Welcome back to this little podcast of Simplicity Diaries and based on simplicity parenting practices. So glad you could join us again this week. It's lovely you could give up the time.
These are little podcasts, 10-15 minutes, and I always hope that they're being helpful. This week, I wanted to give a bit of an overview of a book that now it's released. A new book that I've co-authored with my dear friend and colleague Luis Fernando Llosa and it's called the Emotionally Resilient Twins and Teens and the subtitle is Empowering Your Kids to Navigate Bullying, Teasing and Social Exclusion.
This has been, as some of you might know, a long-held interest of mine, working with schools, particularly working with parents who are trying to coach their children through exclusion, through being marginalized, bullied, teased, friendships that have shifted and changed, where a child is pushed aside. This is the real stuff of childhood, of the tween years, of the teen years, and it is often a puzzle to us. It's one of the worst things when a child comes home and says, mom, they're leaving me out or they're picking on me.
It really is hard for us as parents to know how to calibrate our response. We don't want to move in too hard and embarrass our kids, but we don't want to under-react and normalize situations like this either. This book, although it was written for parents of tweens and teens, really also does apply to younger children, particularly if your kids are four, five, six years old and those tween years are coming up.
This is a book that I sincerely hope will help you prepare for those years as well. Now, I wanted to give you a bit of an overview of some of the content that's covered. It's an unusual book for me to be involved in because it is advice to parents and educators and care professionals in the first section of it, but then in the second section, it really shifts gear.
This is what was brand new for me, is that together with Louise, we wrote 10 stories, real life stories from my own background of working with countless, really, I want to say thousands of kids actually over the years, but suffice it to say countless children, coaching them, tweens and teens and younger kids, and helping them be able to break through of being marginalized and not fitting in, but give them the feeling that they did it on their own. Give them the feeling that it's not the adults sorting this out for them, that they have broken the cycle that keeps teasing and exclusion coming back over and over and over again. So, let me just describe what is covered.
The first chapter in the book, and the first section really, is advice to parents. It's like when social problems arise for our kids, obviously we need to be informed to be effective, but the wrong approach, if we move in too hard, too soon, that approach can really inflame a situation or it can drive the problem underground. So, the first chapter is all about how to soothe and shift that sort of social dilemma that our child's involved in and move it and not have it be stuck and give our child, our tween, our teen, a message right from the get-go that we're with them without overtaking them, without getting our own biography caught up in their stuff.
It really talks about how to strip back, simplify, move in close, get close to our child, how to apply simplicity parenting principles to when our child's not doing so well and reacting to this horrible stuff that could be going on. You'll recognize that a lot of that also leans into quietening, soothing a child's life, giving them more time to decompress, moving in closer, going on walks with them, playing board games with them, being with them and establishing family as a safe harbor, because when they're moving out into school, neighborhood sports clubs, for many of our kids in this situation, that has stopped being safe. Then in the second chapter, I talk about something that's been close to my heart for many years, that when we don't belong, when we don't feel we belong, it can be very, very hard.
How can we help children and ourselves and our tweens and teens understand that social challenges and falling out with friends and being left out and so on, it's horrible. But inwardly, as adults, if we know that it's a part of growing up, and it's a part of learning to deal and cope with things, not always thinking that our kids have got to be accepted at all times by all people, by all other kids, that's just never going to happen. That is in the book I call that harmony addiction, where we think everything has to be harmonious at all times.
And that just can't be true. It isn't true. So belonging is a part of almost like a coming of age.
But it's the end of the process. We can't always have our kids fit in. But it's as what I think of as eldering our kids through a process that they go through the difficult stages, but with us accompanying them through so that again, that the teasing or exclusion doesn't get stuck.
But at the same time, it's not villainized or rejected. We say, you know, we so the second chapter talks about how we can help our kids through a process so that they will belong, they will go through a phase where they have good friends around them. But to not expect that that will always be the case.
Now in the third chapter, we it's entitled bullying without borders. And that is because it addresses cyberbullying. And cyberbullying has dramatically intensified the impact of exclusion in the lives of our kids.
You know, how does online harassment differ from more traditional bullying, we really explore that systematically. It goes through like in real life, here's the way exclusion can happen in real life. But in virtual life, here's how it happens.
And it takes, it takes in a kind of juxtaposes each form of of teasing and exclusion. And, and actually speaks about this is the this is the implication of online teasing on cyberbullying. And what are some strategies that we can teach our kids so that they can break that cycle of cyberbullying, that they can get out of that, that we can assist them in doing that.
Because over half of all teasing exclusion situations now, actually involve some form of online exclusion. And so it's, you know, no book on this theme about friendships and marginalization would be complete without really addressing that. And that's, I think, quite a special chapter, really, because it does give us, you know, very effective tools that I pass on, where kids have have gotten out of the horrible cycle of cyberbullying.
And it's been very effective in breaking that looping behavior that keeps kids looped into cyberbullying. Now, lastly, in the advice to parents, there's a chapter about just being here, assuring kids that I know how I can help you. I am here for you.
