Welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John Payne. This week I wanted to look at a very simple four-step theme that we can use when our kids, really of any age, are starting to you've got this feeling that things just aren't going in a very good direction. And, you know, that is such a common thing for us as parents, isn't it? Like, oh, this is not going anywhere good.
What do I do? Now, a lot of these podcasts, these episodes, are based around situations like this. But I wanted to sort of boil this down into what I think of as the four its. Now, the four its, I'll just name them first, and then we'll kind of layer on down to them.
So when things aren't going well, first it is calm it down. It number one, calm it down. And then it number two is work it out.
But that comes after calm it down. And then the third one is put it right. So now, okay, so but that comes after the other two.
And the last one is so we can move it on. Now, let's just dig into those a little bit, right? Just take them in order. One of the first things to do when things aren't going well is to definitely not try and sort it out.
It doesn't go well at all. It's always better, I find, to just calm it down. That episode, some of you might remember, this frequent refrain that you can bring into your families of, in our family, hey, hey, hey, nothing, nothing gets worked out when we're worked up.
Nope, nope, we're gonna wait until we're not worked up to work it out. That comes to the rescue in so many situations. Just calm it down, whatever the it is.
Try not to find yourself responding and reacting, because then it doesn't do very, very well for us, either. We get into a reactive state. The kids are all head up, we're trying to work it out.
And even if the calm down is just under a minute, and I know, like a minute, right, but we've got to get out to the car that, you know, whatever it is, we've got to get to school, we've got to get dinner on the table. The more we do these calm downs, the more the biochemistry of both ourselves and a child will get used to it. And it's almost like a little bit like building up a muscle, a calm down muscle, the more both ourselves as parents and guardians and kids get used to.
Step one, calm it down. Let the adrenaline drain down, the cortisol drain down. Just let's get back into ourselves.
For very little children, like get back into our bodies, because they're often just sort of getting out of themselves, out of their body. So calm it down. It also does a lot for us, right, as parents, if we set up a family mantra, you know, like a practice that over and over and over, you know, we're going to calm it down, we're going to have some calm down time.
Now, you might to, you know, lean into some of these other practices we talk about in these podcasts, like, you know, have a have a child come and join you over at the counter, just sit them up on a stool, or if they're bigger, just say, Come on, come on, sit with me for a minute. And just tell them and I remember when story, I remember when you were just the littlest baby. And I remember the very first time we took you outside.
And or whatever it is. And I remember when or and I remember when I was just a little boy. And I got this idea that I would set off on my little bicycle for the next town.
And I thought I would like to explore the next town. I'm not making that one up. Actually, I did that.
My dad drove by in his pickup and said, Hello. Three miles from home. Those I remember when stories are a fast track to a child being able to recover, because it gives them a picture.
Right. But as I mentioned in the other episode, it also helps us because we develop an inner picture and brings us out of the fight or flight or freeze brain, the lower brain. Okay.
So that's the calm it down. And, you know, stay really close to the calm it down. And this is that's just what we do.
Then, so we can work it out when you've got that hunch that a child's body language changes a little bit, their chest softens, their shoulders soften, and particularly their eyes get a little bit more softness to them. It's a hard thing to name, isn't it? It can just be the breathing changes just that little bit. And you're not even aware often as a parent, we're not even aware how we're reading it, but we're reading it.
So now the the work it out, and then to be able just to say, Okay, so what do you see? How do you see it? What do you see that went wrong? Now you can just know, doesn't matter if if your brother or sister or dads or whoever, doesn't matter if they see it differently, because in our family, it's okay to see things differently. It's okay to feel things differently. You can tell me how you see it.
Now what what went wrong? The just sitting with a child doing this, you know, they've, they just, they really love it, that we're connecting with them, even if they're still grumpy. They, I think very much value the safety in the calm down. And now that let's work it out.
And particularly, you can tell me what how you see it, how you felt it, you can tell me and, and it's important to not do in the early stages of the let's work it out in the two or three minutes, and not not 20 or 30, by the way, but just in that quick little, let's work it out. And if kids get used to that, they get used to you, you as a parent being in a receiving mode, in a Venusian mode, more Venus, less Mars, more listening, less speaking. They get used to it and and and they start to almost expect it in the most positive way that they can tell their story because look, everyone's got a story.
Even if your child's been a right little bugger, they still got this story as to what happened. There's still been a build up to it and just to give them the space to tell their little story about what went wrong is is a beautiful thing to do for a child doesn't mean they're going to get off the hook. You know, doesn't mean that they won't be held accountable, or they don't have to put it right.
But it does mean there's a space for them. This comes under that broad banner of connect before you correct. Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Mate talk about that, don't they, in the Hold On To Your Kids book.
Beautiful saying, connect before you correct or connect before you direct, but connect first. It does not mean you're colluding in bad behavior. It means you're creating a space for them to feel safe.
So that when you come to the third it, you know, let's now put it right. You've established a connection, you've built a bridge into how we can put it right. Now for little kids, it might be ideas around turn taking, because sharing wasn't working so well.
It might be writing a card or drawing a little card to their sibling or to a friend in the neighborhood where it was going badly. For older kids, it could, yeah, I mean, it could be an apology, but it's not a forced apology, not where they say, well, sorry, you know, not that. But how can we put it right? It might be for a 12 year old child, it might be, well, okay, he can, he can like play with my baseball mitt, but he's got to bring it back because he leaves it outside and it gets damp and even rained on.
So we've got to have a deal that he brings it back because there was a big blow up previously about a little brother, let's say going into a bigger brother's space and taking a treasured baseball mitt that was grandpa's and handed down to, to the son. And he used some really harsh language. Okay, so we can put that right.
What, what are we going to do about the name calling, sweetheart? Because that was harsh. Yeah. Well, like, well, okay, I guess I could say sorry for, for calling him that, but he's got to, he's got to understand that, you know, that he can't go into your room.
Yes, we can put it right. We can put it right all the witch way round. And then a lot of kids, this is the last it, so we can move it on.
A lot of kids will buy in to problem solving if they know that pretty smoothly, the move it on is going to come, that it's not lighting candles and it's not making eye contact, that it's not big moral lectures. And it's not, it's just, we're going to move, we're going to work it out so we can move it on. We're going to put it right so we can move it on.
We're going to calm it down as a first step to being able to move it on. And if kids get used to this, and you can even say it out loud, you know, we're going to put this, this right a little bit or whatever stage you're up to, so we can move on. We're going to move it on and get back to playing or get back to listening to your music, or get back to whatever it is you want to get back to, which is usually not talking to us, you know, about this thing, then we're going to do that.
And we're not so the child doesn't feel corralled, or, you know, entrapped, that all this is designed to be forward moving, because children's lives, tweens, teens, their lives are full of forward motion. That's what we want, right? We want them to have that forward motion. And if they know we understand it, then you can often onboard them, so to speak a lot, a lot easier.
And they get used to this. If you practice the four it's one thing I know for sure, is they do get used to it, they expect it. And they come along with you in a much happier way.
Okay, so the four it's I hope that was helpful. Bye-bye for now.
