Welcome back to this Simplicity Parenting podcast and to the Simplicity Diaries and this is the second part of this celebration of the Emotionally Resilient Tweens and Teens book and the questions that came up in our free workshop. You might remember the last podcast we focused specifically on how to help kids who are doing the teasing and doing the exclusion. In this podcast we're going to be taking a collage, a mixture of questions that came up and again if you're a parent of a younger child I sure hope you enjoyed last week's episode in that we can get prepared and don't need to be taken aback when things happen because when social difficulties arise as our kids grow, it's so good to be prepared for them.
So that's what my hope for a parent of the younger kids but for a tween or a teen and an older child in their middle or later childhood, I hope this is going to be helpful right away. Now I've chosen some I've clustered the questions together because there were 1,200 or so participants in this workshop. Many questions but I've chosen some that are a little more emblematic.
One person wrote, my son has been bullied and he's now in a new school. Do you have any particular recommendations of how he must behave or any new tools he can use? One of the things when a child starts a new environment is that you really want to be able to establish one of the, and we'll come back to this in a moment, but the family base camp. Spend a lot of time with your son.
Do a lot of family activities. Allow him just to decompress. Board games, story nights, puzzle nights.
Move in really close to kids who are making transitions, particularly if they've, you know, in his situation has been excluded in a previous school. Give him a really big family base camp. This is something we spoke a lot about in the workshop and it's come up a lot in these questions so we will cover that some more.
That's my first piece of advice. Have him launch off into school with a good feeling that my family are really behind me. The other thing you can do is establish, if you can, speak to the school administration and teachers and have them stay relatively close to him.
Have some big sisters, big buddies, big brothers in upper grades be able to show him around, help him out, keep an eye out for him. Another thing is to speak to the faculty and to his teacher about actively, really actively, including him and making sure that with just the neutrals in the class, you know, just the sort of, you know, just the kids who are really well-rounded socially. If the teacher can make sure that your son is included in their games, I'm not quite sure how old he is, but if he's of game age or just hanging out age, that he goes out and joins in with them and that that is actually set up and it's just a normal part of welcoming a new student.
In our school, this is what we're doing from now on to welcome. It's a welcoming gesture and that needs to go on for two, three weeks at least or more. However, the main event for a child starting a new school is really to not get caught up in the cycle of reactivity.
He'll be a little more on alert, I'm guessing, because of his previous experiences. And I don't mean to be self-referential, but the Emotionally Resilient Twins and Teens book really does dig into how to help him break the cycle of reactivity or potential reactivity. Sarah's story is a really good one.
The new kid, there's a whole story in the book about the new kid and it deals with feeling lonely and feeling left out a little bit, not being able to find your way. Helping him not feel he needs to make great big changes to fit in, just being himself, but having the tools he needs to know where to go to, who to go to, and being able, if he is called names or is subtly teased, to be able to use the tools in the book and be able to navigate and not get reactive. And that's the key thing.
And if he does do that and he comes and tells you that he didn't react when someone called him a name or didn't include him in a game or hanging out, then to be able to really affirm his courage. The other thing, and lastly I would suggest, is that you look to do more of what he's good at with kids who are good at that. In other words, there might be a sports club, an activity club, a rock climbing wall in your local town, something he could do at a horse barn with other kids, but to not have him put all his friendship basket eggs in one basket, so that he's not going into school feeling this is everything, so that he spreads that a little wider.
Now there's another other questions that relate to this family base camp. There was one question that rounded up, it was a really lovely long description, but it ended with, how can adults support with love and engagement versus strictly just strategies and tools? And that for me again comes back to not wanting to just be strategic, but having that family base camp and having kids go into school and neighborhood environments with us very firmly behind them. That base camp, another metaphor is that as they get older, we can sort of, it's almost like scaffolding to mix my metaphors, but it's almost like we can have them return to base camp for less and less time, not lean into it quite so much, and that their own ability to hold the big picture, to be able to navigate socially, you know, as they get through their teens, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20s into their early 20s, that scaffolding is only really lightly in place, but when they're little, when they're 8, 9, 10 years old, and when they're struggling, that scaffolding needs to be, you know, quite strongly there in order for us to get to the places to help them make the repair in their social life, but the aim of the scaffolding is to be taken away.
