Welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John Payne. This week I wanted to mention the theme of connecting, but particularly connecting before collecting and then bringing our children to the meal times, to the dinner table. Connecting first.
This is particularly important around holiday, holy day seasons when there's a lot of activities around meals, but it's also important just in everyday life as well. Now, I'll tell you what I've been thinking about and what many parents over time have tried and reported that, yeah, that was just that little bit helpful. That was helpful.
Is that generally this is how it goes, right? Unless we're really thinking about this, this is how it goes. We're preparing a meal. We've come off a busy day ourselves.
Let's say it's an evening meal and we're really going for it. We're getting it together. The kids, thank goodness, are playing somewhere.
We're just grateful that we've got a bit of time to do this. We're throwing stuff together. It could be enjoyable.
It could be hurried. Whatever it is, we're doing this thing. We're getting the meal together and good for us, you know, because it's not easy to do night after night after night, and especially it's not easy to do when you have visitors over, when it's a celebration, it's a birthday, some sort of event.
That's when it gets really tough. So we're getting it done. And then we might give the kids a shout, hey, five minutes until dinner.
And they're off in some other room and yeah, yeah, you know, and it's like, okay. And then two minutes, we might even, and generally when you do that, all that really achieves for most kids is they've kind of handcuffed themselves to the rail now. But anyway, we're doing our best.
And then we get the meal done. Okay, the plates get put on the table. And phew, and we go and we go to get the kids.
And then no, we don't want to and it's really tough. And you get grumpy with them and say, look, right now, I gave you a five minute warning. Come on now, right now.
And it starts the meal off in a really challenging trajectory, right? It's like now they're grumpy, or they might take their grumpiness out on being persnickety about the food. And you're thinking or saying, look, I prepared this, and it took me a long time. And oh, you know, it's just one of those scenes that repeats itself over and over.
And it's particularly difficult if you have company over, because then the kids really are disappearing out of your purview. They're doing stuff, they're playing with, with their cousins, with their friends, and then trying to bring them to the table can be really problematic, and almost kind of embarrassing, because when they come there, they're grumpy, they're not doing so well, they might, you know, put on a bit of a bit of a performance, and it's like, oh my goodness. Okay, so what to do, what to do to that, with that.
One of the things that's important that we can do is realize that we have to connect with our kids before we direct them anywhere. Connecting first is such an essential part of being able to build a connection bridge to the next activity. Mealtimes is an especially big one, but this applies in many other areas, too.
But I just want to stay with that narrow focus around mealtime. So one of the things that many parents have found helpful is, at the very least, when the meal is prepared, just set it aside for 30 seconds, one minute. Take, if it's a family serving, take it to the table with the lids on the big pots.
Some parents have just, have even gone so far as to have a heating pad where they put the plates on the table, and just let it sit for a moment, let it just sit, and let ourselves just sit right alongside our child, and go over to them and say, hey, what you've been doing? And look at their drawing, look at their project. If they're older and they've just been listening to music, what have you been listening to? What have they been reading? And you just spend that 30, 45 seconds, 60 seconds would be hugely generous, but you spend that tiny little bit of time checking in with their world. Now, I write about this in my Soul of Discipline book, but here's how it applies to mealtime, is that you go over and you check into their world.
And then you say to them, hey, I'm going to go over to the table, I'm going to bring stuff over to the table now, or I'm just going to clean off the counter. And after that, we're coming on over to have dinner. Now, that's my world.
I go and do what I'm going to do. And then I come back and say, hey, it's time to come over now. Yeah, of course, bring the book over with you.
I'm not going to read it at the table, but you can have it nearby. That's fine. Just have it on the counter there.
Or, okay, let's just, let's leave your project right there. Let's, and we'll come back and we'll finish that up right after supper or whatever it is you're going to do. But it's your world, whatever it is, my world, which is very clearly defined, it's supper.
And now our world, we're going to bridge over to that. This kind of way of bringing children to the table, many parents have even gone further. They've found that to be somewhat sort of helpful.
