Welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John Payne. Gosh, grateful that you could make it again. This week we're going to be talking about choosing the right moment.
You know, as so many of us know that, well, all of us know really, that so much of working with kids is just like parental version of laying in wait, you know, for that right moment. Just before we get started on that, a quick reminder, we have this Discipline and Guidance Care Professional Seminar. It's just a couple of hours, three hours on Saturday, three hours on Sunday for care professionals who work to support kids and parents with issues around boundaries and around discipline, around guidance.
And we run these trainings, this one particularly, we run this every year. So if you miss it, don't worry, it's coming up again, you know, the year following, but we are gathering soon. Okay, so to the main theme of laying in wait for the right moment.
One of the things that strikes me about this is that when we choose the right moment, you can almost sort of sense an opening in a child's heart. You know, other parents have described it to me as a sort of a temperature gets just right, when it's just, you sense that time to go for it. This is the time to bring something up.
And alternatively, this is the time not to. And yet, tuning into that voice inside us takes some doing. And I'm suggesting that maybe over the next week or two, you take a moment to really tune in when you're about, particularly when you're about to give a child, a tween or a teen, a direction, an instruction of some sort, that you take that couple of heartbeats, those few seconds, and you just like, time check, right moment.
Yeah, it is. You know, you run that check, because we get used to in the day to day, just flow, just moving on at the day, just to be able to say, hey, this needs to be done, that needs right, can you get that? Hey, what about? And it's when parents, myself included, but when the parents I work with, really start tuning in and set themselves a little bit of a project, really, an action-based research, that before any instruction, you pause and say, right moment. Because there is a sort of right instruction, right moment.
That's right at the top of the list. That's a number one. And then there's a number, there's like a two, which is the next down.
A two is right instruction, but wrong time. So you're saying the right thing, it's fair enough, but your timing was just that bit off. And then three is sort of wrong instruction, wrong time.
It was just a weird thing to be saying to your kids. And we all know that one, right? Now, most of us get in that secondary, in that two range, a lot. It is the right thing to say, you know, when you reflect on it.
Yep, that was okay to ask. But the timing wasn't good. And that, you know, in those moments, I think we can back it on up.
If we get it wrong, and we get a lot of pushback and a lot of, it just was, it becomes clear to you, gosh, that wasn't the right time. Then to be able to not, you know, back off completely, and, you know, just beat ourselves up, or get angry, you know, defer, you know, basically project, we got it wrong. So now I'm going to get mad, that kind of thing.
But to be able to say, well, hang on. Okay, okay. Yeah, that wasn't a good time to ask you about that, Jacob.
But you know what, we're going to just hit pause on that. We're just going to pause on it. And we'll come back to it later.
Okay, when the timing is better. I don't think there's anything wrong with that at all. Just if you if you start tuning in to timing, the sort of the cadence of the day, and it doesn't quite go right, there's nothing wrong at all in saying, oh, that didn't go right.
That wasn't the right time, was it? Now, some examples of not the right time, I mean, the most obvious one and spectacular one is when we're rushing to do something, you know, when we're rushing, okay, okay, quickly, quickly, just tidy that up now. And you're trying to get out the door, the chances of that actually happening to any, with any sort of great satisfaction, well, they're relatively, they're sort of minimal, aren't they? We all, we all know that. Try, I think we've all got to try and avoid giving those instructions, those directions, when we can't do this thing that I've talked about in earlier podcasts way back, when we can't do a two by two by one.
And what I mean by two by two by one, and this is a really easy way to judge whether this is the right moment. If you've got time to put your two feet on the ground and not be moving, two feet on the ground, and they're not going anywhere else, they're growing roots, right? Two feet down, two feet away from your child. So you're not moving, you're not shouting an instruction from over the, you know, over the room or from upstairs or wherever.
Again, you know, the chances of that happening, you know, relatively low. So two feet away, and then by one, one instruction, one thing, not a series of pretty good, that's okay, it's all got to get done. But if you're trying to get a child out the door, you know, staying with this example, it's something like you need now to put your lunch in your backpack.
That's what I want you to do now, okay? And you're speaking a little more slowly. This kind of costs you about, I don't know, two or three seconds. It doesn't take much longer to do this, but you've dropped your voice down a little bit into your lower chest and into your belly, and you're two feet away.
You don't have to insist on eye contact or whatever, but you've paused, and then you give one instruction. You might get away with a little. After you've put your lunch in your backpack, then I'm going to be asking you something else, and that'll be to do with coats and such.
