Welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Ken John Payne. This week and in subsequent podcast episodes, we're going to do something a little bit special. Recently, very recently, we celebrated the release of Emotionally Resilient Tweens & Teens, the book that I co-authored with my dear friend and colleague, Luis Fernando Llosa.
And in that particular celebration, we had a free workshop. And it was attended by, I think there was something like 1200 people or so signed up for that. It was really wonderful.
And many, many, many questions came in. And we thought, wow, what a great idea to put those questions together, collect them together in themes, choose some that are more emblematic of the theme as a whole, and put that out as a podcast special. In a way, if you've got younger children preparing for the tween years, the 9, 10, 11, 12 years and beyond, it's just a really, really smart thing to do.
So for those of you who those years are yet to come, I sure hope this will help in terms of preparing. And for those of you who are in the years, well, that's right at the sweet spot of what we're talking about today. The questions that came in were, the number of them were about why do some children tease and exclude others? And I appreciate that question, because a lot of the workshop and the book in general is based on how to help your child if they're excluded.
And the reason I really appreciate the question from a handful of parents, or more than that, but that question was that it doesn't often come up, to be quite honest. Parents of kids who are marginalizing others don't often, don't seem to have, and I hope this is okay to say, but they don't often seem to have the same motivation as the parents of children who are very, very unhappy. And I'm not suggesting for a moment that those parents of children who are teasing others aren't good folk and have concerns to want to raise their children in the right way.
It's just that their kids don't come home unhappy. Their kids don't come home crying, just going to their rooms, not wanting to talk. It's a harder thing to actually pick up as a parent.
So I really appreciate that question that came in, even though it's a tiny minority in these situations of parents seeking advice in this way, nine out of 10 parents I speak with want help for children who are being isolated and pushed aside. However, I want to now just work through 10 points of how you can help your child if they are doing the excluding. And underlying all this is the acute importance of unstressing their day-to-day lives.
Because just like children and tweens and teens, I'll use those terms interchangeably, children, tweens, teens, kids. Some people like one term, some people like another. So I'll use those interchangeably, just like I will use he, she, they, them, you know, interchangeably as well.
The day-to-day life of kids who bully, tease, pick on others, form cliques or cliques, generally exclude, they are doing it to be hyper-controlling. In fact, in the workshop, I talked about how I use the term bullying and teasing interchangeably with the term hyper-controlling behavior. And I know that's a bit more of a mouthful, but it really does describe what's going on.
Now a lot of kids who are teasing others are doing it to hyper-control. And the question of why are they hyper-controlling has to, of course, come up. That's why I like using the term, it leads to a question.
As I mentioned in the workshop, simplifying, balancing, and unstressing a child's day who's picking on others is the most important thing you can do. It creates the vessel for the 10 points that I'm going to talk about now. These 10 points are coaching points, but if they don't have a container to hold them, if the child is living a life that is too much, too soon, too sexy, too young, they're just overwhelmed, then they are very unlikely to absorb the points that we're going to talk about right now.
So it's not just step one, it's foundational. Balance, unstress, dial back their pace of life. So to the 10 steps, and I'll just run through them fairly smoothly, I won't dwell particularly on any one or another.
The first step is when you're talking to a child who's excluding others, is to remember their goodness, is to remember that they often get it right in relationship with other kids, that not everything they do is hurtful by any means. They often get it right, and that is right there as step number one. If you're talking to your child, talk to them about the situations where they were kind, where they had fun, where they didn't put anyone down, and give those pictures vividly to your child.
That will signal to them that yeah, they aren't in a bunch of trouble, that their mom or their dad or their teacher is genuinely on their side, in terms of on their side of being the best they can be, and that it also, for us, when we picture a child when they're at their best, it actually changes our, it's a little bit of a brain switch, because then we become more empathetic with a child, and they pick it up right away. Because we can't picture a child when they've been good in the past and helpful and kind without it also positively affecting us and engaging our big picture thinking, our frontal lobes. The second point is one that I call crossing the line.
And a lot of kids who are picking on others will claim, I was just joking around. You know, it's like, no, I was just joking around. I mean, just chill, dad.
And the just joking around thing is really worth exploring. And simply put, do a little exercise with your kid, with your child, and ask them, well, look, when does joking around cross the line? Because sometimes it doesn't. And with some people, that line moves.
But ask them, and ask them to finish the sentence even. And you can begin the sentence with, joking around crosses the line and becomes teasing when. And then some kids say, well, I don't know, like when everyone doesn't think it's funny, or like when you do it to the wrong person, or like when someone gets mad.
And it's so great to do this exercise because it is accountability, but it's also not blaming. It's talking about a line that gets crossed that everyone can cross. The third step is to humanize the child they're picking on.
Everyone has a life. Everyone has a right to a life, a right to be able to live it without fear. But, you know, simple little questions.
