Welcome back to the Simplicity Parenting podcast, the Simplicity Diaries, with me, Kim John Payne. This week, I wanted to consider perhaps a deeper question not all of us carry, but almost all of us know of someone, a parent who is struggling with addiction. This is not at all an easy issue.
I'm going to focus primarily today on substance addictions, even though addictions are much more widespread than just substances. But substances, alcohol and drugs, tend to become extremely intrusive within the life of the family. And the addicted parent, when the parent is struggling with compulsions and addictions, is often just so devastated by what they're doing as a parent, and yet the behavior is such a struggle to stop.
And therein lies the dilemma. So this might not apply directly to you, but hopefully this will be information that you can pass on to anyone who might need it. Now, I wanted to give, first of all, a definition of addiction.
And this definition comes from a group of 12th graders I was actually working with in a school near New York City. And they asked me, they said, Kim, would you please not talk about drugs again? Because I was asked to give a talk to the high school, a lot of my work is with kindergartens, elementary and high schools. And they said, you know, let's just like, you know, talk about addiction.
And I said, well, OK, in general, what do you mean? What do you think addiction is? And we talked for a while, and what emerged as being quite interesting is that we didn't really, couldn't easily land on what addiction was. And so we thought, well, what a good idea if we take this to the high school. Now, the 12th graders were a part of a student social action committee, which I helped set up in schools to work with, you know, helping children with behavioral needs, with social needs, emotional needs.
This is another hat I wear. But the, I'll tell you the addiction that this high school came up with. And I think it's a wonderful definition because the kids broke into small groups headed up by the 12th graders.
And then we came back and we kind of wordsmith this. And what they came up with was this. Addiction is an increasing and compulsive tendency to avoid pain, silence, boredom and inner development by displacing it with outer activity, distraction or stimulation.
What an amazing piece of work, right? For these high schoolers. Yes, it was a Waldorf high school. And those kids whose parents can stick with it and have their kids go through 12th grade, if there is indeed a 12th grade option.
Boy, these kids are magnificent. I'll read it again. Addiction is an increasing and compulsive tendency to avoid pain, silence, boredom and inner development by displacing it with outer activity, distraction or stimulation.
In order to understand addiction, I think it's good to, which I've worked with for years. To understand it as an erosion pattern and a healing pattern. There is a pattern to addiction where the physical body starts to break down with the substance use in response to all kinds of stresses and strains and all manner of things going on in a person's life.
Following that, their life body or what the Chinese medical doctors would call qi or vitality or etheric body starts to break down. And that's the immune system. It's the endocrine system starts to break down.
But also habits start to shift. Nighttime becomes daytime. Daytime becomes nighttime.
Staying up all through the night until five in the morning, sleeping until five in the afternoon, eating breakfast at dinnertime, dinnertime at breakfast. The rhythm starts to become very affected. And the physical environment around someone who's struggling starts to become very cluttered, disorganized, super messy.
And then if the addiction continues and the stresses and strains continue, the next thing that breaks down is the relationships. And I've seen this over and over with kids, with high schoolers and such that I've helped. Emotionally, the user becomes very brittle.
The person who is struggling, which is a better term than user really, the person struggling with this and being affected by this starts to have friendships that fade, difficulty maintaining caring, loving relationships. And then finally, the fourth stage is a breakdown of the sense of self, a feeling of I have no future. I have no footing in this world.
And that's a very serious stage. Now, the reason I mention all this is it therefore makes a whole bunch of sense to start where it's doable, to start the healing process where the breakdown process first began. And that's with the physical environment and the physical body.
Now, the reason I mention all this is that the first thing where, if I'm working with a parent who is struggling with addiction, is that we start to do something right out of the simplicity parenting palette and we really start working on decluttering. We start working on organizing, getting baskets for the toys, getting baskets for the cloths, getting younger children, decluttering, doing what we can to just simply tidy up. And that's not easy and it may need the person's small go-to team, if they have one, to come in and help them.
But for the children, it gives a real sense of spaciousness. But more important than that, for a child who is living in a home of someone who is struggling with addiction, it gives the feeling of organization, of things being organized. And I found that to be crucial.
And the children, tweens or teens, comment how much they like it, how much the tidying up, how much just the real mess the house has gotten into. How when that's tidied up, everyone feels better. Now, the next thing to do for a child, for the children, if you are indeed struggling with substance struggles, is to not only have the physical environment.
It's not the physical body, but the body of the physical, if you see what I mean. It's the body of the physical environment of the home. And have that become as organized as possible.
And I realize that's not easy, but it really pays great dividends for kids. The next stage that you can do for kids is to have things be very, very rhythmical. As rhythmical as possible.
