Welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John Payne. This week I've been thinking a little bit more about examining feelings as opposed to helping kids move on. What I mean by this is there's been a lot of emphasis in the last decades, I would say, probably the last 10, 15 years, perhaps a little bit beyond, of naming young children's feelings.
And whilst a little bit of that is fine, of course, my concern about naming feelings is mainly based around the brain science. It's that ability in limbic system and the neocortex to actually stand outside your feelings and know what your feelings are feeling develops much later in life. And for a young child up to the age through five, six, seven, and even a little bit beyond, asking a child to name their feelings, asking a child to be like, what is it you're feeling? Let's explore.
What are your feelings feeling? Examining a child's feelings like this can really have them feel like they should be able to do this, but they're not really able to do it. And we're looking at them as if they should be able to do it. And it can help.
It can even help a child move further along that dysregulated spectrum, where they just don't get it and they're feeling mad. And there we are asking them about, are you feeling sad? Are you feeling angry? Are you feeling frustrated? And if we're not careful, if we go too far with this, it can have a child go into freefall and react quite strongly and make a difficult situation a whole lot worse. The, this is different to, to, I think it's, you know, as an adult, I don't see much wrong, really, with saying, oh, gosh, this is frustrating, isn't it? That, that, nothing matter with that, as I see it, but really interrogating and examining a child's feelings and, and asking them to go deeply into that.
I don't think it's a, it's a great idea. And it doesn't help all that much. And even if a child, you can coach them up to do it.
I wonder if that is adultifying them a little bit. It's, it's making them into little adults. When a child feels a feeling, it's a total body experience.
It's, it, and it, and it is rightly so, if you watch them play, they, and when they're happy, just their whole body is happy, you know, when, when they're sad, their whole body is sad, everything is sad, their dollies are sad, the trucks are sad, everything is sad. And they are immersed in that experience. When we, when we ask, when we attempt to pull them out of that experience, and be objective about it, be mindful of it.
It's, it's just not an ability that a child has, naturally, a young child developed. More than that, it's sort of gets into their face a little bit, you know, they, they, and that's what we don't want to do when a child's upset. In a sense, I think it's, it's a, it's a good thing to understand that they're, they're in this intense experience, and they're looking to us to co-regulate, they're looking to us to actually move them on, they've kind of in this canyon, they've boxed themselves in a little bit to this, and they're looking for us to find a route to move on from those feelings.
It doesn't mean we're denying feelings by any, any stretch. In fact, it's a little bit the opposite, because when we help them be in the feeling, be in the frustration, be in the anger, and then we, and we're not trying to lift them out of it, and, and be intellectual about it. But they're in the feeling, and we let them be in the feeling.
And then we can move, move them on, we can, we can say, well, gosh, this is a very hard situation, isn't it? You know, and, and this relates, by the way, a little bit to those four its that I talked about in a very recent podcast, which is a kind of a process of calming it down, working it out, and then to be able to put it right, and then crucially, move it on. Do you see? And so I think the, the calming it down, the regulating allows a child to when we, you know, we say to them, you know, nothing gets worked out in our family, when we're worked up, we're going to calm it down first. That's what we're going to do.
And then we'll work it out. That's not denying in any way a child they're feeling. In fact, I think it's, it's the opposite, it's helping them process.
And then, and then being able to move it on and get back into the flow of their day. So this, and you can also do that with another one of my favorite strategies you've heard me mention in these episodes, which is an I remember when story. Now if a child's very, very frustrated, and you give them a little you sit with them in their frustration.
And an episode is podcast, I'll talk more about that in a moment. But in a future episode coming up soon. But it's it's we're with them, we don't have to, you know, get too close and get in their face just where we're in the vicinity, we're around.
And once they calm it down, and we're working it out, it can be that again, we can have a child understand their feelings even more, not less, if we tell them a little I remember when story. You know, I remember when I got very frustrated when I was building a cart once. And I wanted the I wanted to actually have a real steering wheel in the cart that I was going to drive down the hill.
And I just couldn't figure out how to put that steering wheel in. And it just wasn't working. Not making that up, actually.
And but if you if you tell a child a story of when you also were frustrated, when you also were angry, when you also experienced things not working out, what that's doing is is helping a child co-regulate with you, own the feeling, be in the feeling, but realize they're not alone, realize that that you understand them, and that you that you can help them reorient, and then move it on. And this is quite different to what a number of parenting books say is that you sit in you, and you emotionally educate your child by naming their feelings and talking to them and going deeply into this. Meanwhile, a child's feeling more and more at a loss, because neurologically, they're not, they just don't have that, that full capacity to do what a lot of the books are telling us to do.
So it's not a question of denying feelings. And I think that part of naming a child's feelings is a it's a good aim, right? It's we mean, well, the books mean well, when they suggest that, I'm suggesting that we can bring a child into their feelings, we can come alongside them, we can calm it down, we can tell them an I remember when story, which really helps them even further own their feeling. And then we can lead them out and on and move it on to to then moving back into their day, rather than being trapped by that, that that feeling for for long periods of time.
Okay, as always, hope that's helpful.
