Hello and welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John Payne. This week I wanted to address a situation that comes up for so many of us as parents is when a situation starts escalating and you can feel it's escalating and you need to actually do a quick and hopefully easy pause. You need to just not go there.
You need to not go with the escalation. There are many ways to do this and I talk about these a bunch of different ways in my book Being At Your Best When Kids Are At Their Worst, but I wanted to talk about one in particular that can be used when kids are nagging. They're coming back and they're back and back and they're nagging, nagging, nagging or they're interrupting.
You're trying to talk with someone or get something done and they're just kind of just boomeranging back and just are causing you to feel that the, as one mom put it, the red mists are rising. I've never heard that term before, but when that mom said it to me years ago, I knew exactly what she meant. So what to do when you feel those waves of frustration start to rise? So one of the things to recognize is that, of course, you know, the early warning signs in your own body.
It's usually that tells us pretty early what's happening, tells us, gives us like an early warning sign. So to understand that, oh gosh, this is so frustrating, that's the feeling of it, but you can feel your shoulders tense, you can feel your throat clench, you can feel your abdomen tighten, you can, we all have various little warning signs and my first suggestion is to pay attention to those, to really pay attention, that when that's happening, notice it. Now I know this might sound awfully basic, but just, but first of all, notice what your body is telling you.
Now if that, if that's, you know, not your kind of thing, it's okay, but still notice that you're getting frustrated. Climb the stairs to your balcony and look down on the dance floor and go, whoa, okay, that's really happening. My child is nagging more and more, is coming back and is relentless and won't stop.
And just, and notice that, that I'm getting really frustrated with this. So, and I talk about that a lot in that book I mentioned of getting to the balcony is one of the first steps just to notice what it is that's going on inside us. Now with that said, even if that's difficult to do, and it is difficult to do, I'm going to suggest that when a child is nagging, one of the, what they're looking for is both boundary, a boundary and a connection, both.
Because a boundary has a child feel safe because they know, you know, where they stand. And a connection is often what they're looking for when they're nagging and nagging and nagging like that. So I'm going to suggest a boundary and a connection that is super simple and quick to do.
The first thing, if your child is nagging and coming back and back and back, or interrupting conversations and nagging that they want something in whatever form, is just to simply hold, hold your hand up in that, in that universal, in that universal stop, stop, show them your palm, just stop. And, and, and you can give them a little, a little look, but stop. And you say to them, stop, please.
No, no, no, stop. And just, that's it. Stop.
And, and ground yourself when you do it, mean it, be, be sure about it. It's just stop. And then having done that, that stop, then gather, move your hand around and draw the child, mostly they'll, they'll allow this to happen, kids.
So first of all, stop with your hand, then round your hand and put it on their shoulder. You know, if they'll let you, and most will, like I said, and just bring them in close to you, just bring them in and let them lean against you. Now, even if they're a bit older and they don't lean against you anymore, just put your hand on their shoulder and, and just give their shoulder a little squeeze, run your hand over their scapula a little bit and just, and, and, and just, just, whoa, stop.
And now gather, stop and gather, but gather them in. Gather them in, let them be with you and connect with you on a body-based level, not on a word-based level. If they're, if they're nagging and nagging and nagging to get, if you engage too often with them on a, on a verbal level, then they, what you're, what you're doing is that you're buying into already, very often an elevated method of communication.
They're already elevated. And so to sort of be able to connect with them, but not get involved in that verbal stuff where we end up justifying ourselves or, or arguing back or, cause it's just, who wants to argue with a kid? You know, they're just children. We, we don't want to be arguing with them and we all know that, but they are, they are in need of connection, but the connection can be body language, not verbal language.
So the first body language is just stop, stop. The next is collect and gather them, gather them in and let the little ones will just be with you and lean against you. The older ones, you might just need to stroke, as I said, you know, just stroke their, their shoulder blades or their shoulder and just, and the third, and it's the, the, you know, simple, cause if you do that, this happens organically is breathe, just.
And as you breathe, just run your hand down their shoulder, just down their scapula, run your hand down their trapezius, down their shoulder, down their upper arm. You don't need to go any lower in their body than that, but just down their upper arm, down their shoulder, and maybe do it two or three times. Oh, and then, and then now you can, you can say, Oh my goodness.
And the, and then is, is just to connect with them. Oh my goodness. Something's going wrong.
