Welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John Payne. You know, I've been thinking about a situation I, you know, witnessed this week where a little child was continually coming back to their mom and dad, wanting them to watch. And we're in a park and the child was very unwilling to do anything without being watched.
And I've come across this a lot, as we probably all have over the years, and this kind of watch me, it's what, I think it was Elfie Cohen who talked about watch me dependency. The watch me needing to be watched is just so normal for any little child to want to be seen to be doing things and want to show you. And it's lovely.
There's an aspect of it, which is quite normal, of course. And then there's a part of it that crosses the line. And where it crosses the line is what I wanted to focus on in this wee podcast, to know when to sort of pull back and to give some alternatives as to what to do.
Now, my concern, and this is where the sort of the crossing the line, it gets close to the line, is that when a child needs to be watched all the time, regardless of their age, the little ones do it a little more, obviously. But what it's doing is that it's relying, if you get this feeling that this is starting to be like an external loci, like they're looking for my judgment all the time, they're looking for judgment. And they're becoming reliant on my judgment, as opposed to an internal loci, where we help kids live into their own experience, which is very centering for them.
So their center is within themselves, not external, away and out of themselves. I remember a child coming to, this was years ago, coming repeatedly back to a mum with drawings saying, is this good? Is this good? And the mother would say, well, you know, I think, and well, that's lovely, dear. Oh, my goodness, look at that.
Let's just take a picture of that. We could, we could maybe send that to grandma, and she could make some stamps. Do you know, you could do that.
You can do that now you can make stuff. And it was, it was only the drawing was lovely, but it took it drew the child outside their experience. And the drawing itself didn't really progress very far, because that because she was always bringing that back to the mother to receive the art critics appraisal, almost.
And she never really settled down into that deep, lovely, silent drawing or project or whatever it is that a child is doing, because she continually had that need for affirmation. And it was in it had crossed the line. And the line got crossed.
And this is where I think we can make the judgment as parents is when that line gets crossed into and now this is the center of this is no longer within my child's creativity. The center of this is me being a kind of an art critic or, you know, like one of these reality TV judges sitting in judgment of things. The reason this concerns me a little bit is that it makes kids, it can lead to them just being a bit anxious, really just not settling down into deep creative experience.
It also leaves it leaves them not trusting their own judgment. And it leaves them having to always seek judgment from someone else. And if you grow that thought through the years, it's not going to help them in their teenage years, when they're when they're not following their own North Star, but are leaning heavily into that kind of magnetic North of popular culture, as opposed to their own true North of their own experience.
Do you see if we let a child experience their experience, when they move into their teen years, they're much more likely to not just follow the crowd, just to go along with things and have that center be outside themselves, because in the teen years, there's a lot of stuff that you really don't want that happening for, right? So, so that we avoid like praise junkies is another term for this, where kids have always got to be praised, no matter what. When you get the feeling that it's crossing the line, pull back and just ask a simple question, or make a little observation. Let's take the last one first.
If you've got a child bringing, well, the example I used was, it was a drawing, let's say, or a project of some sort. And they're, they're saying, is this good? Is this good? Watch me, watch me, you know, and they bring a drawing over to you. Is this good? Just make an observation.
As the first thing, just observe and look at it and say, Oh, my goodness, you used a lot of green in that drawing, all that green at the bottom. And I say, yes, that's kind of grass, but the cow is eaten most of it. That's why there's some places that it's different.
And you'll get a whole story that comes out the child about the green or about or about that, that that's, that's, gosh, you spent a lot of time on that today, because often with very little children, you're not quite sure what it is. So rather than say, is that a cow? No, it's a horse, you know, or whatever. Just say, Oh, can you tell me a little bit more about that? And just and just let them tell their story.
The second thing you can do is just ask a little question, something like, huh, how did you figure that out? Look, like, what did you do? Like, let's say it's a project, and they've cut some things out, and they've got a, they've got something balancing, or let's say they're older children, you know, tweenages, and they've done something that is a bit more of an project, just to be able to say to 11, 12, 13 year old, how did you figure that out? That's, I wouldn't have thought to do that, huh? Can you? What is? How did you get to that place? Yeah, well, you know, and then another story will come out. But you see, with those two, just making an observation, or asking a wide aperture, generalized question, what you're doing is you're shifting the dial back into the internal loci. You're shifting it back and into the the tweenages story, the young child story, or you're basically activating them about what they're doing.
And if they say, you know, something like, watch me, watch me. And you and you, you look over, and they say, no, no, come over. The the thing to do, you know, about that is just to pretty much stay in your own space, and say, come and tell me about it, love.
Watch me, come, come and tell me what you're doing. And call them over, or you might go over, you know, you don't have to come to you, I think it's a little bit better. But and, and just say, now, what is it that you've done? Oh, you're, you're, you're doing every second rung, it's on the monkey bar.
And they're, they're doing every second one, because their arms have gotten so big. I can do every second one now. Oh, my goodness.
Is that stretching right to fingertips? Yes, but I can do it if I swing. As opposed to saying, look at you, how much you've grown here, let me just film this, let me just and you start you start falling into that big trap of, of, of filming a child, which only intensifies their watch me dependency. Because after they're filmed, they'll jump down off the monkey bar or whatever.
And they'll want to look at themselves. So now that's more external loci. They're more because now they're seeing what they did on the phone, rather than living in to the internal experience.
So if at all possible, avoid filming stuff, photographing stuff, try to I know we've got this at our fingertips these days, but it but it really pushes kids to always be reliant on something external to themselves. And we really, really don't want to set that up as they move into their teenage years, where they're reliant on others, and other stuff that's going on to be cool, to fit in, and to to do things that possibly aren't all that great at all. And a lot of this, little by little by little, we can bring our children back into their own, own internal centering experience.
We get so many chances to do that through through the through the every day through the weeks and months as they roll on. Okay, so that was my thoughts around watch me dependency. I sure hope that was helpful.
Okay, bye bye for now.
