Hello and welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John Payne. This week I've been thinking about our older children, our so-called tween ages, or I tend to think of it as middle childhood, early childhood, middle childhood, and then the later teen years of being later childhood. This middle childhood, there's not a lot written about it.
I don't know if you've noticed this. If you look around, a lot is written about little ones and quite a lot is written about teenagers, but there seems to sort of be a lack of good, reliable information and shared information about our younger children, the middle childhood phase. Now in the book, Soul of Discipline, I talk about a metaphor that, and some of you are probably very familiar with this, others might be new to it, but to mention it just very briefly before pausing on this middle childhood, I talk about the metaphor from the governor at the parent gestures, that of governorhood when they're little, we're governors of the family state, to all the way through to the teenage years when we shift and we are the guide in the teenage years.
Our whole way of parenting a teenager has to be different, in my opinion, to what it is when they're little. We're very much coming alongside them and guiding them towards their future directions and what might be a distraction to that direction when they're teenagers. But in the middle of those two, not governor, not guide, but in the middle is the gardener.
Now the gardener, and the reason I use that metaphor of the gardener, is that a good gardener watches, a good gardener is very observant, a good gardener is thinking ahead a little bit, but there's some qualities of a good gardener that I particularly want to mention today and just sort of zoom in on this sort of little podcast about one in particular. And that's, that's the quality of the qualities, the cluster of qualities that a gardener has. And the reason I think this is somewhat of a useful metaphor is that a good gardener will always plant plants with a little bit of a thinking ahead and a space to grow.
So a good gardener doesn't overcrowd. A good gardener creates space, creates space so that, so that that plant won't be crowded. Now, the reason that metaphor is good, when our children hit nine, 10, 11, 12, in and around that age, maybe even eight as a transitional time, is that they really want to have their voices be heard.
A good gardener will understand that a child's not a baby anymore, but they're sure not teenagers either. And so it's got to do with creating space for a voice to be heard, for plans to be run by you. A good gardener knows the shape of the garden.
So a good gardener will still, at the end of the day, make a decision. But there is, there is a, there is an openness to, to having a nine or 10 or 11 year old really have their say, but have their say in a way that is respectful. You know, if, and this is continuing the gardener metaphor here, is that a good gardener will certainly want the garden to express itself.
That's when it's beautiful, isn't it? But there sometimes needs to be pruning to let the light in. You know, there are, there are sometimes there are words and actions that a nine, 10, 11, 12 year old will do that seriously do need to be pruned out, because unless we prune them out, there's too many competing, too many competing branches, too, too much foliage, too much. And really what still needs to hold true is if it is the shape, the shape of that plant, the shape of that tree, and, and it's up to us to still shape it, albeit with its own, the tree has its own direction, its own ideas too.
And there's, and the plant does as well. And there's a dance between the two. It's a great metaphor for this, for this age.
Also, a good gardener will weed, will weed out. Now, why, why do we weed? You know, because there are some good weeds, right? We, we, we think of them as weeds, but there's some good ones. But when too many weeds grow up around a plant, what it does is it leeches nutrients.
It actually takes away from the plant the goodness that the plant needs to thrive. Now, the reason I think of that metaphor is that when our children are 10, 11, 12, 13, there are lots of other competing forces. There's lots of stuff, particularly on screens.
They can be, that can be particularly leeching of the nutrients a child needs to develop their own sense of selfhood, their own ideas, because on screens there are so many forces arrayed there that are so cleverly, cleverly done to actually get in there, get close in and have a child purchase stuff or nag to be able to buy stuff that I think in some ways crowd a child's sense of who they are, because on us, because what we want to avoid is kids who are 12, 13 needing to look a certain way, speak a certain way, be a certain way. Now, some of that's normal and natural, but a bunch of that, when it goes too far, needs to be weeded out for a child to have space to grow into who they want to be. Now, the last thing I wanted to mention in this metaphor of the gardener was a good gardener will not only weed, but will mulch, right? Will introduce compost, good, rich soil, good, rich mulching to protect the weeds, to protect, to protect from weeds and to protect the plant so it can grow fully.
And I think a lot of our gesture around this age, around eight, nine, 10 and so on, has got to do with with good and right protecting of all the forces, the weeds and so on that would pull away the nutrients away from the plant and have the plant be weak and have the plant not grow into its full capacity, just like we want our child to grow into full capacity and be strong and stand, you know, stand in their own power. So there is this introducing the rich compost of family values that our decisions are not guided by what other people are doing, by, you know, other kids who have so many activities and other kids who have so much screen access or other kids who go on super fancy holidays or whatever it is. What we're doing at this age, and it is crucial for more connected teen years, is this is the time where our family values are going to be, they're going to start to be challenged a little bit.
They will be challenged more at 14, 15, 16. But if we are staying close to what it is we value and we can say to a child, to a to a 10 year old, you know, I get it that your friend is able to do that. I do.
I get it that they have that. But in our family, what we have is game nights. We have bike rides.
We have and you can not just say what you don't, but what you do have. But every time we do that, every time we have a game night, it's more compost, more rich nutrients around the roots of of of our children's development. And I, you know, I dig into this much more in the Soul of Discipline book.
There's a whole chapter. In fact, in some ways, I think the Soul of Discipline book is that's one of its main contributions, I hope, at least I was aiming for this, was to give further advice to parents of tweenages or children who are younger, you know, five, six, seven, and to prepare for that middle childhood time. So creating space for future growth, the parent gardener.
All right. I sure hope that's helpful. And as always, if you wish to connect as a part of my my parent coaching practice, go right to the website.
You'll see it right there. Request a consult with Kim and be delighted to speak with you. OK, that's it for this week.
Bye bye for now. Bye bye.
