Welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John Payne. Ah, you did it again. Here we are.
Quick reminder again, as I said, I was going to do for the next couple of weeks, this Care Professionals course for emotional self-regulation. For anyone working to help parents be better, self-regulated, August 16, 17, that course is coming right on up. I personally lead it together with my dear colleague, Nora, and yeah, it's three hours on a Saturday, three hours on a Sunday.
It's a simple training, really. Well, it'd be ironic if it was complicated. And you'll see a link right below if you're interested in it, or you know of anyone else who might be interested in it as well.
Okay. So to this week, kind of a related theme, what pushes our buttons? You know, over the years when I've asked parents, what is it that most of all pushes our buttons as kids? You know, like, has us reacting? Has us just not at our best at all? Has us being snappy or perhaps just feeling frustrated and we don't let it out, but inwardly things are churning? Probably at the top of the list of responses is being unseen and feeling undervalued. That comes up over and over.
And it does for us all, right? Because we do so much for our kids. We just put them first in so many ways. We just go that extra mile on a kind of daily or hourly basis for our kids.
And when we feel unseen and undervalued, and we feel taken for granted, it's a feeling that I think is there's something really fundamental. And I know like we're adults and maybe we shouldn't feel this, but it just feels unfair. It just feels out of whack and not okay, and sort of disrespectful.
And it can seriously push our buttons. And it kind of results in some fairly tricky exchanges with our kids. You know, I'm reminded of the time I was visiting in South Africa, where in the marketplace I was staying in a little room right on a market that backed onto a marketplace.
And in the morning I would hear the clanking and the clinging, you know, the clunking of all the setting up for the market for the day. And I would hear the folk call out to each other, Subana, Subana, you know. And in Zulu, apparently, I hope I've got the pronunciation of that correctly.
After all these years, I might have got it wrong, but that's what I would hear. And it was a Zulu greeting for, I see you, I see you. And there was all this greeting as the stallholders held, you know, put up their stuff and put out their stuff.
And then the refrain, what the person would say back to the person who'd said, you know, Subana to them was Ngohona. And Ngohona means roughly translated, I am here. I see you.
I am here. It's a beautiful greeting, right? And that I, I see you. So therefore I am here is what we're looking for in our family.
And when we don't find it, when we don't find, we're just not seen, it's almost like we're not here. And it's an awful feeling. No one likes to be unseen, taken for granted.
But more than that, it's a feeling of, I'm losing myself in all this. This is not at all the way I imagined this to be. And this, this particularly tends to push our buttons.
There are all sorts of other ways and almost like subcategories below this. Children being disrespectful is a, is a, is a really big one. Our kids who are like a, like a sibling, an older sibling who picks on a younger sibling who is more vulnerable, that pushes our buttons big time.
But sometimes it goes, if you're in a two parent home with your partner who doesn't back you up, you know, who, who will kind of call you out or gainsay you in front of the kids, big button pusher, that one. I wonder if through this week, as you know, the previous week I mentioned taking care of yourself, just keep that going, keep that moving. Don't lose track of that.
I wonder if that creates a little bit of space, you know, just that little bit of space inwardly for us to look at, at what really pushes our buttons. Because considering what pushes our buttons, often we, we keep at arm's length. We, we keep that away.
You know, it's just too volatile. I wonder if this last week of focus on self-care can potentially give you the space to look at those inflammatory habits that have taken root in, in your family and really start to identify them, to look at what they might be. Because a lot of this stuff can become habituated and it can become normalized.
And, you know, we're tempted to think, well, this is just, this is my lot. This is the way, this is not ideal, but what family is ideal? This is not perfect, but what, you know, we're never going to be perfect. I get all that.
I get all that. But there's a baseline. There's, there's a baseline of just not feeling undervalued and not feeling unseen.
I don't think it's wrong in any way for us to start to take steps towards remedying that. And I'll come to that in the next, in the next podcast, we'll, we'll look at that. But this, this, this week, try to take stock.
This is kind of a beginning place. Try to take stock of what are the things that get under your skin, you know, to use another metaphor that, that just, that, that really feel like, hmm, this should not be the way it is. This really bothers me.
And even if I managed to suppress it, reacting, it builds up and it has a cumulative charge. And then we kind of lose it at our kids and they look at us and geez, dad, like I only, but I only, and it is, and it was just a relatively moderate thing. Maybe not minor.
Maybe an older child looked at a younger sibling, just for an example, and said, yeah, whatever, dude, that was really lame. Now it's no, now that's not great, right? It's not great at all, but it's the fifth, sixth, seventh time that's been said or other disrespectful, like the same child, the same 12, 13, 14 year old has looked at you and said, whatever, that I really dislike that word used in that way, whatever. And you've had it and you snap.
That, if we can prevent the buildup of this by noticing these parts that might've come, become a little bit normalized, then we're on the trailhead. We're right at the trailhead of making some changes. Now this is next week and so on, we'll explore some solutions to this, but let's just begin at the beginning.
And that was self-care. And now we're taking a couple of steps down the trail into what is it that's pushing our buttons, okay? So have a good week noticing what pushes your buttons, but it's helpful to surface this just that little bit more. Okay.
Oh, and don't forget this reminder of this link below for the care professional seminar, which deals with these kinds of issues actually and trains people to work with people just like we're discussing now. Okay. Bye-bye for now.