Another question about, that related this base camp metaphor, is one person wrote in saying, you know, I've got four kids, we homeschool, there's a small, you know, like, I don't have a large number of strong connections with other children his age. Is it enough for our family to be his tribe? And my answer is an absolutely yes. Yes.
We as a society in general, I feel, are pushing kids into peer groups and put more importance with peer groups. That is too early, and it's overblown. Family for thousands, tens of thousands of years, has been the securing base for kids, and nothing has changed.
Now, if you're homeschooling, and you want to establish other social relationships, there's many other homeschoolers who will do that with you, nature groups, you know, other activity groups, sports clubs, and so on, and so on, but again, of primary importance is family, and a child slowly will find their way out into larger groups, frankly, when they're ready, and we don't need to push them into it, and worry that they're not having all these, you know, multitudes of friends. I do think it's overblown, because the values they're learning, that will sustain them through life, are from us. Now, another question that came up, that was somewhat related as well, is the question of bullying, teasing, that this is, the writer writes in, that this is rampant.
How can life be more predictable for kids from separated parents? Now, I wanted to answer this specifically, because there were a bunch of questions that often come up around this. I often mention the book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen Covey, for particularly in terms of this comment or question, was that we have our sphere of control, and then we have our sphere of concern, and in that book, what Stephen Covey said, is that a highly effective person works within their sphere of control. Now, if you've got a separated home, if your child has two homes, by you keeping it balanced, by you offering calm, by you having decompression points, having rhythm, having predictability, I've seen over and over through the years, that there is a long-term, the only way I can put it is value absorption, because your home is the predictable one, and that's the safe one, and so the more you can do at home, that is within your control, in your space, the more that will inform the values of kids, both now and into the future, and I've seen many kids who grow into young adults, have their own children, and the values that they raise their children are almost always, I want to say always really, from the home where there was safety, predictability, simplicity, and balance.
You can't control what happens in the other home, but you can control what happens in yours, knowing that that is deeply informing your child's values, even though it might not look like it at the right time. The same writer also asked about queer and gender non-conforming kids, quote-unquote. You know, in my experience, issues around racism, homophobia, these really big, very deep issues, very serious issues, the tools that I've outlined, Louise and I have outlined in the Emotionally Resilient Tweens and Teens book, are absolutely applicable.
However, I want to add an extra layer to this, is that it does need significantly more adult help if the discrimination that a child, or a tween, or a teen is running into has become institutionally ingrained. Now, this is a sensitive issue, but where that is occurring, yes, a child needs to be able to be non-reactive, yes, they need to know tools and strategies to go into that situation, but if the institution or institutions themselves have really significant social-emotional blind spots, kids really do need our help in a much more significant way than they otherwise would have. Now, this is a much bigger issue, and I do apologize for giving that rather shorthanded answer.
There are other aspects to this, without doubt, okay? I want to make that clear, that, you know, we're not doing a deep dive. That question alone is, and has been, the subject of many, many books out there, but I can say that the kids I've worked with who are gender non-conforming, they also have expressed to me directly how the breaking of the cycle of non-reactivity on one layer, just one layer, and I want to emphasize that on that layer, has been helpful to them. The other thing that one question came up is asking about which of my books, there's eight, I believe, books in all that I've authored or co-authored, where do I make a start? And honestly, I think the place to start is with Simplicity Parenting, that book, because that book is all about creating the vessel.
We can have lots of tools and strategies to teach our kids, but if they're overwhelmed, a lot of what we're teaching them is coming into their vessel, into their cup, and it's just spillage. It doesn't have a place to be held. So I would really point you back to the Simplicity Parenting book.
