Okay, welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John-Payne, and the third and last of our series, where Steve Bidoff and I just had a bit of a fireside chat. Oh, I hope you've enjoyed these first two sessions. Amazing, isn't he? Yeah.
So, in this part of the chat, Steve takes us into how to work, specifically how to work with children. He's been inferring it all the way through, but here he takes a deeper dive and gives some stories, these beautiful stories he tells in such a gentle way, and he takes us into more specifically that work and that help and support we can give our kids. So this will be the last in the series, and of course, you know, if you're like me, you'll listen to them a number of times.
I've gone back and combed through this, read Steve's book, and it's, I just can't help but feel just a hope for humanity when I listen to Steve and I read the Wild Creature Mind book. So, here we go. Third and last part of the interview, okay? What you're talking about, Steve, also is perhaps a very quick illustrative story about this, is that I used to teach little kids games.
I love teaching little kids games. It's just their language, right? Anyway, I had a big piece of rope that would mark the boundary, because these kids would rather run to London than get caught in the chasing game. And a friend of mine, another teacher, used to pick up this rope and chuck it in a shed, and it was like 300 meters of rope.
It was a lot of rope. It would be in this big tangle. Anyway, that's the reason I'm saying it's a big tangle.
So, I'd run down with the children, we'd open the door, and they would go, yay, the tangly game. So, they didn't feel bad about this. We made it into a game.
Now, we would always send a couple of children up to the top of the tower, you know, the clock tower, Steve? Remember the clock tower? We would, full disclosure, I taught Steve's kids, and they would go to the top of the tower, and they'd be calling down instructions. And we learned that if you want to undo a tangle, you never pull on it. You always open space.
You open it, you open it. And sometimes they'd shout, Rowan, don't pull on it! And Rowan goes, I just can't help it. But it was Rowan, actually, who always pulled on it, and we always keep an eye on him.
But the kids up the tower would be saying, just open it, open it up. And we learned, never pull on a tangle, never pull, create space, open, open, open. And then we would open it, and we'd all give this big shout of joy, yay.
And then on with the game, the kids would come down from the clock tower, which I hope no one's listening from the school, because children weren't supposed to go up there. But anyway, they did. And again, we're Australian, Steve, we do that stuff.
And the joy of this, it was more, as you say, more than a metaphor. It was, don't pull on the tangle, give it space. And that little story really occurred to me as I was reading through the book, is a lot of what the feeling I was left with continually was that of spaciousness, of giving and allowing the wisdom of the wild creature mind to just come in, come out.
I love that. I love that image of coming out from anyone who's been in the bush knows this in the forest. You got to just sit quietly and create a space for that to happen.
I think that's perhaps one of the most challenging things, because in modern psychiatry and psychology and medicine, we're pulling on tangles all the time. We're pulling as opposed to creating space. What do you make of that? Yes, well, I'm a much more concrete thinker, Kim, I think.
And so in the book, we have several hero stories of case studies of people. And I'm thinking of Ellie, the book starts with with Ellie, who's a 14 year old girl. A mum finds her in the bathroom in the middle of the night, just absolutely soaked in tears, sobbing and shaking, which is a scenario that hundreds of people watching will have experienced in their own teenage years.
It's a terrible moment with a complete anxiety meltdown. And they're lucky they get Ellie to a woman therapist who is incredibly present, solid patient. And Ellie says she's the most real person she's ever met in her life.
She comes bouncing out of the first session saying, mum, this lady gets me. Not like the other psychologists, this lady gets me. And then she jokes and says, mum, I've got a tiger, a tiger inside me.
And don't worry, I'm not psycho. I'll tell you all about it. Let's go and get some food.
And in the process through the book is Ellie is helped. She doesn't move from anxiety to calm. She doesn't go to some kind of sedated condition.
What happens to her anxiety is it emerges as an incandescent rage. The things that are happening to her and her friends in the town that she lives in, the predatory sexual behavior of older boys towards them in the streets and in the schools is so outrageous and terrible. And this is something we could do a whole other podcast about.
But it's so outrageous that Ellie finds her fury and she organizes her friends. She organized the parents. She gets action from the school.
