Welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John Payne. Thanks for making the time to join us again this week. I've been wondering a little bit more recently about how to connect children to what it is that they're going to do.
You know, transitions can be so difficult and not always, but they can be, right? And so, how do we help children make those transitions, but also preview with them in a really practical way that sort of gets their buy-in, so to speak, for the activity? Now, one of the things that can be super helpful doing this with young children all the way through to older ones and even teenagers is to prepare them for what's coming up by doing something really grounded and practical. So, for example, if you're going to go on a walk the next day, you could preview that and you could tell them about it, and that's good to do, right? Many of us know to do that, but we give them that little bit of a looking ahead. But how great is it if we can have them the following evening, and we're going to go on a hike the next day, that they get their packs ready? They get their shoes, they check out their shoes, make sure they still fit, but maybe they pack some food or some snacks, or maybe you look at a map together of where you're going to walk, or if you're going to go cycling the next day.
So, you know, that afternoon, that evening after supper, you go out to the garage or get the bikes in or however you live and check the pressure on the tires, you check out the chain, you maybe give the chain a little bit of an oil, you maybe polish it up a bit, you know, get all the grime and dust from storing it over winter, you know, you get all that off. Maybe you go into the park, you know, the next day. Well, what about the equipment you want to take to the park, you check that the soccer ball is nicely inflated, you check that the little bits and pieces they want to take to play if they're younger children in the sandbox, you check that they've got the things they want to do, and you pack them all together and you plan it.
All these things, what they're doing is getting children ready for the next day, but doing it in a really grounded practical way. Because getting ready, yeah, it's grounding. Getting ready is also connecting.
Getting ready is helping children anticipate, and getting ready is like creating a vessel so that when the next day comes and you're, you know, you're off cycling or you're, you know, you're going to the park or whatever it is you're doing and the children are playing, it's way easier to transition them because they've, so to speak, bought in to the whole of the going, the whole of the packing, the getting ready, the snacks or whatever it is that they've done. Now, we're sort of speaking the language of childhood. We can still give them a little heads up that night of what we're doing.
We can still talk or give them a little reminder at breakfast time of what we're doing. But there's nothing quite like getting the kids involved in the practical side of planning. And it also means they're not just, I don't know, like passive recipients of treats, you know, of nice things.
They're involved in the planning of it. They're involved in looking at the maps. They're involved in figuring stuff out.
And what we're doing is helping them get to that point where they know I can be competent. I can make a difference. You know, I'm going to pack this and this for tomorrow because that's what I want.
And that's just golden if we're raising a child to sort of have that, to have that little bit of appropriate sort of independence and autonomy, but we're doing it together. And I mentioned it in passing, but just in closing, one of the main things that helping kids prepare for activities the next day or the next, you know, the next several days, if it's a bigger thing, is that it helps us connect with our kids because the screens have to go away. If you've got screens in a home, the screens go away, the moving around, the distraction.
It all goes away because you've got stuff and you're sitting with your child side by side planning what it is they're going to do, listening to them, having them feel, you know what, my mom, my dad, my grandparent, my guardian is really listening to me. You know, we're doing stuff together. And even for bigger kids, or maybe especially for bigger kids, you're kind of coming alongside them and you're in a sense cooperating with what it is that's going to happen the next day.
And again, that is just a wonderful thing to do for older kids, for tweenage, middle childhood kids, and for the younger children as well. So that's it for today. Remember always, if you would like to talk with me personally, you just go right onto the Simplicity website, and there it is, request a consult with Kim, and that'll plug you straight in and that email will come straight through to our little office.
Anyway, that's it for today. I sure hope that is helpful. Bye bye for now.
