Hello and welcome back to The Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John Payne. Well, another week's gone by, another podcast, and you've made some time to listen to it. Well done, hooray.
The theme today that I wanted to touch on was based around helping kids when they're pushing back and still having us stay in leadership and having us still be that governor of the family state and yet not necessarily getting in their faces. And what can you do in those moments when you meet minor to moderate or even really significant refusals and defiance? Part of the problem that we face when kids push back hard against what we know is quite reasonable to instruct them to do just to move through the day. Part of the issue is that we don't want to get involved in arguing with a child, with a tween or a teen.
It just feels awful, doesn't it? To be arguing, for example, with a six-year-old, a 12-year-old. It's just not an attractive look, and it just feels silly. And it obviously is frustrating for everyone.
And yet they're defying us. And when we argue with a child in that sort of situation, what we're doing, and I think we can all sense it, is that we're sort of bringing ourselves into the level of being a child ourselves. It feels uncomfortable.
It doesn't feel right to get into this arguing or even negotiating. It doesn't feel right. And what we're doing is giving up the ground that we stand on in terms of our leadership of the family.
And the outcome of that, even though our kids are arguing hard and they're pushing back and they're negotiating and they're refusing, is that if we do start to lose that central leadership space within our family, it makes our kids unsafe, feel unsafe and not feel secure because they don't know who's in charge anymore. And they're little, they're young, even if they're tween or teenagers, they still know they're heavily reliant on us to provide food and shelter and so on. And here we are arguing with them on a kind of a level playing field.
Now, I don't mean we're superior, but I do mean we need to be to give them that security and that feeling of safety that someone is leading, that someone is helping keep them safe and secure and providing for them in the world. And so it's kind of a funny old thing, isn't it? Because there they are arguing with us, wanting to have their way. But underneath that, at a deeper level, every child wants their parent to keep them safe and secure.
So there's many things, that was kind of the big theme of the Soul of Discipline book that I wrote a while back. But one thing in particular I want to talk about today, just one of many threads. And that's something called stretching the time.
That's the way I think of it, is stretching the time. What I mean by this is that we don't get into loggerheads with the kids. It's that we look at what's going on.
We notice their refusal, their defiance. And one of the first things to do is just say to them, wow, this is really hard, right? This is not working. And that's really harsh, what you said now.
It's not helpful. And it was harsh. And you know what? It's not always like that.
It's not, you know, you do perfectly well most of the time. You know, yesterday you helped me bring in all the groceries. You can be helpful, but this is just not.
Now, just before we get to the stretching of the time, I want to preface it with that. The prefacing is when things are really going wrong, you've obviously got to say, hey, that's not, it's just not at all helpful. That's harsh, whatever.
You've got to disapprove, obviously. Otherwise, there's no boundaries in the world. It's like parenting sans frontier.
You know, it's just no frontiers, no boundaries. And then you might have noticed what I slipped in there was a little affirmation. You know, a little bit of an I see you.
I see the deeper you. I see that you're helpful. I see that you can be perfectly fine.
Because they've lost it. They've lost the plot when they're defying, when a child's feeling really grumpy and defiant and angry. They've lost that, that, and then it's just helpful to remind them that they're perfectly good kids.
Okay, now, with that said, and it's an important with that said, but with that said, here's my point for today's podcast. Is to stretch the time and just to say to them, you know what, we're going to leave this for now. And we'll circle back to this when everyone's feeling better.
And something that my kids have heard over and over, and I mentioned this in a previous, in a previous episode, my little saying of nothing gets worked out when we're worked up. Nothing, nothing gets worked out when we're worked up. And we're just going to take time.
And, and in doing that, you stretch the time, let's say you've asked them to clean off the counter, because lunch is coming. Just one of many little examples. And, and just say, you know what, we're going to circle back to this in a minute, because it's, it's just too hard to work things out when we're worked up.
Lunch is going to be a little bit later today. That's okay. I don't mind.
And I'm just going to go, I'm going to go over and I'm just going to finish putting the dishes away, or I'm just going to finish tidying up in the lounge room, or I'm just going to go, whatever it is, I'm just going to go and do something normal. And I'm actually not engaging. I'm not engaging with your refusal.
