And welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John Bain. Oh, you've done it again. You've found the time to just to listen in for these mercifully brief episodes of this podcast.
This week, I've been thinking about younger children and how to how to work with them, speak with them to when they're really struggling with their words or, you know, using aggressive words or aggressive actions and how to work with children when they've sort of lost it, you know, they're in the, they're sort of melting down maybe not full meltdown, but it's this, they're like grumpy little gnomes, you know, and they're not doing well. Now, in those moments, I find it really helpful to be dead simple about how to approach them because when a child's not doing well, they're actually closing down a major part of their speech reception center in their brain. So to have a big talk with them or to talk with them about their feelings or to talk with them about, do they realize how much their brother loves them? And when they treat them like that, it's, you know, it hurts their relationship.
And I get it. I get that it bugs us. It really bothers us when there's, there's, you know, aggression in the home.
But it's just not a moment to talk to them much at all about this. And yet we've, we've got to deal with it, obviously. Right.
So what I'm suggesting in these, in these moments is just to keep it dead simple and to also put a boundary in place, but at the same time, assure a child that they're still safe, that you still love them. All right. And I think that can all reduce down into this concept of helping hands and hurting hands, helping words and hurting words.
We touched on this a little bit long time ago, could be at least a couple of years ago now in a podcast. But I want to just take another step with this a little bit. When, for example, a child has, has pushed a sibling and they've really shoved them and the sibling is, is upset.
And, and, you know, you know, the scene or they've struck out at you or they've called you a name. They've used the word like stupid, you're a stupid idiot or whatever it is. And they're grumpy and they're angry and they've got that scowl on their face and their little fists are balled up.
You know, it's not great, right? Because we're in the middle of cooking supper and it's, it's just, it's really inconvenient and hard. Now the helping hands, hurting hands, the helping words, hurting words are a really quick way to cut through and, and be able to say to a child, oh my goodness, that is that those were hurting words. Those were really hurting words.
You know what, we need to find your helping words. Now that's the first part. They were hurting words.
That's the boundary. You're saying, you're not, you know, you're not saying you may not talk to me like that young man. If I had have spoken like that to my father, you know, it's like as tempting as it is.
No, it's, those were, those were hurting words. And we try very hard in our family to have helping words. We do.
We try hard. And you might remember another podcast. I said, try to avoid saying we don't talk like that in our family.
That's just a quick reminder because, because the child just did. And I heard a child once say, well, I just don't belong in this family. You know? So we try hard.
We try hard to have helping words in our family. And that was a hurting word. That was a slip up.
That was a hurting word. No, no. That was hurting.
That's the first part. And it could be exactly the same with actions. They were hurting hands.
They were definitely hurting hands. And we try hard in our family to have helping hands. And no, no, no, no.
We can't have that now. So the boundaries in place, but also the direction is set, the aspiration that we look for helping. And into that next little part of this is to say, and you know what? Just this morning, you definitely had helping hands with your little brother.
Oh, my goodness. You helped him build the best fort. I know you can do that.
You've done that many times. Gosh, most of the time you have helping hands. And those hurting hands, they visit sometimes, don't they? But helping hands all the time.
You do that all the time. You helped pack all those things away. And Mommy hardly did anything.
They were very helping hands. Or it might even be that you reach back and say, you know, on Saturday morning, those were the best helping hands when you made all those blueberry muffins. Oh, they were yummy, weren't they? They didn't last very long.
See, when you do this, two things happen, right? And the first thing is for us as a parent, as a guardian, as an educator, because when we remember what a child did well, right? Right when they're being a right little rotter and we remember what they did well, we're moving up the stairway from our lower brain, our amygdala, our fight or flight brain, you know, and we're moving upwards into our limbic system. We're moving because the moment, you see, we have to picture a child making those blueberry muffins, and it was beautiful to see our beautiful child, son, daughter, child, make those muffins and, okay, they didn't turn out so well, but they made them and they were completely wanting to make breakfast for everyone. You see, when we do that, we have got a picture of it.
It's heartwarming. It literally leads us into our heart forces, into our empathy, into our knowing that that child is a beautiful child. Knowing what they did just now was, you know, significantly less than beautiful and rather unattractive, but that's not always like that because when a kid does stuff like this, it can seem so total because it's troubling, right, that they would treat a sibling or a playmate or you like that, but it's a relatively modest part of their entire whole being.
And in that moment, if we remember it, it lifts us up out of our tendency to fight fire with fire, to get involved in an argument, like to get involved in an argument with a nine-year-old or a four-year-old is just weird, right? Like they're four and we're not, and it just is like you're arguing and you're thinking, I feel like the incredible shrinking adult here. So that's the first thing it does is it lifts us up when we picture a child with helping words or helping hands or for an older child being helpful, being unhelpful, right? You can't say to a 12-year-old, I want to find your helping hands. You get a serious eye roll if you did that, but you can say we need to be way more helpful because that was really unhelpful and you were super helpful this morning when you helped me tidy up all that stuff that was scattered all over the place.
I don't know why the puppy does that, but they do, and you really helped tidy it all up. Thank you. You can be super helpful.
What's happening now, unhelpful, like really unhelpful. You can just word it differently, right, for an older child. But I think honestly the main event of that is for us because then the second piece in that is that a child, when they're feeling disoriented, it orients them, right? When they're feeling dysregulated, and I don't know that they have this big memory of them making muffins.
I think it sort of runs a bit deeper than that. They have a feeling that this is not the totality of my being, maybe, but the biggest feeling they have is that my dad still loves me. He's not going to be this big, scary, fighty dude.
I don't have to get ready to fight even more. So this is the helping hands, helping words, helpful words, and hurting words or unhelpful words. Just one passing thought that there's also another kind of words and actions, and that's healing.
There's hurting, helping, for sure, but healing. And if a younger sibling, let's say, or a friend that came over fell and hurt themselves, and your child moved in and just helped them beautifully, that's healing hands. And we can remember that, too, and say to a child, do you know what? It's not just helping hands you have, love.
You have healing hands. You have kind hands. Do you remember just when Skylar came over last week, and she tripped over and, gosh, she hurt her knee, didn't she? Well, you were kind, and you helped heal her knee.
That's right, you did. You put the Band-Aid on, and you helped her a lot, didn't you? Now you're saying this right when the child's being a little bugger, you know, and has pushed his sibling or her sibling or their sibling over, or they've struck out at you and raised their fist at you even, and you're saying, you not only have helping hands, you have healing hands, and they can be kind, and they can be so gentle, and we need to find that. We do.
So helping hands can transform hurting hands, and even healing, healing words. If a child, you know, if some child was, you know, a sibling or a playmate came over, and they were very upset, and your son or daughter or child sat with them and soothed them, that's healing words, and that can be recognized right when a child is not doing well at all. Okay, I hope that was helpful and healing.
Bye-bye for now.