Another question came in about, which was very emblematic, a number of questions about social anxiety of children, both young ones and older ones, and what can we do with kids with social anxiety. First of all, I would say add a lot of preview, predictability, and rhythm to that child's life. Make things very predictable so that his, in this case you use the term he, so his nervous system can quieten and reset when he is home.
At school, you note in your question, this is now more specific to this question, that he finds it daunting to engage with other kids and hangs on the edge. My advice would be to talk to school officials and be able to speak with them about making a quieter start to the day. Being able to come in a few minutes early, being able to have a task that he takes care of, and have the room slowly fill up with movement and noise, but have him have a much quieter start, and if he's ever feeling anxious because he's just five years old, bring him into a little task that he does with the teacher so that he can, in a sense, have a safe place, but also feel competent and feel like he's doing his job.
That would be important too. The last couple of questions that I've grouped together is that why do some kids bully? Why do they hyper-control? Their need to over-control is very multi-layered. You know, sometimes life is out of control, feels like it's moving too fast for these kids, and that's more and more and more common as we go on with the new normal of just the insanely overwhelmed, too much, too soon, too sexy kind of lifestyle, too much screens, just too much.
A lot of kids are defaulting back to trying to over-control, which results in them teasing and excluding and having clicks and excluding and exclusive friendships. There is often an insecurity, and that's well-known. Kids try to over-control because they're insecure.
Another aspect of that is in a negative attention cycle. It's basically better to be controlling and even teasing and taunting. It's better to be in that role in some kids' minds than it is to be invisible.
It's like a negative attention cycle because many teachers unwittingly in schools, when they punish or lecture these kids, and what happens is the negative attention cycle starts up, but it is attention. Some kids replicate patterns of dominance and of domination. So if they see the school system as being dominating or their home life where there's domination of them and cold, disconnected domination, they will replicate that pattern wherever they go.
So that's another aspect of it as well. Now, these are emblematic of the questions we've had. And lastly, just to finish off now, an educator says, how should I stop bullying in my classroom without vilifying students? I really appreciate that vilifying and being aware to not do that.
She writes, or the educator writes, do I nip it in the bud right there and then? Yes, there is a stop the world principle. Absolutely. Where it's happening, take hold of it.
But it's the way in which we hold it. In my work with social inclusion, which I do day in, day out with schools, and you can read more about that at the website, socialsustain.com. I talk about three ways of calibrating and holding these situations. And this is what kids appreciate, is that if there's a light holding, is for light situations where you could maybe play some games, do some in-classroom stuff, put kids together in project groups.
That's trying to help a situation where there's social tensions. If that doesn't work, then there's moderate holding. And that might mean supervising the classroom a bit more closely, being a bit more careful about the transitions when kids are moving from one place to another, and so on.
There's a slew of different moderate holding tools I talk about in the social inclusion work. And then there's close holding, because what if that doesn't work? Close holding is very close supervision of kids who are involved in social tensions. It's problem-solving meetings, it's bringing older kids in if you have that openness in the school to do that.
You sit down, you talk about it, you work it through, you follow through, you make sure it happens. But that's when it's very close holding, and you supervise the situation very, very carefully. That's calibrating the response.
But do you stop the world when it happens? Yes. And then the second question is, is this a light touch, a moderate holding, or a very close and firm holding that's needed? Okay, so again, I, you know, I aim to have these podcasts usually be around 15 or so minutes. Gone a little over with this special.
I hope that's okay, because I wanted to, you know, really honor these fantastic questions that have come in. And again, if you would like to see the recording of that free workshop, look at these show notes, click on that link, it'll take you right there, or go to simplicityparenting.com and there's a link right there to that hour-long workshop. Okay, that's it for now for the podcast specials.
We'll be back on track with just the regular old podcasts next week. Okay, bye-bye for now.
