Hello and welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John Payne. This week I wanted to talk about how to help children feel more competent, because competency often comes before confidence. Competence, then confidence.
And there's not a parent, you know, around that doesn't want their child to feel confident, right? But competence is what underpins that. And that's the focus of today's Simplicity Diary. Let me unpack this just a little bit.
When a child feels, I can do this, you know, I got this, I know what to do. Then there's a lot is happening within them, that is almost like you could say, welcoming them to the world. This is my world, you know, this is my family, this is my school, my kindergarten, my, you know, environment.
And I can do stuff within this environment that, that I can master. I can have that sense that, yeah, yeah, I can, I can navigate this. And when you've got a child feeling, yeah, I can navigate this.
That's a child who is feeling much more secure in the world, much safer, much more secure. And, and to have a child feel competent in this way, is is just a real gift to their to their development in general. One of the primary ways to do this, and this is perhaps what we'll focus on a little bit more today, is it marries something that I've talked about in other podcasts.
And that's the theme of, of micro rhythms, list little rhythms, little things that are done in the same way, pretty much every day. A child comes to know the drill, they know they can anticipate them. And a micro rhythm is is a little thing of, you know, when we're getting ready for dinner, I know just what to do.
I helps I help set the table in this way. I, I know that we say a thank you to the farmers in this way, we join hands and we say thank you to the farmers, or I know that just how it is that we have our dinner. And I know when I finish dinner, I get down, I wait to be, I ask, may I get down? I'm a big fan of that.
May I get down? My mom or dad or guardian says to me, yes. And then I know to take my plate or bowl to the counter and put it just there. I know, I know, I know.
Similarly, at bath time, I know the drill, I know that I put my pajamas right there, I know how to get in the bath, I know, or the shower, and I know where the soap is, because that's where I like it to be. And that's my towel on that rail. And that's my stool where I brush my teeth.
If it's a little child that needs a little stool to stand on, or a bigger child doesn't need it, that's my toothbrush. And then I do my teeth, and it's in that cup. And, and what micro rhythms do like this is these little stepping stones.
And some of you who are regular listeners to these podcasts will know that I touch on this from time to time. But in terms of competency, what that's doing for a child is that it's building up their grapho, fine and gross motor skills, because they're doing something repetitively, there's a mood, there's certain movements, actually associated with doing that. And it's repetitive over and over, they make these movements, and, and they, and they can give themselves fully into that world of whatever it is that they're, they're, you know, moving through, because they don't have to worry about what's coming next, they know.
So they're not distracted. And it helps them so much with, with what every parent dreads at bath time for, you know, shower time, meal times, they don't, they aren't nearly so prone to being distracted, it creates a slipstream of predictability. But it also enables them to do it all by their big selves.
And that so they can give themselves fully into the body based movement of something. Because they know that this comes after that, that that comes after that. And this is just so lovely to sort of sit back and watch a child just in that in that beautiful flow, get themselves ready, or, you know, help with mealtime, prep and set up or what, whatever it is in the, for younger children with, you know, with getting ready for bed, or even older ones, you know, they know the drill, they know what to do, all the way to to getting in bed and beyond.
That builds competency, it's, it's a micro competency. Inside a micro rhythm, it's little little pieces of competency. But for a child, you know, if we stop and think about it, if they can be fairly autonomous, as they go through, well, the example I gave was bath time, right? So if they can be autonomous through bath time, that's a big deal for them, because that's a fairly big part of their day.
It's a day full of lots of, it's a time full of lots of doings, you know, whether doing this and doing that. And actually, they can do it. Surely, we can keep them company and stay connected with them.
But they're doing it and a look of satisfaction when a child puts that toothbrush in the cup and says, right, I'm ready. And then zoom off, they go to bed into the bedroom. And then it begins again, because they know what to do in order all the way through to, to, you know, storytime and prayer or verse or whatever it is one does, they know what to do there as well and where things go.
This micro competencies builds and builds and builds and you can you can do once you have a like a foothold on one part of the day, the example I've been giving is bath time, it could be many different times, then you can start to work with another piece that a child can, can do it for themselves. Now, they're going to need help from time to time. And they're going to need a little bit of leading into this, where we help them do it.
And then we help them do it a little less, and then a little less until they're pretty much coping on their own. I remember visiting a kindergarten once where there was a little boy who was pretty angry, almost furious, that he wanted to get up to the branch and climb this tree. And he wanted to help to get up there.
And he wanted the teacher to lift him and know you lift me, you know, and it was this kind of situation. Now, I've mentioned this story once before, but it's with this kind of lensing. What the what the teacher did in this little micro competency is that she took a number of the she pointed out and took the child's hand and led him to where there was a number of projects and construction and stumps and pieces of wood, you know, two by fours and so on.
And and that child had played and constructed with all those things many, many times along with the other children in the group. And she just led him there. And then he looked back at the tree.
And then he looked at the at the construction material. And he started hauling these things over and rolling this big stump over and he built, admittedly, it was a fairly rickety structure. But he but he had used that those things so many times that now he'd taken a further step.
He felt competent with all that material. And now, he wasn't just using it in the same old same old. He was he was now coming up with a way to use that competency to build a new competency to master the the tree to get up.
And when he got up onto that branch, the look of satisfaction on that child's face, it was just completely golden. And I guess this is this is the the point I'm making here is that once you establish a beach head, a foundation of competency in one area, it can lead a child into constructing, in that situation, literally constructing a competency in another. And there's just this, there's this feeling of, of, I actually can do this.
And when that happens more, we turn our kids into just such expert little problem solvers. Because now the competency, competence has become confidence. And they feel just that little bit more confident to be able to take something on that is that they're what's often called growth edge.
Whereas previously, they would have maybe asked us to do it and even nagged us to do it. competency is catchy. And it in it, it builds a child to a feeling of, you know what, I can figure this out.
Because they know that they have this, this sense of, of mastery of their own little worlds. And so, if we can embrace, not just ordinary old rhythm, like a clock, like when we do things, but them as the macro rhythm, but the micro rhythm, the little rhythms of just doing things in the same way. It's not boring routine.
I wouldn't really share that picture at all. It's a way of helping a child come into this world and do what they intend to do. Okay.
I hope that's helpful raising competent and confident children. Okay, bye bye for now.
