Well, you did it again. Welcome back to Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John Payne. This is the last in this little series of Simple Holidays, a survival kit.
And we can tell by the volume of people that have visited this resource page that it's been great to see so many people. We can, like in the back room, the team can tell how many people have visited this and that. And I'm told that the volume of folk that have accessed this little library has been huge.
So I'm really grateful because you have these great ideas in life, and then you just hope they're going to work out. And it seems like this has been a bit helpful. So that is great.
Now, this last of these every couple of week podcasts on the survival kit, we're going to be touching a little bit, and you'll see it there in the resource library, about kids being together a whole lot more. It just gets more intense, right, this time of the year. If you've got a couple of kids in your own family, they're together a whole lot more.
If you're visiting with cousins or friends who have children, they're going to be together a whole lot more. It's just a lot of issues to look out for when kids are together this much. And so you'll see some audios in that little library on easing sibling tensions, and also easing sibling put-downs.
Because when things get a bit intense, it can be that a lot of sharp, harsh comments start to be made. And it's not so great. It's hard.
It's really hard. And so those audios focus in on what we can do. There's a whole series, I think there's like four audios, on easing sibling tensions.
It's unusual that there's a whole series like that. But it's such a big theme that I really wanted to unpack it slowly, and wanted to unpack it with some kind of depth, actually. So you'll see a whole bunch of, and they're brief, right, they're mercifully brief, but a whole bunch of brief audios on how to ease sibling tensions, so that we can enjoy the holidays.
So that when the issues come up, they can be a little more malleable. They're going to come up, of course, when kids get together. But what we hope is that we can move in, deal with them, and get over them, and then get on, and not have them go on and on and on, or get better for just a moment, and they're back into it again, and going at each other, and things aren't fair, and that's not true, yeah, well, it is, and all that sort of stuff.
And that often can bubble right over into sibling put-downs. And that's kind of a major theme, really, because the way in which children speak to each other, gosh, it can so affect us, can't we? We just don't want kids, and particularly if you've got a couple of kids, speaking to each other in that way, and it really goes to the heart, doesn't it, of what hurts our heart, so to speak, as parents, when kids do that. So I really wanted to address that theme properly, but also in the framework of it, of course, is going to intensify during the holiday season.
Now, the last piece on surviving, you know, like a survival kit for the holidays, it wouldn't be complete, right, without talking about screens. And again, I don't want to come across as some anti-screen Luddite. Actually, I taught information technology in my high school, when I was a school counselor and teacher.
I taught, for years, I taught information technology, so I'm a relatively sort of, I'm not tech-savvy, I guess, but I am tech-tenacious. That's what the team here at Simplicity Parenting call me, tech-tenacious, because I will work it out. I don't want to come across as anti-screen, but I'm passionately pro-connection.
And the holiday season is the time for connection. We all hope it, we all carry that, we want this precious moments when work life, even this unrelenting pace of work life, often can just pause. And into that pause, there's just this sort of breath that comes around this time of the year, both in the northern and in the southern hemisphere.
Southern hemisphere, you get the breath because of the warmth. In the northern hemisphere, the breath comes because of the contraction. One hemisphere, expansion, one contraction, but both provide this breath.
And it might be an out-breath and an in-breath, but it's still a breath, right? Right across the planet. And we just don't want to fill that precious space with stuff, with screens. You know, it's just such a precious moment for us to get the board games out, to get involved in projects together, to go on bike rides together if you're in the warmer climates, if you're in the snowy climates, to build igloos, to do just all kinds of stuff together.
If you've got older kids, teenagers, just to hang out and be together. Because it's sort of, as they put it, it's like it's non-optional, it's enforced, and it's true. Okay, that's true.
But we get this chance to reconnect after this very busy year for many of us, and in the busy year to come, let's make this a time of connection. And screens don't do that. No matter how much we want to think that screens do that, like, just to sort of drill down on this a little bit, I'm not suggesting we can't see a family movie, you know, maybe, but I would rather play a board game for that hour and a half than just sit there staring at a TV.
When I turned the light off that night as a dad, and we've played this really kind of madcap game of Uno where everyone was madly cheating and laughing and just having fun. When I turn the light off at night, you know, I'm thinking, that was good. That was lovely.
If I turn the light off at night after watching some kind of Christmas movie, not so much. I mean, yeah, it was a Christmas movie, but it didn't fill the family with connection, not in even close to the same way, hanging out together, playing together, singing together, just being together. And so there are a number of audios in the resource library about one right at the top is called Screen Creep.
You may have heard me talk about that before, but it's you have a little bit of screens in the holidays, like a movie, or you want to watch some sports together, but then it gets more and a little more and a little more because that's the nature of dopamine and screens are designed for kids and for us all. But for kids, they're very vulnerable to this pleasure and reward, reward and pleasure that screens bring. Excuse me.
And so just to have a little bit of screens, maybe we can pull it off, but then we have to face the nagging that can't we just do it? We have a little bit of, OK, we're going to have just, you know, one hour of gaming a day, but that's not the way screens are set up. They're set up to want to to have a child want more and more and more. And we end up over the holiday season being like predator parents taking away a child's pleasure and safety because that's what the screen is.
It's their safety. It's there. It's almost like a pacifier, a dummy that they're sucking on.
And we're taking it away and saying, well, it's going to be fun to play a board game. Well, it's actually not so much fun in terms of dopamine release as as, you know, some video game. So you'll see you'll see a whole bunch of audios there actually on on on screens and what we can do during the holiday season to be able to have it be this beautiful time of connection rather than have, I don't know, just the competition of screens this time of the year.
Do we really want that kind of competition, distraction, disconnection, or do we want to be together? And do we want to do something that is that is really special? So there's some some audios and things on that resource page that address that issue without becoming silly about being anti-screen. It's being pro-connection. OK, hope that's helpful.
Bye bye for now.
