Welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John Payne. So glad you could make it again. Well, this week I wanted to talk about bedtime hostage taking.
You know where bedtimes just go on and on and you have to lay down beside a child, you have to be with them. But look, before we get into that, I wanted to give one of the last reminders of our discipline and guidance care professional training coming up on May 3rd and 4th. And this is one of the things I'm most excited about presenting and being a part of this amazing group of people, educators, counsellors, nurses, other medical folk, all come together and we do three hours on the 3rd and three hours on the 4th.
And they are recorded sessions, you can take them that way. And also, if you're looking at going a little deeper, you can take these care professional seminars, which come up three or four times through the year that on various topics covered in the books that I've written. And it's one of the steps when you take three of those care professional trainings, then you're on the path to being a simplicity parenting coach, as a part of our coach training where you work one to one with people.
So anyway, that's coming up. Look, if you're listening to this as a recording, and this is of interest, and think, oh, that's interesting, just go on to the website and join the interest list. And we'll let you know when it's coming up.
It's around May, April, May every year. All right. So bedtime hostage taking.
Oh boy, who hasn't been there? One of the things that I've found is a consistent piece of feedback from parents is to dial the whole situation, like reverse engineer it all the way back to the day itself. Because what I think is going on with that taking, you're almost like a prisoner. And forgive me for using prisoner and hostage taking as a metaphor.
I know that's obviously very serious. But it's like a hauling on you for connection. It's like their little connection cup quite often is not full.
It's not read. It's not all the way filled to the tippy toppy, and then ready to release in it and just fall back into sleep. Because falling asleep is almost like, you know, in those corporate training days where you fall into people's arms, you know, and it takes a heck of a lot of trust to fall, do that trust fall.
For children, particularly little children, it's the same deal with falling asleep. They're leaving this world of safety, which is you, which is us, and they're falling back into sleep. And it does take a rich thread of connection.
Now, I'm not saying this is the only reason this happens. Other reasons for children really hauling on you at night have have got to do with habit. They've just developed the habit of doing this.
Other reasons is that they're overexcited. But I wanted to focus this episode on the connection aspect of it. Many of the parents that I've been fortunate enough to speak with over the years, when we when we try this out, when we say, look, let's try to have more connected time.
And we explore it. And it can it can begin in the morning. And where are your connection times? It can go through the day, up in the afternoon, where are your connection? Where are you building this connection bridge doesn't have to be always playing with children and giving them your complete and undivided attention.
It can be just helping you with with the with the setting out of the of lunch and clearing up and it can be simple little baking projects or when you're going out into the garden anyway, they come out and help you but but you there's this aspect of this connection, it gets thicker, sort of, in a sense, it gets more important around sort of three, four o'clock when you're on the ramp to bedtime, that's the time to to start the connection bridge. Because often the story at bedtime, it symbolizes it inwardly, a child is okay, I've got my got my parents attention. Now I'm with them, I'm not going to let them go.
But what about rather than that, at four o'clock, you just sit and you ask them what they're doing with their drawing playing with their magnet tiles, you go out the backyard and you can, you know, you just continue on making notes or whatever, for your work, whatever it is, but you're out there accompanying them. You're looking up, they're coming back and showing you their new trick. All this is in the in that hour or two, when most kids even on a school day, have got a little bit of time after school to to be able to have free play.
And so accompanying them in their free play, of course, it means you can play with them. But it doesn't mean that you have to play with them. As long as you're paralleling with them, you're available.
And if if you've got problems at night with your children releasing you, this is one of the first places to begin is backing it on up through the day, particularly in those in those hours after lunch, two, three, four o'clock. And, and parallel with them, be with them, be available as much as you can. Now, you know, if because if you go out, if you have a yard, let's say, and you go out and you're, you're, you're getting ready, you're getting supper ready, and you just take the beans out and you're the pizza, whatever you're doing, you know, you're, and you just sit outside, and you continue on with what you're doing.
The the some parents have said to me, gosh, that's gonna really, you know, that's a lot of time. And my point there is, it's, it's actually an economical use of time. Because if you don't do that, chances are, you're not only going to be hold on, and you're gonna have to lay beside a child for a long time before they will release you and basically when they're asleep, and if they wake up, they'll call you back anyway, and you begin all over again.
This is a way more economical use of time, you invest that those connection points and they can be brief through the day. You know, in the morning time, it can be this brief little connection going in, checking on the weekend checking on and just sitting them with them while they play trucks or dollies or older kids just hanging out with them as they're shooting hoops. If they if you have a driveway, and they're playing basketball, whatever, whatever it is, those smaller moments, those 1015 minute investments throughout the day 345 times are significantly less time and much, much more pleasurable than being held captive in the evening.
The other piece I wanted to mention relates to an earlier podcast, a couple of months ago now when I talked about micro abandonment. And I talked about this term, micro abandonment. In terms of, of every time we look at our phone, every time we're with kids, and we look at our phone, we're with them, but we're not, we're checking our phone, we're checking our phone.
So, you know, and, and, you know, some kind of distraction is always present with phones. And I really do feel it's it is a micro abandonment. That's not a metaphor.
I think it's really happening. And it builds up and it builds up and it builds up. And one of the few times our kids figure they have really got us and that we're not being distracted is at night, when I think most of us know that you can't be texting as you're reading a child a bedtime story.
No one does that or very few people do that. And it's it's a phone free time. And I think that's what a lot of kids treasure is that we've got a phone, they've got us when we're not, they're not having to compete for our attention.
So backing it up again, be really, really careful about about phone use around kids, about abandoning them, and looking at the phone, because that means they are going to really cling to you when you don't have the phone when most of us, I think goodness still put the phone away at bedtime, that's still a sort of a sacred moment for most of us. And so the the feedback from parents has been fairly clear when they have quit, or really dialed back dramatically dialed back the amount of phone use around kids. Nighttime has been way easier.
Kids have released their parents in a lot happier way. And, you know, I didn't know that that was going to be as clear to some parents, for some said it helped a little bit. Others have said it's been like night and day, when they've stopped the micro abandonment, the digital micro abandonment thing going on.
But the feedback is clear that that is really a part of it. So I'd say the two key things, and both have to deal with connection. One is is the phone use through the day, and dialing that back.
And one is dialing up these little moments of connection through through the day, particularly beginning around sort of three or four, but not exclusively not just around that time of the day, but earlier as well as best we can as limited and as many things as we've got to do. But it is sometimes just as simple as walking into a room and just giving a child a little hand hug on their shoulder, just ruffling their hair and looking over their shoulder and asking them what they're up to. And they might just say, oh, nothing, nothing much.
They're 14 years old. Yeah, nothing. But you've made that connection, and it's taken 10-15 seconds doesn't have to be these, you know, really large amounts of time all the time.
So that's the nighttime, some solutions to the nighttime entrapment that many of us experience. So again, if you're interested in the care professional training, right at the website, you can see, you can just sign right up there at the website. Let people know if you know some professionals, let them know that this is happening.
The theme is boundaries, discipline and guidance. And it's six hours, three hours on a Saturday, three hours on a Sunday, and it is recorded. Okay, that's it for now.
As always, I hope that's been helpful. Bye.
