Hello and welcome back to the Simplicity Parenting podcast, the Simplicity Diaries that we share each week. This week I've been thinking about, particularly about connecting with children, connecting with tweens and connecting with teens. And with tweenages and teenagers in particular, this principle of connect before we correct, connect before we direct has a nuance all of its own.
When kids are getting a little bit older and they're now 8, 9, 10, 11 and beyond, you know, into their teen years, this principle of connecting with a child and just being present is so important. The presencing and the connecting is what builds up the kind of credits when things are not going well for us to be able to move in and meet with a little more, maybe a little more flexibility, a little more openness. And what I mean by this is it's really important at a time in our kids' lives and they're getting a little bit older and they're, they're feeling life is starting to internalize just that little bit more around 9, 8, 9, 10.
It begins where more, where kids are obviously more capable of internal processing. They're not little anymore. They're not, you know, just prattling away, playing with their trucks and dolls and explaining to you what's happening and talking out loud to their little dolls and so on.
Now that world begins to internalize and it's very important to be conscious about keeping that connection alive because it doesn't happen as naturally for some kids and as easily as it did when they were little. Some examples of this, of presencing, is just hanging out quite often. You know, it, it, it can be activity based, but it's also if they're doing homework up in their room and, or they're spending more time in their room, just to have a comfy chair set up in their room that you go and you sit and you read your magazine or you make some notes, anything but a phone, not, not phones, or you do some mending or whatever it, if you have a hobby that you can take with you, but it's enough just to sit and read, read a book whilst they're getting on with their homework or while they're listening to music.
And you don't need to be there for hours and intrude on their space, but, you know, 10, 15, 20 minutes, even longer, just sitting there, presencing, being present and normalizing your presence when they are in their rooms or whatever, just being, having it be completely normal that you pop in, you read a little bit and cause you like that comfy chair and you just like having their company and, and just be quite honest with it. I just love to read my book when you're around, you know, and I'll only be here a little bit. Now for the younger ones, the nine, 10, 11, 12 year olds, they're usually okay with it, but the 14, but 14, 15, 16 year olds, they will also be okay with it if we've begun it back when they're younger.
Now it doesn't mean if you haven't been doing that, you can't begin, but it does mean it needs to be briefer, more transparent and not kind of weird, like them wondering, what are you doing this for all of a sudden? So there's that kind of presencing and that presencing of being able to be together often transposes into when things are going wrong, you're used to being just sitting together, you're used to it. So if something's gone wrong, a situation has flared up at home, something like that has happened. Then if your kids are used to and you've coached them up to just to being, being okay, hanging out together, just being together without too many words, then you can, you can say to a, to a 15 year old, look, let's, let's just call time here.
Let's just call calm down time. Let's just chill here. We're good at that.
We know how to do that. Let's just, and if they, you know, even older, 15, 16, let's let the adrenaline drain down. Everyone's on a, like this is, everyone's a bit worked up now.
And let's just let that be. Now you've got much more of a chance of, of a young person in their teenage years, letting it be and, and letting things just calm on down a bit. If you've done that, when they've been in good shape, right? So if you can manage just to hang out a little bit together, if you can manage still to do some little projects together, it might be that baking or cooking is, is their thing or whatever it might be, whatever it might be.
You can do stuff together, whether it's activity based or whether it's just being quiet. I particularly like this being quiet because it, as I said, it, it, it translates directly into when things aren't going well. It's super important to not do problem solving with teenagers because the adrenaline and cortisol in their system lasts longer, frankly, it lasts longer than it would for a little one.
The kind of being worked up is very often, well, it is just, it clears the system of the nervous system of the body much quicker when they're little, but a teenager, it's a larger release of adrenaline, cortisol. It takes longer, generally about a minute. I, I, the way I judge it is about a minute per a year of a child.
So if they're nine, it's about nine minutes, give or take, you've got to let things calm down. If it's, if they're 15, you've got to let it be about 15 minutes of just chilling, of calming down in order for it to be okay. Give or take, if it's an ordinary sort of flare, something that was frustrating, but not too bad, then it might be just five or six minutes.
But if it's a really big one, it might be 20, 25. But the key to the point, key point here is that if we've normalized our presence, our connection with them, the correction can then very sort of naturally follow. But the first part of it is, is this presencing of this calming on down, as some of you have heard in my other podcasts, my one of my favorite sayings is nothing gets worked out when we're worked up, nothing.
And so this way of normalizing presence, without the need for too much conversation, and just being able to hang out together is really important. And I do mean this without, without external stimulation, I don't mean hanging out watching TV, that doesn't really do it. Not, not really.
That's, that's a very sort of poor second. Primary is being able to hang out when there's just quiet. And they, they might just lay on their bed, they might just be doing their homework or whatever.
But that's, that's when we coach kids up when we just take our book, take a magazine, whatever it is, take our mending, take some menu planning for the week that we're doing for the family meals. When we can do that, then this, I just want to emphasize, then when we need to spend time, just calming it on down together. It's normal.
We know how to do that. We're good at that. We can do this.
Okay, now, something something real quick, I wanted to remind you of, we have these care professional trainings, as many of you know, and we have one coming up next weekend. And this is a care professionals training for emotionally resilient tweens and teens. And it's two hours on Saturday, two hours on Sunday.
It is for care professionals, educators, these, these seminars, just I love doing them. I personally, and it's live, I personally facilitate them. And they are recorded if you can't make the live event.
And you can get information right on our website, simplicityparenting.com about our care professional seminars. And look, if you're seeing this podcast, listening to it later on, and you're interested in care professional seminars that we run, then just go right to that trainings page. And you'll see them there because we run them.
You know, each year we run ones on family life, strengthening family life, on how to have boundaries and the soul of discipline, discipline and guidance. We run them on emotional self regulation. But this particular one coming up is on how to have our kids be emotionally resilient.
Okay, that's it for now. I hope that's helpful. Bye bye.
