Welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John Payne. This week I wanted to talk about a funny old topic really, but it's about letting children be a little bit thirsty and a little bit hungry. We're living in a time where we don't so much have children drink, we have them hydrate.
You know, that kind of like never allowing children to be thirsty and never allowing children to be hungry. And it kind of comes into that wider palette of not letting children experience difficulty in most walks of life. And although if you're tuning into this podcast, you don't sort of probably buy into that whole thing.
But that it's often called snowplow parenting or curling parenting, you know, where you're those, I don't know if you've seen that sport, the curling in the Winter Olympics, but where those big stones are rolled down the ice, and there's these two people, or one is it or two people madly brushing away with brooms to make that stone that's moving down the ice to make it as smooth as possible. And that kind of like, we have to have this smooth path forward for our kids, never meeting obstacles. It's a lot has been written about that.
But what I particularly wanted to focus in on today is the way that can play out in terms of drinking and eating. What I mean by this is, and I'll take a little just dive under this for a moment and explain why I think it's healthy for children to get a little bit thirsty, or be allowed to get a little bit hungry. Okay, so I wanted to look a little bit at the at the brain science of this.
There's a part of our brainstem called the basal ganglia, which is responsible for picking up messages from the vestibular system, the inner ear, which is this, I've mentioned this once before another podcast with these beautiful interconnecting tubes with fluid in those tubes and crystals move. And it's almost like a carpenter's spirit level that a child puts their upper body forward and the crystals move back, or just, you know, as human beings, not just children, but it's particularly under development. They put their upper body left, their crystals move right and so on.
That sends messages to the downstairs brain, as Dan Siegel calls it in his whole brain child book, wonderful book. And that downstairs brain, the brainstem has an allied part of the brain called the basal ganglia. Now the basal ganglia, the reason I mentioned this is, as some of you might know, is responsible for proprioception.
And we know that we're pretty much onto that as a society these days. You might hear this word, you may or may not, but proprioception means where is my body in space? Where am I outside? Where am I? Where are my limbs outside? How far is that cup away? If I'm a very little child, I reach out and I know just how far to reach out for that cup. If I'm an older kid, then I'm playing basketball and I'm honing that proprioceptive ability to know when I throw the ball to the basket, I know how much force to put behind it to reach the basket.
I know what to do with my limbs. It's that ability of knowing the six directions of space, basically up, down, left, right, front, back, and where I am in space. Okay, so that's proprioception.
Interioception, or sometimes it's called interioception, is about where am I inside myself? How do I read my body's signals? Do I go outside when it's very, very cold in a t-shirt? No, I don't, because I would get cold. Do I go out when it's very hot in a puffer coat? No, because I'd get very hot and sweaty and that wouldn't feel comfortable. Likewise, in a t-shirt, it wouldn't feel comfortable.
I read my body's signals. I'm feeling very sleepy, so I don't fight that. Oh, I'm feeling sleepy, okay, I'll fall back and I'll just let myself go to sleep.
That's another reading of the body's signals. I need to go to the bathroom, because I'm feeling in my body that I need to go to the bathroom. It's another aspect of that interior world and of reading that interior world.
But a really big aspect of that is hunger and thirst. This is why, on a brain level, it's important for children to be let to be a little bit thirsty. Not terribly, but a little bit thirsty or a little bit hungry, because then that is one of the major messages that the brainstem has of all is well.
Because when a child is allowed to be thirsty, the brainstem sends messages, please drink, you're thirsty, drink please, you're hungry, please eat, I need you to eat. And then the child self-manages, this is an important part of this, self-manages, gets a drink of water or asks us for a drink, and then two things are accomplished. And they're both related to safety.
Firstly, the brainstem now receives the message of, okay, now I'm not thirsty, okay, good, I can stand down. The fight, flight, freeze, flock, flop, flood, brain, all the Fs, the amygdala, the brainstem, the dragon brain, the lizard brain, the survival brain, can calm down because thirst is a big deal. You don't want to be thirsty for too long.
So that's the first message. Okay, I can trust this body. The second is that I can trust this person.
If it's you that get the drink and say, here, for a little child, here you go, sweetheart, here's your drink. Like, Mom, I'm thirsty, okay, let's get something to drink. Then not only can the amygdala stand down, I trust this body, but I trust this connection, I actually trust.
So if we can wait for the request of I am thirsty, Mom, I'm hungry, if we can let that happen, then we're sending a double, a really double message, a helpful, super soothing message to the brainstem. It could be that we could, I don't mean to go too far with this, you know, if a child clearly is running around and needs a drink and they're sweating profusely, and they're not returning to you to ask you for a drink, then okay, it's so fine to bring a child over and say, do you think we need to drink? Do you think we need a little drink? Let's take a breath and let's just see if we need a drink. Rather than calling a child and saying, you need to drink.
Because that's not teaching them, in a sense, self-management. And that relates to many things, even like self-management going to sleep. We've got to be able to have children feel a degree of self-management in order for that brain, the dragon brain, the lower downstairs brain, to not be waking up and dominating.
So rather than telling a child they need to drink, bring them over, sit them on down with you and let them catch their breath a little bit. Because that's needed for them to be able to read their inner message, the interior message that's being sent. Just calm them down a little bit, have the water bottle there, the juice, whatever it is, and say, gosh, that was a lot of running around.
I'm sort of voicing this for a younger child. You could voice it for an older child too, of course. That is a lot of running around.
Do you think you need to have a little drink now before you go out and do some more? And no, or, well, let's just sit for a little longer. Because I think your lovely little body is telling you, it's sending you a message. What message is that? Okay.
And then the child takes a drink. But it comes as a question rather than a command. And we can coach our children up to read these interior messages.
And the reason for doing this is, of course, health-wise. But one of those layers of this message is self-management, self-soothing. But the big one is they develop the ability to read their interior messages.
And in later life, that comes as being able to read your instinct, being able to read your gut hunch, right? So what we teach a child today about self-management and them being able to read their interior body messages, in time will mature, because we'll get that down, right? But in time that will mature to us pausing and taking note of our gut instinct. And that, as we all know, is crucial in relationships, crucial in so many aspects, in investments we make, in big decisions, little decisions, is being able to tune in to our interior world and not just be carried along by the exterior. But those messages, that ability, we can build up when kids are little.
Now I want to emphasize that I don't mean letting kids dehydrate or suffer from malnutrition or anything like that, of course. But what I am suggesting is that we give them a little bit of time to read their inner message. Alright, as always, hope that gave just a little bit of help along this precious parenting path that you are on.
Okay, bye bye for now.