And I can help you. And I can give you the tools, unequivocally, no, no doubt about it. I know how to coach you into breaking the cycle of reactivity.
I know how to do this. And I'm going to tell you a few of these almost secrets really, into how you can break this cycle of reactivity. And there's a very powerful thing to be able to say to a kid, to a little one, or a teenager, or a teenager, it's very powerful to be able to say to them, I do know the tools that are needed.
And I can give them to you, we can practice them, so that when you go back to school, or back into your sports club, or the neighborhood, you are going to go back in with a new sense of confidence that you never again will be picked on, excluded, and marginalized. It's a very powerful statement. Then the whole second section of the book pivots into this new territory.
And Louise is an award-winning master journalist and writer, and we worked together to go through 10 different, we call it your 10-story toolbox. And there's basically every form of exclusion and marginalization that I've seen through my 25 years of helping kids through exactly these issues, both as a school counselor, then as a child and family counselor, and as a counselor of tweens and teens. We talk about everything from when kids are new, and you're trying to fit in, but often kids will give up too much of themselves in order to fit in.
And then it opens themselves to tweens and teens and other kids who can manipulate that. So this thing of fitting in, yes, but how do you do it so that you don't give up too much of yourself and open yourself to kids who are cruel, frankly, and will use that to manipulate you and control you. Now, when a child's being teased, often I hear kids say, it's true.
It's true what they're saying about me. You know, it's true that I look weird. It's true that I'm too tall and skinny.
It's true that I'm overweight, I'm big and round, or whatever it is. And there's a chapter, a story about how you can deal with stuff. The fact that it's true is not what the issue is.
There's another issue completely playing out, and how to reveal that, and how to not only just expose it, but coach a child up to say, you know, it doesn't matter that it's true love. That is not what this is about. It's about reactivity.
It's about how you're reacting to this, and we can change that. Now, in another one of the stories, it continues on with that theme of how do you, how can you give your kids the very simple and straightforward tools to actually break that cycle? Now, in one of the other stories, this is called Sophie's Story, it's entitled, It's Life That's Bullying Me. And this is when Sophie in this story finds out that the modern pace of life is actually overwhelming her, and it's forcing her to be reactive.
She's got very little bandwidth. She's reacting. She's pushing back because she's exhausted.
She's tired. She's overwhelmed. And how in this story, Sophie discovers when she has her parents and grandparents help to dial her life back and give her more downtime, how she's much more comfortable in herself, and how she can reconnect with her friends who she'd fallen out with.
And the last couple of stories are about, for example, kids who aren't outgoing. They're slightly more introverted. And in this story, it's called Destiny's Story.
It's about a quieter child and how you don't have to always be extroverted and big and noisy to actually find your voice. This is something I've worked with a lot of kids with over the years. There, of course, has to be a story in this book about physical, being physically bullied.
And in Michael's story, that's exactly what we cover, is how do you help a child, a tween or a teen, deal with kids who are being aggressive? And how does that situation escalate? And how can you stand firm without becoming hostile? And how can you be confident and secure in your own space without the need to either be forced to walk away and pressed down and subjugated? How can you deal with kids who are aggressive and help your child deal with them? There's a story called Elena's Story in the book, which is about how, particularly girls, although this is not gender exclusive, but there's a lot of rumors, whispers, sometimes quite malicious rumors that can be used to be very excluding. Now, this is a tricky one because it's all under the radar. And so how can you coach your kids, if rumors are being spread about them, to be able to stand up to it and get beyond it? Now, in the book ends, I think, in a really beautiful upswing, where there's a story about a boy called Darpan.
And Darpan discovers that in his elementary and middle school difficulties that he experienced, that prepared him to be able to stand up and speak out when he starts in junior high and then high school. And he forms a group of students who really develop very hands-on and practical ways to change their whole school culture to be inclusive. It's a beautiful story.
Now, all these stories were subjected to a eighth grade editorial team, a school I was working with called the Alice Burney School out in Sacramento, California. We submitted our stories to them. They then divided them up between them and then critiqued them, commented strengths and weaknesses.
And so it was just a beautiful thing to have a 13, 14-year-old editorial team giving us the help we needed to make these stories be very, very real. So that's this new book, Emotionally Resilient Tweens and Teens, Empowering Your Kids to Navigate Teasing and Bullying and Social Exclusion. And we will be holding a webinar on this theme, a free workshop coming up very soon.
All you got to do is go to simplicityparenting.com and you'll see it right there, all the information you need about this free workshop that Luis and I will be holding in the coming weeks. So that's an overview of this book, which, gosh, I hope it's helpful. It's the culmination of 30 years of learning and how to help parents help their kids break free and get more confident and stand within their own power.
Because when we do this for our kids, even though they're young, it's a lesson that they absorb so deeply and will use all throughout their life. So that's an overview. Again, as I always say, I really do sincerely hope that is helpful and will be helpful.
And of course, feel free to join us in this free workshop that's coming up very soon. Okay, bye bye for now.