And again, this is right out of the palette of the simplicity parenting work. So that as much as possible, breakfast times are at breakfast time or at that time. Snack is at that time.
Lunch is at this time. And so on through the day. And so, you know, dinner and then bedtime is at this time.
And so to have those anchor points for the children, because if a child is living in a home with someone who is struggling with addiction, those anchor points become very, very important that they can rely on those things happening. And if it's at all possible that that can be done, or even if there's one or two people are willing to help have that be done, then the children, their nervous systems stay significantly more regulated because there's things they can rely on and then they happen. So if you are a person struggling with addiction, and here I'm not talking about screen addiction and device addiction, which is a huge question.
It's another whole piece of addiction. But with substances, if you are struggling with this, do your level best to have those anchor points for your children as they go through the day. And if this is at all possible, have the little things they do be the same.
Use the little, if they're younger children, have their Winnie the Pooh bowl. That's where they have their breakfast out of that in the morning. That's their cup.
This is where they sit. This is their special little spoon. And if they're older children, the same sort of thing in a different way.
This is all the little stepping stones. This is what we do. We do it in this order.
Again, a child living in a home where there is addiction, their sympathetic nervous system, the intake, the stimulation-based nervous system, is often on high alert because things are a bit out of whack and a bit unpredictable. If we do this for children and we have the big and little rhythms, the rhythms and rituals in place as best as we possibly can, then the parasympathetic nervous system, the calming, soothing, digesting, emotionally digesting, that nervous system starts to then be able to have its place, actually. And so, as best we can, and I keep saying this because this is aspirational, and we can do, if you are suffering from addiction or you know someone who is, then the person can just do the best they can.
And what I'm presenting is aspirational in that sense. But I think it's worth having an aspiration. Because if you're suffering from addiction, it's often too big.
You're saying to yourself, I've got to get my life back on the rails. I've got to get my friendships back on the rails. I've got to get a job.
I've got to know where I'm going. And I agree, but that's all the third and the fourth stage. Do you remember the four stages that I mentioned in the descent? Well, if we keep aiming for the third and fourth stages of relationship building and of future orientation and of getting your life back together, it's actually overreaching and can often lead a parent to feeling a real sense of failure.
But if a parent can work on the first two stages, the first stage of decluttering and organizing, and the second stage of getting rhythm and predictability back into a child's life, even to the point of sitting with them at night and just going over what's happening the next day, this is much, much more reachable for a parent. And it helps the children feel warm, feel cozy, and feel that they can trust in the next day to come much more than they otherwise would have. The last thing I wanted to mention was that of building a small team.
This is not possible for all people, and I absolutely know that. But for many, many parents that I've helped with over the years suffering from addiction, building a small team of friends, of family, of very dear people becomes more possible if that small team know what it is their job entails, what kind of support they're being asked for. Because many people peel back and step back from the addicted person because it's voracious and overwhelming to them.
So this is what the small team can do. The team can basically be there ready to help with the organization of the home and with keeping hold of the rhythms. Now, one of the ways that this can be done is that when times are okay, when an addicted person is coping a little bit better, then you build what I call a bridge of attachment.
In other words, if you have a dear sister or a brother, extended family, a close and very dear friend, they can come in and they can help the children with their bedtime, for example, and they get to know the rhythm. They get to know the drill. They get to know the rhythm on Saturday morning or Sunday morning, pancake morning.
They get to know all the little things that sustain a child through the topsy-turvy and the disorientation of living in a home that is suffering from addiction because it is a whole home that suffers. And then when times aren't good, a mum or a dad or a guardian who can call on their small team to step in and then they know the rhythms. So for a little child, they're thinking, let's say it's a little child, they think, well, when mummy is sick, and that's often the way, and unfortunately we view addiction in that way these days as an illness.
When mummy is sick, Aunt Jennifer still knows what to do. She still knows my favorite things. But for an older child, it's the same.
When mum's not doing well, when mum's sick, when dad is sick, yeah, Jennifer comes over and helps out and she keeps things going. She knows what to do. And this is a way in which to be proactive with this whole situation.
So I hope this has been helpful. It's leaning somewhat into the wisdom of the simplicity parenting approach, but it's applying it in a situation that often can benefit from these two organizational pieces and then the habit life, the rhythm, the predictability. And it makes it feel doable.
And at the end of the day, literally at the end of the day, if a mum or a dad or a guardian lays their head down and says, you know what, I did get dinner on the table tonight and we did have that story and I just feel really good for doing that, not I feel really bad for what I'm doing to my family. Okay. I sure hope that's helpful.
Bye-bye for now.
