Welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kem Jon Paine. You did it again, carved out 10-15 minutes to listen to this little podcast. Today what I wanted to talk about is when something crosses the line and particularly when a kind of a healthy sort of social interaction, particularly with tween ages and teenagers, when that crosses a line and it becomes a giving up on what they know to be true, to what they know to be true to themselves, from what they know to be true to their family.
And this is a conversation that we can have with our tween and teenagers that then becomes about values rather than don't, don't do this, don't do that. Teenagers can be spectacularly disinterested in that, tween ages too sometimes as well. But rather the conversation is about crossing the line.
And in another podcast, another episode, we talked about crossing the line. It's for me, it's that term embodies all that is beautiful about restorative work, about restorative discipline, restorative justice, because it doesn't point a finger at a child. It doesn't shame them or blame them.
It just talks about when something crosses the line and we can all do that. But in particular today, I want to want to just to give some leading thoughts around when something crosses the line and and rubs up against values, kids own values and the family values. Now, to give an example of this, I want to tell a story from my own biography, just a little story.
I was on my way home from football practice when I was in the early years of high school. And we didn't have a very good team, but we like in terms of, of always, of always winning, but we were close and our coach was good and kept us close. And we're very supportive of each other, which is why we did OK, you know, while we didn't get beaten by a lot more.
Anyway, I was walking home with all my gear uphill. I don't know why it's always uphill home. But anyway, it was.
And so I was walking home and a car pulled up beside me and it was a really great car. And it was a big, fancy muscle car. And the window wound down and there was a friend of mine driving the car.
And the car was packed with other kids. And I could smell the weed. I could smell the alcohol.
And they were saying, Kim, John, get in, get in. This is great. Apparently, my friend had liberated the car from his uncle.
It wasn't his at all. And his uncle was away and he'd taken the car. And in that moment, I sort of felt a line being crossed.
As I thought about getting into the car, I just had this sort of slightly uncomfortable feeling. And as I considered getting into the car, the uncomfortable feeling grew. And the crossing of the line got, you know, I really put a foot over the line because I could hear the voice actually of my coach and of my father, two very important people who gave me strong values in my life.
And I could almost sort of hear them saying, you know, we don't do that kind of thing. That's just not an okay thing to do. There's drugs, there's alcohol.
It's kind of a stolen car. Don't do that. And while I was listening to these voices, my friends must have thought, well, they just took off.
I was standing there and off they went. And I walked home up the hill, got home and my meal was there taken. It had been warming, kept for me.
And I sat down and my dad sat down with me and wanted to ask all about practice and how things had gone. He was always very interested in that. And it felt good.
It felt good to be home and to have not got into the car. Although, you know, the kids I liked were there. There was some girls I liked that were in the car.
But it felt sort of like a very simple but deep right. I didn't cross the line. I'd done the right thing.
Later on, I found out the next morning that there'd been an accident and some kids had been hurt. And that was really bad. And that easily could have been me as well in that car.
Some of them were quite injured. But the point of the story is that every teenager, every teenager, and to some extent all little kids as well, but particularly when we get a bit older, we're confronted with choices. Do I cross that line or do I not? And in a way, that's the kind of choice that we're often confronted with at that age.
But if we have a values base, if we have been raised when we're little, like in those first seven, eight, nine years, in that principle that I call the governor principle, the governor principle when kids are little is all about, it's not about discipline per se, it's about values. It's about this is the way we do things in our family. This is what we really try hard not to do, the words we try not to use.
And this is what we try to do. We try to do our best to be kind to each other, to be considerate to each other, to be able to make good when something goes wrong, to accept responsibility, but be able to put it right. That we don't blame each other, but we do put things right.
All those things, all those values, all coalesce when our older kids come to make decisions. So if you're parenting a younger child at the moment, really be encouraged, I hope, to work with discipline as a definer of values. Because when we establish boundaries like this, when kids are little, it just isn't in the story that I told about coming home from football practice.
That is when it counts. That's when the decisions that tween and particularly teenagers make might err on the side of values rather than crossing the line into being ethically questionable. And then if they do cross the line, it's important to use that language talking to our older kids about how something went wrong.
It's okay, it crossed the line. It was kind of a distraction. I talk about this in the Soul of Discipline book, where to talk to kids about distraction versus direction.
That wasn't your direction. Your direction in life, your values in life, were kind of, they went off at right angles. There was a distraction that happened.
I find teenagers can be very spectacularly disinterested in our opinions, at least outwardly. But they can be very, very interested in their direction or their emerging direction. So this crossing the line is a key conversation to have in so many ways.
Because as I mentioned, it speaks to restorative practices of putting it right. And it also owns it that we all can do that. It becomes a we gesture.
It's we and not just pointing a finger. And it's you. It's not a you, not pointing at you.
It's owning it as we. And then how do we put this right? Because it happens to us all. So this whole piece about having conversations around distractions to values, for me, is some of the most successful conversations that I've ever had with older kids.
Particularly once they're 11, 12 and then beyond. That conversation can be had. And it's got a much greater chance of landing, of not getting pushback.
But at the same time, it's also confronting what went wrong if indeed something did go wrong. Okay, as always, I sure hope that was helpful. Bye.
