instructions to ourselves, I not be able to do anything about it. As one mother of three children put it, what helps is that my thinking and observations can influence what I'm doing before things get out of control. Here's a practical way to stand on the balcony without signaling to a child or a teen that you are disconnecting an aloof.
Connect. I can see this is hard for us. Altering your first response changes the direction of an exchange with kids.
Opening a conversation with I can see statement sends a message that you've been watching. It also reassures everyone that you're not getting angry. Most importantly, it subtly reinforces to your child that you are a loving family and here are a few examples.
I can see this is not going so well for you. I can see this really bothers you. I can see that you probably need more some space right now.
We can find out what's bothering you just a little bit later. Okay, so that's the first step I can see. Then the second step on the playground, opening the tangle.
It is so easy to get entangled in blame and frustration. That's when we tug too hastily on the ropes and feel constricted. The more we pull, the tighter the situation knots up until our family ends up in a matted, restrictive mess.
Another possible solution to the problem gets lost in the snarl of misunderstanding and anger. What we need to do instead is open up the space in the knots. Now, in order to do this, get their perspective.
Can you help me understand how you see it? That sentence, can you help me understand how you see it? You see, the truth of any situation is a journey, not a destination. Kids have their own perspective on how a hard situation has come about. Too often, we presume how we see something is the way it is.
As adults, we tend to be more objective, maybe, and grasp more of the bigger picture on a good day than our kids. But we can parent more effectively when we pause and ask them for their viewpoint. It's always better to hear them out first rather than jumping into a problem-solving mode.
The question I like to ask is, can you help me understand how you see it? If there are two or three people involved, you can add, the way you probably see it is different from how your brothers or I do, and that's normal, and that's just fine. If it is just you and your child in a muddle, explain that seeing things differently is perfectly normal. It helps you both maintain your truth and stay connected to your child, because by allowing different perspectives, you're promoting mutual respect.
If siblings are involved, it's common for them to battle to gain your allegiance, and things can escalate quickly. Using the second statement stops them from trying to recruit you over and over on their side by insisting that they're the only one telling the truth, and the siblings are totally lying. That second question, remember, a second statement, is the way you see it is probably different from how your brothers or I do, and that's normal, and it's fine.
Or, you know, it's fine to see things differently in our family. That's just perfectly fine for us. And then next is change your tone.
It's not about what is said, it's the way it's spoken. These two strategies above, I can see, and can you help me understand, help take the edge off your tone, which your kids are so sensitive to. Most of all, it helps you, in a very practical way, shift to a different place within yourself.
Rather than falling into the all-too-familiar escalation pattern, you can stand on that objective balcony and, at the same time, engage with your kids at the playground level or on the dance floor. It was endearing to watch the kids struggle to work things out through the knotty game, even though they knew that pulling a knot did not work. Some children could not resist doing it.
Each time that happened, someone would say, don't pull on it, it only makes things worse, give it more space. A nine-year-old girl called out, don't choke it, let it breathe. That's exactly what we aim to do when we coach ourselves to observe our kids and our family from the tower and from that balcony, while engaging lovingly in the playground at the same time.
Well, I sure hope that was helpful, right? Because this ability to both be objective and on the balcony, but be on the dance floor, engaging with our kids, we're on the dance floor, on the playground where we're engaging. There we are. It's important, right? We don't want to just be aloof.
But what this strategy does, what these two strategies particularly do that I've mentioned, really open up a way, not only to take the edge of your tone, which they totally do, but it gets their perspective. This, can you help me understand? Boy, it's quite a thing when you say that to your children, because it holds your own space, right? But at the same time, you usually get a good answer to that question. And then, being able to be able to say to them that it's really okay that everyone has their own perspectives.
That one is just so crucial. And then to start the whole conversation off, just working backwards now while we end this diary for this week, is to be able to just to make a simple, I can see statement, right? Because if we say stuff like, I can see this is really bothering you. It's so different to, look, would you please stop it? Why do I have to tell you five times? I mean, that kind of statement gets us pulling on the tangle.
And that's sure not what we want to do. So anyway, that's it for this week. We are starting, as many of you know, a free workshop on the book, Being At Your Best When Kids Are At Their Worst.
And you can go right to the simplicityparenting.com website and sign up for that three-part free series, which takes a bit of a deeper dive into the content of the book, gives a bunch of other ideas. And oh, I sure hope you could join us for that if you've got the time. Each session is about 30 minutes or so.
There are videos, but you can also listen to the audio. There's transcripts, you know, all the normal stuff. And best of all, it's free and it's starting real soon.
Okay, bye-bye for now.