I've often asked kids who are picking on others to consider the child that they find, like, totally annoying, you know, and say, well, look, does he, she, they have a little brother? Do they have a sister? What do they like to do? You know, where do they hang out at recess? Are they good at a particular subject at school? Do they do anything after school that you know about? Now, you've got to be subtle about this, but what you're trying to do is humanize because bullying and teasing is, at its core, dehumanizing. It can only exist if you see the target as being less human than you. So to give that child back a life, I've even gone so far as if they say, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.
I'll say, well, look, I'm going to give you a couple of days and I want you to just tell me one thing. One thing that that kid is good at in school, just one thing, or just where do they go at recess? Just, and start very small and doable. The other fourth point is early warning signs, like to be able to lead your child or a child you're working with at school to say, what are the early warning signs when something is about to blow up, when something is about to get kind of unkind or heated or just not be okay? What are they? Now, some kids will tell me that they get all tight in their muscles.
Other kids will say, well, voices start to get raised. Other kids will say, you know, it's just like they're totally annoying and I get really like annoyed. There's all kinds of early warning signs.
Coach your child into what those early warning signs are, because when they spot those early warning signs, this relates to the next point. And that's the point of it's strong to walk away. When they feel triggered, forgive the metaphor, but when they feel triggered and they spot an early warning sign, you can then coach them to say things like, yeah, I don't want to do this or yeah, this is not going anywhere good.
I'm out of here. And it, it is strong to walk away when they're feeling triggered. It's one of the strongest things that a young person, a tween or a teen can do is, is to walk away and you can assure them of that, that other people who see them, uh, in doing that will respect them.
Point number six is hot words and cooling words. And what I mean by that is I've said to a lot of kids in the past, it's cool to be cool. It's cool to use cooling words and just talk to them about what hot words are like you always, never.
I call those the three stooges of escalation. They're hot words, stupid, idiot. They're really, they're super, they're inflamed words.
But what are cooling words? Cooling words are whatever, yeah, I know. And coach your child to use cooling words. Ask them, what are words that cool down a situation? What are words that heat up a situation? Land on two or three, not more, and help them when they're going to use hot words, heated words to see if they can make the shift to cooling words.
And if they do, and they get in the car at the end of the day and they tell you that they, that they avoided hot and inflamed words and use cooling words, really praise them. Really affirm them. You know, just say, I am so proud that you could do that.
Wow. Point number seven is every problem doesn't have to have a perfect answer. Often kids who pick on others, they find it hard to make a start on it because it's not going to work out.
That's never going to work out. That's really dumb. That's not going to fix it.
Well, and just to say, yeah, you know, you're right. It might not, but it'll make a start. It'll make a start.
Point number eight is go in slow motion, slow it down, slow down what's happening. Even ask your kids when you're talking to them to rerun the situation and slow it on up. Point number nine is change the scene.
You can, when something is happening, you can ask them, where are the places where this happens? Where in the playground does it happen? Where in the neighborhood does it happen? Where is this happening? And then say to them, well, you know what, for a while, for a couple of days, couple of weeks, don't spend much time there. Go, go someplace different. I know that sounds awfully basic, but that one has helped solve a lot of problems because kids who tease tend to want to own certain parts of of the recess field, of the play of the playground, or they just there'll be a place where where it frequently happens, where there's frequent arguments.
And lastly, find a cool down place and a cool down person. Plan with your child, where is a place they can go to when things are getting hot? So, yep, they can walk away and say, this is not going anywhere. Good, dude, I'm out of here.
Like, yeah, whatever. I'm out of here. And they go to a cool down place that's pre-planned because often kids don't know where to go to, so they don't move away.
If they know there's a cool down place, a certain bench they can sit on, a certain place in the recess field they can go to, they're much more likely to do it. Some kids have even gone so far as to identify a cool down person, someone that they'll go to when they're feeling like they just need to cool down. It could it's it's most often another kid.
It's most often a neutral kid or sometimes it can be a teacher as well or one of the care professionals in the school. But it's often a peer and sometimes it's an older student and I'm a big fan of older students helping younger students. And, you know, you might go right into the school if you're a parent and say, is there a big brother, a big sister, you know, a big student that can be a cool down person for for my child, for my tween? Is there, you know, and often the school social worker, school counselor, the care team, support team there will say, yeah, OK, give us a day.
We'll work on that. We'll come up with someone. That one, if the school will do it for you.
Oh, my goodness, that that's that's powerful. So those are 10 points. But again, they're all resting on the foundation of quietening, balancing and calming a young person's life.
OK, so that is a podcast based around this workshop. And by the way, in our show notes, we'll have a link to the workshop if you weren't able to attend because we did record it. And so you can back on up and see myself and and and Luis being interviewed by David Levin, our dear operations manager and an author in in his own right of Raise Your Inner Game.
And you will be able to access that right from this link and also from our website at simplicityparenting.com. OK, I sure hope that was helpful. We went a few minutes over 15 minutes for this workshop, but only a couple. I hope this was worth listening to.
And I'll be doing a couple more of these podcasts to answer the great questions that came in. OK, that's it.
