Hello and welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John Payne. It's been so great to see how many people have just stepped right up and are making these contributions to our podcast, Sustainability. Thank you so very much.
So this week, I wanted to dip into the issues around boundaries and the soul of discipline and that whole basket. I wanted to try and draw from the soul of discipline, put words, a little more color around this whole image of discipline as being a definer of family values. It came up in the last couple of weeks in a number of conversations I've had about parents and it seems to be one of these issues that are percolating up again.
That, you know, we have a very understandable hesitancy sometimes to put those boundaries in place for our kids, because we don't want to be mean, we don't want to be cold. We don't want to be sort of an authoritarian figure for our kids. And we'd all agree, right? But at the same time, how can we be authoritative without being authoritarian? And because as long as we think discipline and boundaries will have that kind of quiet worry that this will mean that we're not going to be as close to our kids and as connected to our kids as we want, we'll be a little bit hesitant, right? And our kids know when we're hesitant, and it makes them a little bit anxious, or at the very least, it makes them feel they can get away with it, right? If we're not standing on firm ground.
And I want to pull out an image from the Soul of Discipline book, which really struck me quite strongly when I read the biography of Michelangelo. You know, as a school counselor, as I think I've mentioned in other podcasts for a long time, and quite often I would be teaching various blocks and classes. It was a small school.
So you know, we all were doing different things and all pitching in. And I was teaching this history block to the seventh grade on the Renaissance. And I was in the summer reading this Agony and Ecstasy, this biography of Michelangelo.
And there's this part in the book, and you may know this because apparently it's quite well known. I didn't know it before I read it, was that when Michelangelo was asked, how did he carve the Statue of David? It's just so ethereal, so just otherworldly. His answer was, I did not carve the Statue of David.
I took away that which was not of David. And I paused, you know, reading that, probably as you would do if you're coming across it for the first time, because what a concept. You know, he had this image of the Statue of David that he was carving.
And then rather than try to create it, he took away the marble, he took away the pieces to try and uncover what was his vision was, you know. And I thought, gosh, that's just like education, being a teacher. It's just like being a parent.
We have this vision of what we're trying to do at home or in the classroom. And when things come up that are not okay, you know, they in some ways cross a line. And it's not of our vision of what we want our family to be.
And it's a visceral thing. It's a thing that is deep within us. But we have this value, this hope, this deeply held hope of what our family life could be.
And then when the kids do something that just crosses a line and runs counter to that, we know it. And in correcting that, what we're doing is actually defining our family. And I think we need to be confident with it, kind, but confident to say to a child, you know, we try so hard to be more thoughtful in our family.
We try so hard to use kinder words than that. I would suggest we don't say, we don't speak like that because the child just did, right? I cover that in a previous podcast. It's hard when we say we don't do that in our family and the child just did.
It makes them feel like an outsider. But as I suggest in a previous podcast, if we can say we try really hard to not speak like that. And when we do, it's really important in our family to put it right.
That kind of boundary that we present our child with is like, no, uh-uh. That is not how we behave. That is just not what we're going to do.
We're going to work towards not doing that. We're going to work towards putting that right. It's like, I'm not suggesting we're Michelangelo, but our families are a piece of our work.
They're our art, to put it bluntly, don't you think? They're our art. And we're crafting a way throughout the years to be able to have this value be uncovered. And we do it through little bits, just chip, chip, chip.
We don't take great big chunks away from the marble. We do it just slowly, slowly. It's what I love about it.
And then when we get closer, maybe we polish it a little bit. And then maybe something else comes up. And nope, that's not what we do.
But essentially, what I'm suggesting is that when we apply discipline and loving boundaries for our children, then we're helping them understand that your guardian, your mom, your dad, your mom and your dad, whoever it is that is close to the children, when we put those values in place, and we put those boundaries in place, what we're doing is helping a child understand that actually we do have ground we stand on as a family. Your mom, your dad, your guardian, we do have a vision. We're not making this up as we go along.
Well, we are a little bit. But we do have this place we're working towards. We have some things that we hold really dearly in our family.
And the interesting thing is, you know, defining our family, like we might have wonderful birthday parties, and that defines our family. We might have a beautiful holiday on the coast somewhere in the mountains. And that defines our family.
And we look at those photographs and so on. They define our family for sure. But I think equally, if not more, what defines our family, perhaps in smaller ways, but what defines our family is actually helping our kids when when their behavior and what they do and say to each other to us is not of our vision.
It's not just the good stuff that defines our family. It's actually the boundaries, the discipline, the soul, the soulful act of discipline, the authoritativeness that where we're willing to go. And our kids know it, right? They sense it.
They sense that this is coming from a deeply held place. That's not mean. That's not cold.
That's not steely. So rounding off on this on this part, this first part of what I wanted to bring in this way, I hope that that this might stick a little bit in your mind of when you're putting a boundary in place. Do it with all your heart.
It's a heart thing that we're doing for our children. Now, this is the first part of two parts, because I want to tell you in the next part, a little story that that came up after this happened when in this biography that I read when I met a real live sculptor. And I want to tell you about that in the second part next week.
OK, thanks so much for for tuning in. Hope that was helpful. Bye bye.