And and there is a. You know, her anxiety is not a problem, it's it's it's in fact, things need to change. And and over time, it becomes a word that I really love, Kim, which is resolve. There is a little bit like we need to have with the climate emergency and with so many things in the world now, we need a resolve.
We have to be. In a in a sort of fiercely loving way, taking on enormous evils, and so we can't treat it like a short term crisis, we can't let it destroy our balance or our calm. But.
Letting just letting people know that that while creature mind enlivens you, it doesn't deaden you. You feel like there are things to be done in this world, but also some sort of sense of of like a wild creature. Let's live in the moment.
We'll deal with today with what today brings. There's that beautiful poem I can't remember about, you know, while things do not trouble themselves with thoughts of tomorrow. Wendell Berry, Wendell Berry wrote this poem and I put it in Manhood.
And there's a there's a balance and a pacing that comes in when you're when you're your animal self is in the steering wheel. And Ian McGilchrist says that we should be in our right hemisphere 80 percent of the time. We use the left in order to attain an objective, to be focused, to to follow a sequence.
But we shouldn't live there. Indigenous people don't live there. And.
We simply have not occupied our ourselves in the right way. So the long term effect of this is that we can be in the world with our right hemisphere, which is open. Its primary quality is openness to the environment.
And so it attunes us, you know, attunes you and me as we're talking, attunes the audience to us, attunes the parent to their child, husband or wife to each other, nature and the human race. It's an antenna for harmonizing everything around. And you can walk through the world in a very, very different way.
Very effective, very not not at all spaced out. The complete opposite of that. Opposite.
Yeah. Yeah. What about Steve? I know we have to round off soon, but gosh, I wish we didn't.
But the one of the bearing in mind, many of the people watching or listening, of course, have got kids and young kids. One of the things I appreciate and extrapolated and you talk about this in the book is this delicate dance between naming a feeling and yet going too deeply into a feeling before a child is ready for that. And it's because I've been concerned for years that we ask kids about their feelings too much in a in a very cognitive way.
So we talk about feelings in this abstract way. And it helped me a lot in thinking about when I was reading the book, I've been reading it continually, it only arrived on just a couple of days ago. So I've literally hardly put it down.
But you give examples of a picture of creating, more engaging of the limbic system, actually, of that artistic, creative, limbic picture. So to saying to children, oh, you're like a grumpy old bear this morning. Oh, dear.
Oh, dear. You know, or there's a there's a, you know, I'm extrapolating now, but, you know, there is a big, a big river running right through you at the moment or even asking them, you know, what and I am much more comfortable with that. And then sitting with a child often after giving a picture and allowing a picture to arise and little kids often will do that and bigger kids will give a picture themselves.
And it helped me get out of this conundrum of over intellectualizing about feelings. And you offer this alternative of the wild creature mind in like what is going on inside you. And that is really OK.
Bearing in mind so many of our watchers and listeners, our viewers and listeners working with children, particularly, I'd say, you know, slightly younger children as a whole. Can you say a little more about that? Because that was a beautiful section. Yes, I think not so much telling them as as helping them explore.
Explore. Yes. And the so just to put it in very simple terms, we we knew in the earlier days that feelings mattered.
And this was probably the breakthrough of the late 20th century parenting was to to acknowledge, identify and value emotions. And but that was only half the story. And some of the work on the neuroscience of emotions was was starting to emerge that it wasn't quite structured the way we thought, for example.
And I forget the name right at the moment of the researcher, but a very good woman researcher who said we. We know we're sad because we're crying. And so the the primacy of the physical, that it starts with the physical.
And so now it's it's many times it's very straightforward and simple to say, you know, it's really sad that your best friend is leaving, going to another school or I would have felt pretty angry with if my friend had stolen, broken my my toy, too. It's very helpful that we we join with our children at the emotional level. But everyone watching watching or listening would have experienced that sometimes that doesn't help.
Child is still very caught up. And and it can even be somewhere in there is a slight sense. And I'm thinking where I feel in my body.
It's kind of up in here somewhere of that is patronizing. Yes. And and so the respectful thing to do, which is always the right thing to do is when a child is troubled.