But for now, all I want you to do is do that. No, no, no, just that. I want you to do that.
We can even do it together, but this is what we're going to do. Now, if you don't have time to do that, and honestly, we don't. Sometimes we just simply don't.
Then the timing is off, and it's sort of hard to say, but it's on us. If we are frantically saying put your lunch in your backpack, and we didn't do that just a few minutes earlier when there was time, then I don't know that it's really a child's fault. Now, they could have been told then, and they didn't do it, right? But chances are we didn't do it two by two by one, and it's still on us.
Now, there are bigger examples of this, right? Where something really does, something more serious does need to be talked about, and again, it's got to do with timing. But here's a little bit of creating, you know, like a little bit of creating the vessel before you pour the content in. I think in those moments where you know you've got to talk to child about that, you know, the teacher's rung from school or, you know, something's, you need to talk to them, right? Something's come up.
There was some pretty disrespectful behavior or aggressive behavior towards a sibling, or very fresh behavior towards yourself when you were trying to get supper on the table, and just really unhelpful stuff, is to be able to say in those moments, hey, hey, hey, we're gonna, you know, we're gonna have to talk. I've got something we need to just chat about, and we'll do it after dinner. It's a good time after, you know, the belly is full and blood sugars are balanced.
But yeah, no, after we clear supper away, I want to just have a few minutes, not long, and this is important, you know, not to have a kid think you're going to go on and on, but just a few minutes, and I want to check in with you, okay? And a child would go like, what? Why can't we talk about it now? Like, you know, that sort of stuff. But I wouldn't get drawn in. I really wouldn't get drawn in to say, no, no, no, right time, right place.
You know, in our family, we do it a lot. Right time, right place, right thing. That's the way we roll.
That's what we do in our family. This would be the right, the wrong time. Wrong time.
No, no. After supper, I want to have a few minutes, and we're just going to touch on something and then move on. Not going to take long.
I think that's really important. You know, we're going to just, I want to talk to you about something, so we just briefly, so we can move on. A lot of kids like that, right? So we can move on.
And so that then stands a much greater chance of being a one. Right time, right place. And also, a child's not, you know, a tween or a teen is not doing a project.
They're not wanting to go out and shoot hoops, ride a bicycle. They're not doing all kinds of other stuff. You've made the container, you've created the space, and now you're moving into it.
And that is a sort of a larger example of the, you know, lunch box in the backpack. Right, that's one little example, a micro example. But one for a bigger event, when you really do need to talk about it.
Yeah, that has to do with create the container, and then speak into it in a big way. The lunchbox example was still creating a container, and then speaking into it, because it's a two by two by one. Now in all these situations, it's best if you can do it in an undistracted way.
Now I know this one is really tough, right? If you've got more than one kid at home, you've got two or three, like how on earth do you do that? And it's a little bit of, for the big stuff, you know, then you've really got to choose a moment where there's as least distraction as possible. Doesn't mean it can just be a one-to-one conversation, but if there's a, if you're speaking right time, right place, and you've got a little kid, you've got a younger one, come up, you can put your arm around their shoulder, give them a little side hug, draw them in, and still be speaking to your other child. They want to be, you know, if they want to be close to you, they want to be with you, it's not just, you know, saying to them, just give me some space, please.
I'm talking to your brother, because that then raises the the temperature for everyone, right? But it's just, draw them in, and if it's not, doesn't, you know, conversations around lunchboxes or, you know, whatever, that doesn't need to have private space. You know, like, I don't know, I'm guessing five, six, seven out of ten times another kid can come and lean up against you and be a part of that, because why not? You're having a, you're doing just an ordinary conversation, you're putting some boundaries in place, you're showing good timing, it's all good. But, you know, it's not private, like, you know, super private.
However, if it's a really big deal, then you, you know, we are going to have to choose a time when there's going to be as least distraction as possible. And that's not easy to do, but that will ensure that you get a one right time, right place. So I hope that is helpful, because when parents have really worked on this and said, okay, for this next month, I'm going to focus on tuning in and getting stuff at the right time.
That's what I'm going to do, because I want to do all that for my child, my tween, my teen. And I want to have less of this harried, hurried conversations with kids that don't go so well. So right time, right place.
Try as best we can to get that moment right. Okay, I hope that's helpful. Bye-bye for now.
