Hello and welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John Payne. Today I wanted to lay out for you a series of pretty intuitive steps that can help our kids when they're distressed, when they're not feeling so great, things aren't going so well for them. What are some possible ways in which we can help them? And there are a ton of different ways, of course, but this whole metaphor that I often think of when kids are struggling is the metaphor of coming alongside.
It's like mooring your canoe alongside theirs. The beautiful thing is that, you know, you're facing in the same direction. You're pulled over, you're out of the turbulence of the fast flowing water, and you're just pulled into a little kind of quieter place on the river, and you're sort of with a child.
It doesn't, you're not facing them, you're not trying to sort things out, it's just basically saying to them, you know, I'm with you, I've moored my canoe with you, we're just going to rest here a while. These are the steps, when it's broken down a little bit, that I often find myself with my own kids going through. And the first one is to recognize a distress flare has been sent.
There's been an SOS, your kid's distressed. The metaphor is a distressed flare, but I kind of like that double meaning of the word because your kid's in distress somehow. It's like an understanding, there's the signal, something's happened, something's not going well.
They've just shouted at their little brother, they've just said something really defiant. It's just not them. There's something, that might be as obvious, of course, as them crying, but there's distress.
Now it may sound so simple, is this principle of noticing the SOS, but sometimes that's not as easy, you know, as it sounds, because we're moving fast, you know, we're moving, we're going for it. And to stop and notice that something is wrong, rather than just being bothered by it or hoping it'll go away, but to really slow right down and notice. Notice that there's distress.
Now step two, to use this, continue to use this metaphor of canoeing, or of bringing your boat alongside that of your child, is that of changing course, that the mothership or the fathership changes course towards the vessel in distress. In other words, you know, you might have been doing something that, you might have been emailing something, responding to a text, or whatever it is, it could be getting supper ready, but just for a moment, you put the phone away, you put the knife down you were chopping with, and you come close to the child, you physically come on over and just sit near them, just shift course. Because again, it's just so easy to just keep moving, just keep moving right on ahead and not be willing to change course, to be beside a child.
It's worth changing course, because even though it might feel like, I just have to get this done, would you just wait a moment please, you know, you can say to a child, that's just going to ramp things up, and it is going to take way more time to untangle. So, changing course, right there and then, it signals to a child, my mother, my father is tuned into me, and they're willing to put me first. It means a lot to a child who's in distress.
The third of these five steps is coming alongside, you know, with comments like, yeah, it's hard when this kind of thing happens, or one of my favourites that I say to my kids all the time, they're a little bit older now, but, can you help me understand what's bothering you? Coming alongside doesn't mean having the answers, it's such a relief to not have the answers, to not feel that you need to be this really clever, smart, problem-solving mum or dad. Way better to come alongside and just say, can you help me understand? Or for a little child who's frustrated at a project and has thrown down the scissors, you know, to be able to say to her, it's really hard when things don't work out like you wanted them to. The fourth step, the second to last step, is to secure your child.
It's, to keep using that metaphor, it's like throwing over the ropes. It's like throwing the grappling hook over and saying, here, you know, here, let's just, let's tie up here. Let's just moor here.
We don't have to go anywhere. We don't have to do anything. We're fine just where we are on this sofa.
We're fine just where we are. That you, I can throw my metaphoric rope over to you and I'm calm, I'm okay, or okay-ish, you know, but I'm okay. And I can just draw in close to you and we don't have to do anything.
You're okay. And then the final step is that, is the dry docking or the repair. You know, it might be that at this stage, you can make a repair.
You've resisted problem-solving earlier, but it's like, if a child's been very fresh to you, for example, and defiant, and you've just moored your boat in beside them, they've calmed down a little bit. You can hear it in their breath, in their voice. They've just taken that little bit of a softness in their shoulder, their eyes are less hard.
At this point, the repair or the reframe can be something like saying, you know what, sweetheart, I think what you meant to say was, this is really frustrating. Because what the child did say is that this is really stupid and why are you making me do this? You're stupid too, right? It's been pretty, you know, fresh. But in the repair stage, when you've, you know, you've managed now to moor and come alongside, you might be able to pull that emotional canoe up onto the bank, look at where the water was getting in and make the repair.
And so often the repair has got to do with a reframe by that simple little comments of saying, you know what I think you meant to say was, and then it could be a myriad of different things, but you model for the child what it was that he or she was trying to say. Now they might say, no, that's not what I was meaning to say. It really is just so dumb that I have to do this homework.
And then, you know, you can say to a child, okay, I get it. So you were really frustrated about this homework where you're being asked to do this math thing that you don't even get. Yeah, like totally, you know, your son might say, I think it's so what you meant to say was that you were really frustrated by this homework.
You didn't really mean to call your sister a fat pig, or that was harsh. That was horrible. What you meant to say was that you were frustrated.
And that's making the repair. But you see the repair comes after, first of all, you've noticed the distress and you're willing to change course. And you're willing to put things aside and just for a moment, come alongside and sit with a child.
And then you're willing just to be, just to be in the space. It doesn't need pushing along. And then after those first four steps, then maybe, maybe a repair by reframing what it is that they're trying to say or express is possible.
And you know what? Maybe that repair will need to wait until bedtime. But those four steps that you've made earlier by noticing the distress signal, being willing to change course, coming alongside, asking a child if they can help you understand, and then securing and just being and listening. Then when the time for repair comes, you've got a whole bunch of connection for you both to stand on.
Okay, that's it for today. It's a kind of a special one, this coming alongside. And I really hope that helps because it's helped a ton of parents.
And boy, did that help me as a parent and continues to this day to help me as a parent as well. And don't forget to come on over to simplicityparenting.com where you can sign up for our free starter kit. There's so much there that will support you as a parent.
There's book readings, there is a free audio, and especially there's a free one month membership to our community area with this huge resource library of audios, videos, helping you out with discipline issues, helping you out with simplicity and balancing issues. Come on over to simplicityparenting.com, sign up for that free starter kit. And I sure hope that will be helpful.
And I sure hope today's podcast was helpful and helpful as well. Okay, bye bye for now.