So they've said, hey, we're onto something here. So now what we're going to do is that we're going to a couple of times through meal prep, go on over to their space and just check in with them, see what they're doing. Maybe just give their shoulder a little squeezy, you know, just stroke their hair, just make a little contact with them.
Look over their shoulder from behind the sofa and say, wow, okay, that's a lot today. And just, or maybe ask them a little question, you know, is if you got to the best part of the book where you were hoping to, is it come? No, it hasn't come yet. But it's soon.
Or yeah, there was this really exciting thing. And now they've looked at you. You see, they've made eye contact with you.
And now that means you're built that little connection bridge, just that little eye contact that and they've done it a couple of times through meal prep, 10, 15 seconds. It's not a question of, have I got the time to do this? It's have I got the wherewithal to do it? Have I got the consciousness to, you know, to do it? Time is not such an issue in this case, because it's so brief, but you've done it once, twice, and then the third time, off we go to the dinner table. Now, where this particularly becomes important is adding another little component to it.
And that is when there's celebratory meals, when it's holy day, holiday times, when it's birthday celebrations, one of the largest spiritual religious celebrations, whatever it is, then I want to add one other component into it. When you have meals through the year, try to have a calm down activity before meals, always that 10 or 15 minutes before a meal is calm down time, where it's if it's a if it's a chasing game that's been going on bouncing on the trampoline, you know, whatever it is a building of a full, bring kids in and say now it's calm down time, get one of their project boards, like a tea tray with a board down, get a book out, if they're little, get their modeling beeswax out, whatever it is, but about 15 to 20 minutes before every meal, what some parents have found to be a bit of a game changer is being able to then have that that calm down time. And to be able to say right up front to kids, this is we're having our calm downtime now.
So when we have our food, we're going to be able to take all the goodness from it. And if you do that day after day after day, they can just come and sit at the counter with you. And you tell them a little story of, of when you were a little girl, you know, when you were a little boy, when you were a young one, whatever it is, you or you, you tell them a funny little thing you saw that day, or they can go and read their book or whatever it is, it's a quieter activity that allows the adrenaline and cortisol to drain down and and allow the body to get ready and the tummy to get ready for food.
Now, the benefit of that is that when you have cousins over friends over, it's a bit frenetic, you can say to a child the day before, hey, when when everyone is over, we're still going to have our calm downtime before we have our meal and our family, that's just what we do. And we are going to do that still just remember. So just a little bit before we eat, we're coming in, and we're going to have just a little bit of settling downtime before the meal.
That's what we're going to do. You can come in and help me if you like, or just sit up at the counter, like we often do. But we're still going to be doing that.
So a child doesn't come in, you know, when you're trying to hold them in, they got their crazy eyes on as one mom described it, where they just, they're out of themselves. And you're trying to get to the table. And it's just, it's just a train wreck, so to speak.
So in that way, what you're doing is that you're building a connection, you connect before you collect, you're collecting them to come to the table to eat. And in this way, you can establish a little family ritual that will, that will pay off big time, when there's big celebrations going on, child might not might not like it, because there's other stuff going on. But you've got a much greater chance of bringing them in, settling them on down, you can bring the cousins into maybe, maybe not.
But at least we're going to do this. And even if it's just the sort of basic hand washing time, but it's extended a little bit, it's hand washing, it's it's face washing, it's a child helping set the table, because that can do it as well, right? It's targeted, it's a little quieter. And you're connecting, it's still connecting before collecting before coming to the table.
Okay, I sure hope that was helpful. And don't forget, right below in a link here, you can see our Simplicity Parenting Starter Kit. It's an amazing little starter kit.
It's got book readings, it's got videos, it's got audios, it's got all kinds of stuff. Particularly, it's got our monthly e-news with all sorts of articles that other parents have sent in that I've seen, as well, that are just so on point with living a simpler life. It's got lots of articles like that, but also audios that we have.
That's in our monthly e-news. And that is in the free Simplicity Parenting Starter Kit. That's the link right below.
Okay, bye bye for now.