Am I present for you? Yes, yeah, I'm still here. I'm present, but I'm not engaging with that behavior. It's just a simple non-engagement.
And you're, and it offers you a way just to move right out of the argument. It offers you a way to not, not get into the escalation pattern that often underlies arguments like this. But it also, and crucially, keeps you in the leadership role.
It keeps us as parents with our hands on the steering wheel, on the tiller, directing the family. Because when we say this, we now are setting the time and place that we'll work things out. Are we going to circle back to this? Absolutely we are.
But we're not going to do it when our child's body is full of adrenaline, full of cortisol. No point. Nothing gets worked out when we're worked up.
And we stretch the time. So by doing that, many parents have said to me over the years who I've suggested this to, when they do circle back and they've tied, they've gone and tidied up something or whatever they've done, just a roundabout, stayed present, not stormed out the room or whatever and closed the door, but just going about calmly what they're going about. Two things happen.
One is that obviously it allows the adrenaline, the fight or flight or freeze, the refusal to calm on down. That's one thing. And it's often you go back to a child five, six, seven minutes later and then while they may not be good to go, they're much more ready to move along, to be able to clear off the counter.
That's one thing. The second thing a lot of parents have noticed, and I've sure noticed it within myself, is that we're in better shape as well because we've gone and done something that is just familiar, you know, done the washing, folded the clothes, whatever it is. And that's calming and soothing to us as well.
And then everyone is in better shape. Everyone is in better shape now to work through the issue, to find out what was going wrong and to actually move along with what it was that, you know, a child just needs to do. They need to pack that stuff up.
They need to tidy up their room. They need to... There are so many situations where we can stretch the time. There are some times when we can't.
I know that. Like we've got to get in the car. I, you know, there are times in the day where this is not going to work.
But there are many times where rather than getting into loggerheads with our kids, we just stretch the time a little bit, circle back, get it done and then afterwards say, you know, I'm really glad we didn't try and work that out when we were worked up. I'm really glad. Well done us, hey.
That feels much better, doesn't it? And then you just move on through the day. But there's that little of an affirmation, just tiny little ones, little ones like, we did that, didn't we? We worked that out. That was feeling kind of hard.
Or if it's a little child that was feeling yucky. And we managed to figure that out, put it right. That was good.
Well done us. I love that saying. Well done us.
But it comes about through the, one of the strategies is being able to just elongate the time so that very often what we've got going on is that we've got this mental vertical to-do list. In our little organization here at Simplicity Parenting in the Center for Social Sustainability, our team meets and we know the drill of this. We take our vertical to-do list.
There it is. Boom, boom, boom, boom. All the things we've got to do.
And then before the end of the meeting, we turn it sideways and we put it on a horizontal. We move it from a vertical to-do list to the horizontal. And the horizontal is a timeline.
And then we just kind of move things along the timeline and things that are really hard, we'll say, well, let's just do the first part of that now and realize that that was too hard and that needs to wait a little longer. Our organization, one of the things that we often note ourselves is how stress-free what we do is. And we do a lot of stuff.
There's a lot of things going on at our little center. But what we do is stretch the time. Sometimes we move it up.
And then, oh gosh, that's more doable. Now, what can be done in an organization can be done in a family. And this gives children crucially, I think the end result of this, just to round off now, the end result of this is, as I mentioned, an inner calm, a greater possibility of inner calm for us as parents.
But more than that, we sort of, as so many of these things circle back to a deeper connection with our children, because we haven't gone into that forcing current. You know, this is a hard thing, this forcing when you feel like you're forcing the day. And as I mentioned, there are some things where we do need to actually say, now is the time we do this.
No negotiation. We have to get in the car. Okay, I get that.
But if we're in all these other times willing to stretch the time, when the moment comes where you do have to put your foot down and say right now, and we need to do it now, we've built up relational credits. We've built up connection. And that time where we just have to do that has a good foundation of love and care and crucially, of leadership, because we're not forcing every single issue through the day.
Stretching the time. I sure hope that's helpful.
