Hello and welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John Payne. So glad you could join us again. This week I've been thinking a little bit about how children take control, how they can take control in appropriate ways and ways that are helpful and feel competent and confident in doing that, and how there are other ways they attempt to take control in ways that are just not helpful at all.
Now, there's many layers to this, but the layer I want to look at today has to do with how children can feel that sense of competency and how they can feel it on a small daily level, in a daily way, that they have this feeling of, I can do this, I can do this, and I can do this, and I can do this. This is for me the key to it, and it's when I've seen many children calm down and ease off trying to take control in ways that are not helpful. Now let me unpack this just a little bit.
The key to it, I've noticed over the years, seems to be having children have little, those little rhythms, those little micro rhythms that I've talked about in the past, where they know that when they get up in the morning that we do this, we do this, we do this. You know, we, this is our little morning, little rituals. And it can be the same for very young children, it can be tween ages, teenagers, but it's particularly these moments through the day where they know the drill, they know the rhythm, they know the structure, and they can actually take charge of it.
You know, they come down for breakfast, if they're little ones, they come down for breakfast and there it is. You know, they maybe go and fetch their bowl and they put it, and they know which bowl is theirs, that's the Winnie the Pooh bowl, you know, and they put it there, and then they get their cup and they put it there, and then their spoon and fork. I like children to set their own places, but, and that's it, they know.
And then they know to sit up, and they know that we're going to say thank you to the farmers, and they know they're going to have their food, and afterwards, when they ask if they may get down, they also know to take it to the counter and put it right in that place. Now, it's the same for older children as well, you know, they can, they can take part in just the same way, and they know the small little micro rhythms and little rituals. For a child that knows how to do that, there's a couple of things involved in this, that they do it every day, so they get more and more competent both in their gross and fine motor skills, in their graphomotor skills, with their fingertips, they get, it's kind of like a very familiar little workout, you know, every morning, where they know how to go about things.
And they become so familiar with it, that they can just go right to the cupboard and get their things ready, and then when they're done with their breakfast, they can go right to the counter, or in the evenings, let's say a 12-year-old knows exactly what to do, what the steps, the small stepping stones are, and they know exactly what to do for bath or shower time, and they know that this is where my pyjamas go, this is the shower, I know how to turn this on, I was taught that years ago, I know how to do that, I know how to, you know, dry myself properly, I was taught that years ago, and I've done it dozens and if not hundreds of times now on my own, I know to pick up the bath mat, and I know exactly where that goes on the rail, so that it dries, my parents struggled over that one, but now, you know, but I do that now, mostly, I know just how to brush my teeth, I know just, and, you know, of course, there might be some assistance needed, some reminders needed, but there's this feeling of, I know what to do, and a child has a kind of an inner picture of how I do this, and what comes next, and what comes next, and what comes next, and it gives that feeling of mastery, that feeling of, there are aspects of my life, no matter what age I am, and I don't mean necessarily an infant in the same way, but from a fairly young age, there is a way of having a child, a tween, a teen, feel that I know how to do this, I can do it, I don't need a whole bunch of supervision or reminding, maybe a little bit, but this is where I take control of my world, and it's pretty important controls, it's often got to do with eating and sleeping, these things with washing, with home care, these things are important, you know, and they're the kind of skeleton, the structure, the bones of life, and they're building that structure for themselves, they're building that inner sort of emotional skeleton, so to speak, and they're building it strongly because they're doing it each day in an appropriate way. What I've noticed is that when children don't have that so much, they will attempt to take control of their world in ways that can be difficult, inappropriate, not well-timed, and it's not really for them to take control of that, and that they then will try and control siblings, they'll try and control other kids at school, they'll try and even control adults, parents, teachers, and it's a need to have mastery, to have competency, it's a need to be seen, it's a need to actually manage myself, but what they're doing is they're taking that into places that are not well-timed, and really not appropriate, and it starts to get them into trouble, it starts to have other kids pushing back because they don't want to be controlled in that way, and being able to offer our children these small daily pieces of competency has them feeling that I know my place in the world, I know that I can do many things in the world, I know I can take care of myself, and I know I can control the world around me, so I don't need to control the world further afield. Inwardly, I know there are places and things that I do, and I get affirmation for it, I get good feedback for it, and it just flows along, but it's small, right? It's really, really small, and it happens on a tiny, tiny little micro level every single day.
Rather than playing itself out on a macro level externally, one builds the internal loci of self-management, and this also leads to children being able to self-manage their play, being able to play more independently, and the independence that one sets up through doing these simple little micro rituals every day leads to independence, really strong and good and healthy independence in all kinds of other aspects of life, in play, in friendships. The key thing with friendships is I've been concerned for years when kids give up too much of themselves in order to conform and fit into someone else's control, so this is another layer to it, right? But if we want a child to be strong within a friendship, we don't want them either over-controlling other kids, but we also don't want them giving up too much of themselves in order to fit in because they don't feel competent, they don't feel confident. Now, some children will go either way, but one of the ways we can prevent our children from having these struggles where they will try to fit in at their own expense and kind of be led into trouble sometimes or be overly manipulated or undervalued, much of this, these bigger things, have their little expression through establishing small ways that they do every single day that they can largely take charge of and just move into a slipstream of competency and of confidence.
I sure hope that helps. As always, if you would like to chat with me in my parent counselling practice, you can go right to the website and there you'll see it, request a consult with Kim, it's right there, it's my favourite thing to do, so don't hesitate, but I hope that was helpful looking at appropriate ways that children can take control. Okay, bye-bye for now.