Something's hard. Something's not working out, is it? And just have a moment. So what you've done is stop, gather, breathe, and then connect with them, but not about what is it that you want? Tell me everything that's bugging you.
It's just, it's just an empathetic recognition that something feels bad. It's like, yeah, for an older one, you might say, all right, this is something's frustrating, right? Or for a younger, younger one, just rubbing their shoulder, squeezing their arm, their upper arm, just giving them a hand squeeze. Oh, something's gone wrong.
Hasn't it, love? Something's really gone wrong. So you're not actually inviting them to tell you everything about it. Not yet.
You're giving yourself that vital five, six, maybe even 10 seconds that you've got to shift the trajectory just that little bit to settle yourself just that little bit. Settle it down, create a space, and then, and then be able to connect with them and work through the problem. Now, what is it, love? What is it? What is bothering you so much? Then what we've done in that five, 10 seconds is we've connected with it, with the child to be sure that's, that's happened.
You're giving them a little hand hug. You've drawn them close. You're not rejecting them.
You're not saying, would you please just stop? No, stop now. Stop right now. Look, I cannot hear any more of this.
Would you please? And you know how that, who hasn't let the parent cast the first stone? Who hasn't been in that place today? But you can say stop with your hand. Stop. Put the hand up.
Stop. Gather. Breathe.
And then connect. Connect on that. Now go to the verbal.
Something's not working out. Oh dear. All right.
Okay. Now, this is, is of course helpful for most kids. It breaks the, it breaks the verbal very often.
They'll stop talking just for that, you know, three, five, 10 seconds. They'll stop with the, with the talking. You're modeling emotional self-regulation.
And that's huge. That you're modeling taking a breath. And you're modeling bringing in, like, I'm here for you.
I'm here. But you're also at the same time showing them that there is another way to do this. And if you do it enough, what, what a lot of parents tell me who get pretty practiced at this stop, gather, breathe.
That get, like it becomes second nature. Stop, gather, breathe. Is that, that's enough time, you know, to be able to do what that famous thing is like, count to three.
You know, count to 10. But if we just count to 10, and our child's standing there glaring at us. And they're still going at us verbally.
I need you to pay attention now, mom. I want to, I need to know now because mom, I need dad. I need to know.
And you know, for little kids when they're into that kind of, that kind of voice. If we're just standing there counting, like closing our eyes, counting to three, counting to 10. It's not dealing with a child's need for connection.
Is it dealing with our need to have a pause? Maybe we can do it through the barrage of repeated words. But it's doing nothing, virtually nothing for the child because they're still in, in this kind of, they've got caught up in that handful of repeated words that they're saying over and over and over. And there's few things as annoying as nagging like that.
By, by using stop, just stop. No, no, stop. Stop.
Gather. Breathe. What we've done is that we've broken the child or at least shifted the child out.
We've broken them out of that, of that cycle of, of barrage of repeated words. And as long as, if you gather them in and they're still repeating the words, take two or three more breaths. Take longer just to massage their shoulder.
Just, just give them a squeezy if you can. Some kids don't want to be touched. Most kids are okay and you can coach them up to do this.
Just be, and just on their upper arm, just give them a little, a little hug. What you've done for them is also shifted the communication. You, you've shifted it.
I want to emphasize this. You've shifted it from a very narrow band of, of, of needling words into a wide aperture, a wide band of loving body language connection. And the breath out, what that's doing is that you're going down because they were going up.
Like the voice, their voice was, mom, mom, mom, dad. And their voice is up and they're losing it. And they're literally getting out of themselves.
They're going up. By, by stop, gather, and then breathe out, go down. Down is this last crucial piece in this.
What you're doing is counterbalancing the whole gestalt, the whole gesture of them going up and out. You're coming into yourself and down. So the stop and gather, breathe and down.
Stop, gather, down. And as much as we can remember this, our kids start to become sort of practiced at it. And they'll realize that when they get into that cycle, and they don't like to be in that cycle.
They really don't like it. It's, it's worse for them than it is for us, believe it or not. But they've got into that way of, of a habit of getting our attention.
Even if it's negative attention, they're getting our attention for doing that. What this is doing is giving them not so much attention, but it's giving them presence and it's giving them connection. Stop, gather them in, breathe down.
Stop, gather, down. Okay, I sure hope that was helpful. And happy practicing later today.
Okay, bye bye for now.
