Welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John Payne. This week, I've been thinking a lot about something that I think of as micro abandonments. Little abandonments, unintended abandonments that can happen throughout the day in our family life, that we don't mean it, but it has a cumulative effect on our children when we withdraw that vital life's blood of love, and that's connection, that being present and being connected.
And the micro abandonments that I'm seeing, chief amongst them, is what I'm seeing as phone use, as cell phones. Another one that I'm seeing is just the straightforward pressure of life that so many of us as parents are under now, and in both situations, children feel subjugated, and it can build up, these micro abandonments can build up to almost in a cumulative sense, so that we start to see effects on our kids, where you see an attempt for them, from them, to reconnect with us, and that reconnection can often be the source of annoyance to us, and then the problem becomes very circular. Now, let's first of all explore what the abandonment is, then the effects, and then what might be some possible solutions.
First of all, there's never, I don't think, been a time where we've had such, kids have had such competition for parents' attention. Now there perhaps are some other things that have happened on large, global, dramatic levels, and they're, whilst tragic, easy to see and say, yep, that was a time when there was a split and splintered, and it's interesting for someone like me who's worked in areas of war zones, of places where there have been forced separations of children from family, that I'm actually seeing now many, many of those same symptoms playing out now with our children, and we're kind of left wondering why. Now there's many things that maybe contribute to our kids looking for all the world, like wartime kids, like, as I wrote in the Simplicity Parenting book, like many kids are living in the undeclared war on childhood, but one of the leading stresses for a child is to feel abandoned, and our phones are doing that all the time.
Every time we're engaged with a child and we're playing with them, or we're with them and we're baking, or we're just sitting quietly with them at home, or whatever it is that we're doing, we're picking them up from school, and they come running out from school to greet us, and the phone goes, and the text notification goes off, and for that moment, we look down, and our eyes go down onto the screen, and away from a child who's running towards us, so happy to see us. That is what I mean by a micro abandonment. When we're with them at home, and they're wanting to tell us something, something happens on the phone, and we look, we check.
When they're wanting to show us something that they're playing with, or we're sitting beside them on the sofa, we're reading them a story, and a little notification goes off, and we look, and our eyes just, and we think, we're only doing this really quickly, and we go right back to them, which is good, right? That's a kind of a compromise, but it's still, for a child, a micro abandonment, that kind of a thousand cuts, it's like a small little paper cut to our connection with a child, and every time that happens, a child starts to feel, my mom, my dad, my guardian, is not only are they not quite there for me, that even when we're doing something, and the phone gives a notification, that is more important than me, that is more central in my parents' and guardians' life, that is more central than me. This then leads to a child attempting to be central. In other words, they will fight the displacement.
They will fight against the abandonment and the displacement by various behaviors, and there are a bunch of them really, to name a few, like one is perhaps like that tendency for whining, for example, of just whining, of that thing that we all dread as parents, you know, that child whining, and I don't mean they're just whining when we look at our phone, the whining will come at more generalized times, because a child doesn't bracket, oh, I'm being abandoned now, my mom is looking at the phone, my dad, my grandparent is looking at the phone, the feeling of micro abandonments, as I mentioned, are cumulative, and they will build up over time, and they will, so the whining becomes generalized, and they'll whine and whine in order to get our attention, and bless their hearts, they're not doing it because they enjoy it, they're doing it out of a feeling of needing to become noticed, of needing to become central, because they've got this underlying feeling that they're secondary, that they're being displaced, and that's a very insecure place for a child, it's a place that brings up a lot of anxieties, because they're little, you know, even tweenages, teenagers, they're still young, they're still vulnerable, and if they're feeling that sense of cumulative micro abandonment, they will do, they will bring various behaviors into the family in order to basically feel safe again, it's that, it's very primitive, it's a very, very sort of survival-based response, and it's involuntary, they're not in charge of it, it's not their fault, really, it's not our fault either, it's just, it's something that's become normalized, and