Welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John Payne. This week I wanted to talk about a theme of getting it right versus trying to get it right. You know, not only outwardly, but with our words, with our actions.
So often kids are living, and we all are living in a society, where there's an emphasis on getting it right. Being right, getting it right, having things look great, having them be kind of perfect or close to perfect, having our words always be, you know, thoughtful and kind, and getting it right, getting it right with sibling relationships, with parent relationships, with kids. And I want to just sort of dial that back a little bit and mention trying to get it right is a much more humane, much more attainable aim than always getting it right and feeling kind of bad that we didn't.
You see, kids value our efforts because they're also trying to get it right. They're trying to figure out life. And they recognize, I think, on some level, when if a mistake is made, and particularly if we make a mistake, we can just simply talk to them about, yeah, that didn't go right, did it? Oh gosh, that came out wrong, didn't it? What I really meant to say was, what I really meant to do was, I'm going to try and get that a little bit more like I want it to, in whatever way we can with our kids.
If they're, you know, for them, if they're doing a drawing, and it's not right, and it doesn't look like a cow, it looks like a horse, or the other way around, usually more to the point, then we're trying to get it right. And if we raise our kids in a culture of striving, of trying to get it right, and, and value, almost value the times when when we don't, then it doesn't need a lot of words and talking and sorting things through. You know, like, what we're, what we're living in a time where there's even a term for it, right, like social networking envy, where things that are posted on social networking are always so perfect.
People looking perfect, doing fun things, always successful, posting stuff that just looks great, things you've made that look great, look perfect. And it's there's a pressure, right? There's a there's a real pressure, and it doesn't allow much space for growth. And I know we all know this, you know, we're onto this, this is not something that I think I've invented.
But being able to really accept that we're trying to get it right, has a whole subtext of, it's okay to get it wrong. It genuinely, genuinely is okay, when something doesn't go well. And what can we do to try and make that a little bit better that kind of culture, if we're raising our children in the kind of culture of trying, as opposed to arriving, right from the youngest years, all the way through to their teenage years, we're trying to get it right.
It matters, right? So look, an example of this is, there was a there was a parent who I heard two or three times at a park at a picnic we were at with various families saying, well, we don't talk like that in our family. Now I get that we don't talk like and I could see that was good. You know, we don't do that in our family.
We don't talk like that in our family. But this little girl just burst out crying, saying, well, then I'm not a part of this family. And, oh, gosh, you know, I knew this mom was doing her level best to like, we don't do that in our family.
And I've mentioned this in a previous podcast, I think is that so much better to say, you know what, we we try to speak more kindly in our family, we try to, to share our things or to take turns, or we try to explain ourselves a little more than just blowing being blowing people off. We try our best to do that. Then it's it's value based, right? It's it's a value based thing.
Hey, in our family, we really value trying to speak respectfully, we do. That's one of our values. And you can say that to a 14 year old, right, with with real authenticity, that we're trying to do that.
And, you know, you can, you also pre presumes that that we don't always get it right as well. So in a previous podcast, I mentioned another example of that was one about apologizing to children. It was a few years ago now, where the same sort of principle applies, rather than only saying I'm sorry to a child, if we blow it, if our tone was too sharp, or whatever.
And that's okay. It's okay to say, I'm sorry for the way I spoke. Perfectly fine.
But it's also another whole option is to say, you know, in our family, we try to speak respectfully to each other. And I don't think I just did that, that came out wrong for me. And really, what I meant to say was, it's helpful if you can pick your stuff up in the doorway when you leave your shoes in the doorway, so I don't trip over it.
That's what I meant to say. Because you didn't say that because it was very frustrating. And again, it's right in the sweet spot of trying, we try to do this.
And the upshot of all this is I think it creates a little bit of space when we say to a child, you know what, we do our best to take turns with our toys, if it's a little kid. In our family, we really try our best to do that. And it allows a child or a tween or a teen, the space, it's a little bit of space, a little bit of grace in that trying.
And it's not pointing a finger saying, you got it wrong. It allows, it is saying it's putting a boundary in place. But it's putting a boundary in place that is a little more spaciousness to it.
It's a little more, it opens up the possibility of restoring a situation, of healing a situation. But we can do this in so many ways, like even at the dinner table, you know, we can talk about some of the things that went wrong today. Like, oh, gosh, I was trying to change a tire today.
And that old jack that I have jack in the car, it gave way and it came down and I got what a mistake, I didn't put anything there. I think it's okay that I don't think anything got damaged. But by the way, I'm not making that one up.
That was true. And, and then suggestions can come and they did come from my kids. Well, you know, maybe you could just get like a really like a stack of bricks and put it underneath.
So if the jack doesn't break, because you don't like to buy new stuff, then at least it won't come down and hurt that. And again, I'm not making that up. This is real.
So it opens a space when we can admit our own felibilities, without over talking it without overburdening a child. But we all make mistakes, of course, you know, quite a sort of cliche, but it's so true. And if we can remember that we're trying to get it right, as opposed to always getting it right, small point, but gosh, that is a culture in a family right there.
Okay, hope that's helpful. Bye bye for now.