Is not to kind of try and rush them through it unless unless we just have to. It's like, OK, this matters. I sit beside them.
I go into my own right hemisphere. So I go into open, I go into receptive, I drop agendas and goals. And and I'm with them as and the way to be with a child is to be in your own right hemisphere.
And and to say to them, you sound really uncomfortable. Do you. Do you know, where do you feel it? Where is it inside you? And they'll know, Kim, as you know, with kids, they'll know it'll be a black lump in their tummy or a little girl in the book who said it's like hands.
It's like hands gripping my throat. I'm very concrete and specific and. And the thing then is never, ever to try and solve that.
Yeah. You're going to absolute present moment and you just mirror completely, you know, it's black in your tummy or it feels like hands around your throat. What that then does is it's like you're providing a little bit of left hemisphere kind of I'll I'll track with you.
And and and they and so they just sit with that and and now it's coming into a thought, a little girl in the book who fell off a bicycle. She feels that clenching, you know, and she says, those girls were laughing at me, mommy. And and she's suddenly aware of of that.
It's it wasn't falling off the bike. It was that she felt embarrassed about that. Or like the other child who was in the book where he had the big argument with his sister.
Yes. Yes. Ravi.
Yes. Ravi. Yes.
Yeah. Beautiful, very touching story, because his sister had been his best friend for most of his life. And suddenly she was turning into a teenager, didn't want him tagging along.
And and he he got so angry with her. And but when he and his mom sat with that, it was just pure grief. He just suddenly remembered holding hands with her on his birthday at the skating link, skating rink, and how great it felt to have a big sister that was also his best friend.
And and that that was changing. And and one of those unsolvable griefs of of growing up. There's no no answer to that except to feel it.
And but his mom was right there with him. And then in the next instant, he's saying, hey, mom, I've got to get to school. And he's he's up and he's off.
Catch the bus. And so we're we're left like torn aside with grief. And the child has dealt with it in the moment.
And, you know, they're off on their life. And so this I can I feel it clearly in my own eyes, just even thinking of it. But but yes, I can't even remember how we got there.
But but this is if you work with children, that's just help. Yeah. I remember now the two steps.
Where does it live in your body? What's it doing? Can you can you describe it to me? And then quite often, what do you think it's trying to tell you? And what does it want to say to you? And they may not know they may or they want to do a drawing of it instead. No drama. It's you're paying attention where it matters.
They'll do something with that. You've you've given them the profound help of of some presence of yours and and and life continues to unfold. And this is new.
This is new in the parenting sphere. You know, use the body. Then your child will have a facility with that as a lifetime skill.
They'll know that, you know, that this is there and this matters. And it'll just be part of their being. They'll be they will live an embodied life.
And body life is one that will go far, far better. That's probably a nice place to sort of like. Yeah.
Gosh, Steve. So much so much is encompassed as our kids move into a world that is so in need of healing. And being embodied and not being lifted out, like being being aware of of the world does need healing, but being aware of how this affects me, I can go there.
I'm not holding it away. It's almost like the it's almost like the law of emotional physics. The more you hold something away, the heavier it becomes.
Right. And so what what you're talking about is moving it in, embodying it, make because as we move it in, it becomes lighter. And and no longer subject to gravity, it will lift.
It'll get that lift. And in in this in this approach, it's more than a book. This is the book is the book is a book.
But this is a whole way of being of of coming alongside to use a canoeing metaphor of coming alongside a child and and not feeling the need to hurriedly fix the problem, but to sit within it. Beautiful. It's a much, much needed message.
Yeah, I think it's got some real answers to the terrible place we are in at the moment. And I'd love to come back in another time, Kim. And there's the whole trauma aspect that we haven't talked about.
And I wouldn't want to start in a light way, but to do it properly. So if you ever feel like having me back, we can can do some more. But this is a fantastic, fantastic exposition.
And I'm hugely grateful of you for for bringing these these ideas to to to an American audience. So I live in a little island on the bottom of the world. And so without your help, I couldn't couldn't do this mission.
So thank you. Well, without your help, I couldn't do it either, brother. So there we are.
Right. All right, Steve. So so bye bye.
Bye bye for now. Thank you so very much. Bye to everyone watching.