it's something that I want to try and draw attention to, that we really start to become aware of our phone checks, of looking, looking, looking, checking, checking our phone when our children are around. The other thing that can happen with other kids is that they don't so much whine and haul, they become explosive, now that's a different kind of a temperament, some children will whine and haul on us, other children will explode, and they'll become, and their explosions can happen all over the place, for seemingly really, like, weird little things, you think, wow, that is just, seems like my child is willing to die on the hill of not putting their coat on, now we're trying to put their coat on to get in the car, meanwhile, they're pushing back so hard, because the connection has been thinned, that would enable them to make that, you know, transition they don't want to make. If our connection with a child is thick, and rich, and juicy, then it's easier for us to put, you know, for them to accept, okay, I've got a transition, I don't want to do that, but I really like being with my mum, and that connection, and my dad, and my guardian, and I really feel like, okay, I can go along with this, but if the connection has been thinned, and a child is experiencing that, not that richness, that fullness of relationship, and connection, and these micro abandonments have happened throughout the day, then it's much harder for them in general, and much harder to move along with the program, and then everything becomes difficult in the day, then we become frustrated, and then they have that sense, an increased sense of lack of safety, and around it goes again, as I mentioned, round it goes, so the micro abandonments were the beginning, the child's pushing back, and trying to get back to be central in their lives comes up, we get frustrated with that, and this very understandably, and then the lack of safety, and the lack of connection is thinned even further, and this cyclical phenomena of a child through difficult means trying to become central in our lives is something that I'm seeing played out over and over, there was a mum and a dad I was speaking with a couple of weeks ago, actually a month ago now, and their child's attempts to be central in their life was more around controlling behavior, so they would try and set the agenda of the family, they were very controlling to their mum and dad, and they really tried to grip them, like bedtimes, they had to lay beside them, the mum and dad had to lay beside the child, and it was almost like a hostage taking situation, the child is very controlling about sleep, you may not leave me until I'm asleep, I'm going to hold you, and in this situation the mum and dad, particularly the dad, had a habit, he was saying, of bringing his phone up into the room, and the child got so mad with the dad, and was really acting out, and so on, and so on, and when the dad, when we talked about the micro abandonments, because the dad would get up, go check the phone, come back, or eyes would just slide to the phone as it lit up in a slightly darkened room, his eyes would slide over there, and the child would start acting out and controlling again.
When they both realized what was going on, and they really worked hard, and I was so impressed with their ability to deal with what, for them, they said had become a compulsion, they used the word compulsion, to check the phone, to always be looking, the controlling behaviour started loosening, and it's early days yet, it's been about a month or so, but my prediction, and I think this is showing every sign that this will come true for the family, is that the controlling behaviour will start to ease more and more and more as they break the habit of the micro abandonments that this child is actually feeling. So for all these reasons, if over the coming weeks and months ahead, you can be aware of these little paper cuts of abandonment that our children feel, and think to oneself, you know, I'm just not going to do it right now, what's central in my life is my child. And that's almost like, I kind of know we all know that.
But it's so compelling, or a compulsion, as this dad talked about it, to be looking, always having our eyes slide off to the phone and looking and checking. If we can resist that, even turn off notifications completely, just turn them off, particularly when we're with our children, but just turn them off in general, then it means we've got to go check, right? And then we're not being tapped on the on the on the primal shoulder, hey, there's a message for you something you got to check, hey, every time that little ping, that little noise goes off, it's very hard to resist. Again, that's very primitive stuff as well, you know, that we check, is everything okay? Is everything okay? If we can resist that, and be fully present for our children in just very simple ways, just like, you know, having dinner, like bedtime, like bath time at night, like just hanging out on the sofa, whatever it is, if we can resist, the micro abandonments will be more and more fully present for our children, we will have them feel more and more connected to us.
And more and more safe and secure within our families. Okay, I sure hope that helps. Bye bye for now.
