Welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John Payne. You know, today, in this episode, I wanted to talk about talking about feelings with children, with tweens, and with teens. The way we talk about our feelings and a child's feelings can be calibrated developmentally so that it can really make sense to a child in early childhood, middle childhood, or later childhood, you know, the teen years.
The way I want to frame this is, first of all, is head, heart, hands. Or the other way around, hands, heart, head, in terms of development. When children are little, their primary developmental interest and neurologically as well, in terms of brain development, they're all about doing.
They're all in there willing, right? Anyone knows that. For a little child, they're just doing, doing, doing. It's not that they don't have feelings, and it's not that they don't have thoughts.
They most certainly do. But there is a strong wish to, like, I've been born into this world and now I'm going to taste it. I'm going to smell it.
I'm going to feel it. I'm going to, I want to be in this world grounded, grounded. And then in the later years, 8, 9, 10, 11, through to the mid to late teens, a lot of emphasis is in the consciousness of feelings.
And of course, it's not that a little child doesn't have feelings. Again, they totally do. But there's a new kind of consciousness in those heart forces in the feeling life a little later on.
And then in the teenage years, particularly sort of latter teens through into early 20s, a lot of cognitive ability begins. And the brain science, when you look at these, when you look at brain imaging, it's just beautiful how you see those cognitive frontal lobe neocortex centers, which are barely lighting up when a child's like three or four. But to see them progress to when they're in their early 20s through to about 25, it's just amazing to see how that development occurs.
But it's not there when they're very, very little. Now, all right, so with that said, with that hands, heart, head paradigm just explained a little bit, willing, feeling, thinking along those lines, what does that have to do? How can we use that understanding to talk to children about their feelings? Because again, a little one does have feelings. In fact, they have big feelings.
So let's just, in a sense, when a child has big feelings, a little child has big feelings, it's more like the, what I recommend or what I've seen work really well is that it's a feeling willing. In other words, the heart forces, the feeling forces, you can help a child by taking them down into their will. It's a downward direction to their feelings.
Whereas for a teenager, a latter teen, they have big feelings, obviously, but those feelings go into their thinking, then it becomes feeling thinking. It goes upwards into their cognitive abilities because it's very clear in brain development that the cognitive abilities are really improving. So there's a transition upward at that stage into, it's more objectivity really, whereas when a child has big feelings, they're just immersed in them and that moves downwards.
It's a little bit like, for example, with a little child having big feelings, it's oh, that was very hard, that was very upsetting, let's see what we can do to make things better. Key words, we, because you're helping them with it, because they're lost in this intensity, because they don't yet have the brain development to be objective about it. So to try and be objective about a little child's feelings is actually presuming they have frontal lobe neocortex activity fully developed, which they don't.
They just don't. I know we wish they did, but they just don't. Do they have feelings? Aha, by the buckets.
But when we direct those feelings down into their strong point, their strong point is their volition centers in their brain. So let's see what we, guardian, mom, dad, can do, do to make that better, right? So now we're taking the feeling and we're not talking abstractly about, I'm going to name your feeling, this is what you have, because that is hard for a little child, because it's wordy, it's cognitive, it's verbal, and it leaves a little one feeling unsafe a little bit, feeling like they're not understood. But if what's happened and they're angry about a project they're doing, then naming a child's feelings abstractly, well, that's fine later on in the teen years, but it doesn't have the desired effect of calming, of moving things on with a little child.
It seldom is optimal. You can do it and it's not going to do any damage, but it's not going to be particularly effective and the child is not going to easily feel like you're a part of their team and you're helping them problem solve, because for them it's about the doing. Now by example, for a 12, 13 year old or so on, you can say, yeah, of course, that sure seems upsetting.
Can you help me understand how you're feeling about that? Or how do you think you can deal with this? That is a perfectly good question to ask a child, a teenager, a latter stage tweenager, perfectly reasonable question. But to ask a three or four year old, how do you think you can deal with these feelings? Is to a little one, that just means I am not understood. I'm on my own with this.
But to ask a tween or a teenager, that connects you with them because they can be a little more objective about it. Now, the kids in the middle, the 9, 10, 11 year olds, it's almost like you sense, can you take them upstairs or downstairs? Sometimes downstairs, it's like, oh, my goodness, that really didn't work out. Let's see what we can do to make that jump for your bike work a little bit better.
It's just not working. Or for a 9, 10 year old, it could be, oh, my goodness, that is really, you know, that's hard. That seems that seems really upsetting that you spent all that time on this.
Can you help me understand how you're feeling about that? Now, you might ask an 11 or 12 year old that or you might just, you know, sense we just got to ground this. We just got to sort this problem out. That's a judgment call in that kind of tweenage years.
But the teenage years, you really can. I like this term. Can you help me understand? Because often we don't understand.
It's genuine. We don't. And for a teenager, you're coming alongside them.
This metaphor I use a lot, like a canoe. You come alongside a teenager as opposed to solve the problem for them, if at all possible. So just rounding up, can you talk to little ones about their feelings? Oh, you bet.
But the optimal tool I've found is in that feeling willing, in that heart hands. You take the big heart forces and you and you work out practically how to make that better. With a teenager, you take those heart forces, which are full and brimming over often, and it's optimal, often, not always, not always.
But as a as a as a main strategy, you take that up to try and and have that be understood. So it's the feeling willing for a little child and the feeling thinking for a teenager and for the ones in between. That's our judgment call as to whether to go up or down, depending on what the situation presents.
All right. I hope that was helpful because this talking to children about feelings is a really kind of big deal and it can help us. I think the main point here is it can really help us connect with our children and build beautiful attachment bridges just when they are feeling those those big emotions.
