Hello and welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me Kim John Payne. So glad you could join us again today. This week I've been thinking about family stories and the wealth, the treasure trove that family stories bring us and how family stories open the doors to connection, to that deep and enduring connection.
And I wanted to be a little more specific about how one, well one way we can use family stories to help a child who's struggling. I want to preface this a little bit by describing, and it's another, there's another podcast on this about the power of we direction. That's with a W right, we direction, as opposed to re-direction with an R. Very often we'll say to our children, why don't you go and, and why don't you go and ride your bike? Why don't you go and? And we do that and it's very well-meaning and sometimes it works when a child's not doing so well.
We kind of get a feeling we need to shift the energy, we need to shift something. But a re-direction often doesn't work because, or has only moderate success, because fairly quickly the kids, there they are, they're back, they're, you know, they just boomerang right back. Because a re-direction tacitly means that a child has to go away from you and, and it's just at a time when they need to be near you.
And a we direction is all about why don't we do something together? Why don't we? How about we? I, that's not going so well is it? What about we just, and there it is, we. Now one of the, the, the principles of we direction, it actually rests on the building block of something else we've talked about. And that is this thing that you've often heard me say in these podcasts, that there's no such thing as a, as a disobedient child, only a disoriented one.
You know, I've never really met a disobedient child in my life, but I've met just countless numbers of disoriented kids. And this is way more than semantics. It's, it's truly, they're emotionally disoriented.
And as you might remember from other podcasts, they're pinging us, they're echolocating, they're looking for a feedback loop, because they're looking to emotionally orient themselves. Now these two things, a we direction, which I've mentioned before, and this, this need to orient oneself when it, you know, when a child is little, both of those two things are beautifully served. When we think about, about family stories, actually, it's, it's like a superhighway to having a child do something with you and orient.
If you think about it, you know, like when things are not going well with siblings or with a child, and you know, a change of energy is required, right? By saying to a child, Oh, dear, that really does need a change of, we need to change, we need to do something else. Or if it's an older child, you know, obviously, you voice it differently, but saying, Hey, this is not working out, is it? Come on over and sit with me at the counter for a minute. I remembered something that happened to me when I was just a little boy, let me tell you about it.
Or do you know what, I don't know if I've ever told you this story about, about grandpa. But when he was, and the, and even though, you know, chances are that story has been told before, there's very few kids who will push back against it, they might sit a little sullenly with their head down for a moment, but most of them will come along and sit with you. And it's a we direction because you are saying we come, come closer to me, I'm not going to send you away, come closer to me.
That's the first thing. And it's also changing the energy. And it's helping a child orient because, you know, on a deeper level, you're really when you're saying when you're telling a child a story about your earlier years, about grandma or grandpa's early years, or whatever, you're deeply orienting them because you're saying, you know what, you come from good people, you come from a long line of good people, even if you have to be sort of fairly selective, and they're not all good people.
But or, if you're in a situation where you don't, you know, you don't have, you're adopted, perhaps, and you don't have connection with those people, we have connections with people, most of us, at least have connections with good people around us. It might be a story about a family friend, a very dear family friend, it could any number of stories that relate to that close circle of family and friends, is very, very orienting for a child. And what it's what it's saying to them is that I'm making time for you, even though, and these are some of the best times to tell stories to a child is or to a tween or a teen, is when you're actually doing something, you're not necessarily needing to sit on the sofa, although that's okay, too.
But you could just be making the salad, you know, making supper, folding clothes, just doing what you're doing, staying in the flow of the day, and telling the story. In fact, doing something practical, and something that's familiar to a child, particularly young children, but but children of any age, is actually particularly helpful, because it's comforting to them. It's familiar to them.
You're folding the clothes just in the way you always fold them. You're making supper right in the place that you always make it with the same pots and pans that whatever it is, it's familiar and familiarity is very, very securing to a child. And for younger children, it fires the mirror neurons.
And you might remember, in another podcast, we're sort of building here, aren't we really, it's quite rather lovely. There are we mentioned the mirror neurons in a child's brain that when we do something that is familiar to them, then they inwardly start imitating and doing it as well. Both practically, they start sort of, you know, like, if you're folding clothes, they start folding clothes, and they might not even be doing it yet with their hands, but they're doing it with their brain.
And they also copy our emotions, the mirror neurons pick up our feelings. Now here's the thing, is if we're telling a family story, we're moving right into our pictorial brain, right into that lovely, warm, pictorial thinking, and a young child will actually mirror that. They will imitate it.
So it brings them out of their fight-or-flight, freeze-or-flock brain, you know, the amygdala. And isn't it amazing that the very same thing, just a plain old family story that they've heard a bunch of times before, or it might be a new one, but you know, chances are they've heard it before, not only achieves a we direction, it not only orients them, but it also brings them into a whole different part of their being. So next time you get that feeling, that instinct, that gut feeling that something needs to change, try a we direction, bring a child over to the counter while you're making supper or whatever it is you're doing, and tell them a story about something that happened to you when you were little.
They love the ones when you were naughty or did something a bit edgy, but any of those dear family stories. And just watch a child sort of sink into that lovely connection of we-ness. Okay, I sure hope that's helpful.
Okay, bye bye for now.
