Hello and welcome back to the Simplicity Parenting podcast with me, Kim-John Payne. This week I was thinking about why it's so important to have younger children really be surrounded by rhythm and predictability. This is a theme that comes up a lot in simplicity parenting, as you know.
But one of the aspects of this which really stand out for me is when I look at the kind of scaffolding a young child needs and how rhythm provides that scaffolding. The key to this is, I think it's perhaps best understood when we consider the brain development actually of a child this age. Because when they're very little, right up through 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 years of age, there's not a lot of executive functioning in the brain.
Those parts of the brain, the frontal lobes, neocortex, all those parts of the brain that have a child be able to, in a sense, have an overview, hold the whole picture, the big picture, be able to look ahead and see what's coming and be able to more cognitively be able to take hold of that and know what's coming next and be able to navigate through their day and their week and so on. That part of their brain, the frontal lobes, is barely functioning. It's much later in the later teens, early to mid-20s.
That's when that part of the brain particularly flourishes. It's not to say it's not active, of course, when they're little, but not much at all. Now, think about it.
If a little child doesn't have the aspects of brain development that can hold the whole, that know and can synthesize and know what to expect next and put kind of pieces together and say, okay, that's my day, you know, I've got it, that's my day. If they wake up in the morning and are unable to do that like we can as an adult, not nearly in the same way, then what can? What does do it? And the answer is rhythm. Rhythm does it.
Rhythm in a sense scaffolds a child in a way that that scaffolding over the years as the building blocks of brain development take shape and get firmer and get, in a sense, get more form, then we can take that scaffolding away. We probably don't need to rely so heavily on rhythm when we're older, although it sure is helpful, particularly in times of stress. But the, for a little child, the navigational scaffolding to get through their day, to mix my metaphors, but to get through their day is actually rhythm.
What rhythm does when they open their eyes in the morning and says, okay, so next this is going to happen. I'm going to get up and I'm going to put on my clothes that are laid out on the chair. Okay.
Then I'm going to, and then I'm going to after that, and you know, there's a procession of events that lead to a child either getting out the house in the morning, beginning their lessons, whatever it is. But that kind of rhythmic, predictable activity is very, very securing for a child. Just like as adults, what secures us in times, particularly in times of stress, is being able to hold the big picture.
And I might add for us as adults, when times are particularly stressful, it's really hard to hold the big picture. If you notice you get caught up in, in tiny details in the now and it loops around to become slightly obsessive. That's because the frontal lobes, even for us, are starting to shut down under stress.
But imagine a child who doesn't really have that capacity intact in the first place. Imagine how helpful it is to have almost like the sole anechoe of rhythm surrounding their day. And what that also does is helps the child not default back into an anxiety response, a stress response, fight or flight, which is the amygdala, right? The ancient brain, the reptilian brain, the adrenal and cortisol brain.
If a child doesn't have the scaffolding of rhythm, then the default position is the amygdala. The default position is anxiety, is fear, is hyperactivity, all kinds of stuff kicks in that we just simply don't want. A child sure doesn't want it because that's very uncomfortable for him or her.
So at the point, right in the morning or before bed when they're thinking of, before sleep time, before they're thinking of the next day, when there's rhythm, when there's predictability, it means the brain can, in a sense, not have to default back to that survival mechanism. It leaves the child free to, in a sense, move forward into the second wrap of the brain, which is the limbic system that's creative, that's cooperative. So beautiful, beautiful abilities that that part of the brain are partly responsible for.
And so what rhythm does is, in a sense, it builds a kind of a mechanism to compensate for what a child doesn't have yet. And then as the years roll on, of course, the rhythm still is very important, but it's not quite, I would say, not quite as crucial as it is for them when they're little, because what we don't want is this, is anxiety and fear creeping into their lives, which I'm seeing a tremendous upswing in fear, in anxiety responses, nervousness with younger and younger children. There are schools now that have anxiety classes and how to cope with anxiety from kindergarten, and those classes are offered during school day and they're full, all through the elementary school, anxiety classes of how to cope and the various ideas that teachers develop of how to help children cope with anxiety.
Now, all that's good in terms of treating the symptom, but in terms of causal, in terms of going right back to what we can do to build the building blocks so that we don't have such a lack of resiliency to stress, lack of resiliency to any fears that every little child is going to have, what we can do is build rhythm and predictability. Rhythm and predictability will enable the child to have a picture of the day and to be able to hold the whole. And when a child can predict what's coming next and can see in a certain way, unconsciously, that their day has a shape to it, then they can go forward into the day being children, having fun, being creative, and if things come up that are hard to cope with, at least they've got the shape of the day to fall back on.
They're not, in a sense, in free fall, not knowing what's coming next. So, I hope that's helpful, and I hope that just adds just a little bit more sort of wind in your sails about the rhythm and the benefits of rhythm, really the deep benefits of rhythm and predictability in your children's lives. Okay, bye-bye for now.
