Hello and welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kemp John Payne. This week and over the next three or four weeks, I'm going to be reading excerpts from my co-authored book, Emotionally Resilient Twins and Teens, that I co-authored with my dear friend and colleague, Luis Fernando Llosa. And I'll be reading this book particularly as a lead-in to our Care Professionals training that's coming up on November 1st and 2nd.
And registrations are open for that now and there's a link, you know, like right below in the show notes. This is a, these Care Professional trainings are one of our kind of core practices where we work with educators, Care Professionals of a wide range of backgrounds to help these Care Professionals be better equipped to support us as parents. And so that's coming right up and registrations are open.
What I want to do in these next couple of weeks is, first of all this week, just lead in, I want to lead in with some practical help if your child is ever socially suffering, it's not doing well, and every child goes through this, every child does of course. But what can we do? Because it's very hard when this happens. Then next week we'll pivot to reading some stories from this book and the stories of course are just so illuminating and they're read aloud stories that are meant to be read aloud with your tween, with your teen, sitting right with them, working out what in that story related to their situation, what was an understanding they gained from it, what is a hope, what is a strategy they could put into practice as well.
So just jumping right in, this is chapter four, and it's entitled, I Can Help, I Am Here For You. By the time our kid approaches us with their problems, they are likely, they've likely tried a bunch of things to deal with the exclusion that they might be facing. We tend to jump in with suggestions like, just walk away, or just ignore it.
However, it's so important instead to ask them and recognize their efforts, and even if they didn't work, when we make flat suggestions before hearing them out, our kids lose confidence in our ideas. And when we use words such as just, well, we make it sound easy. Make sure your tone or attitude doesn't make your child feel incompetent or even feel more like a loser if they already feel that way.
Like a loser is in italics, I don't mean we'd ever knowingly have a child feel that way. Okay, so affirm your child's efforts. Here are a few simple comments and questions you can use.
Sounds like that's been hard. Has it been going on for a long time or just a little while? Have you tried some things to have it work out? Or is it hard to think up ideas like that? Sounds like you've been brave, actually. Knowing what to do when you're left out or pushed aside, that's not easy.
Try to have a kind and attentive but matter-of-fact tone. Getting this right is actually important. You don't want to sound dismissive, but you also don't want to sound too sentimental or overloaded because your child might close down if you get into their space.
Just be you. Speak in your normal voice. That's the best way to reassure your child that they're being heard and are safe when they're talking about their issues with you.
That tone is actually very important. There's some suggestions there of what to say, but it's our tone that will signal to a child that they can speak to us some more. Okay, so back into the book.
Can you help me understand? It's a subheading. An effective question with which to begin an exchange with your child is, can you help me understand what's been happening? Children love to connect when the request is genuine and they feel safe. By beginning this way, you open up the possibility for a meaningful conversation and you're signalling to them that you are present, ready to listen rather than talk.
That's important, right? Children who feel that they're being picked on or left out need to be listened to because they feel the world does not value their voice. Also, this opening question is both practical and compassionate, making it clear that they know their dilemma can be brought out into the open and that you very much want to understand. There is a former podcast actually, one back in the catalogue, that goes into more depth with that question.
Can you help me understand? Small steps versus one big long conversation. Children really dislike it when we go on and on. They may occasionally want to have a long and in-depth conversation, but much more often, particularly when speaking about troubling situations, they like it when we keep it brief and spread out our conversations over a few days.
This gives them space to breathe and helps them feel as though that we're not trying to squeeze information out of them. It also gives you a chance to pause, calm, calm down, and if necessary, consider what is really essential. It gives us space as well.
Choose your time carefully. We all know that there are good and bad times to talk to a child. They might need to speak with you away from siblings because they're embarrassed, or they might have the kind of relationship with a sister or brother that makes it easier for them to open up when their sibling is actually present.
As one mum said, parenting is the art of laying in wait for the right time. I love that. Some parents find it best to do something while having a chat, making a bed together, unloading the dishwasher, taking a short car trip.
And so choosing that right time, terribly important. And even though we might want to just jump in because we've heard something, be careful about timing. Okay, it's all about easing reactivity, uncovering the truth.
In my school years, I was one of those quiet yet feisty kids. I really was. Hmm.
I tended to hover on the outer edge of social situations until I felt comfortable to join in. I was good at games and sport, which gave me a kind of immunity to being picked on. However, I watched with interest and empathy the children who repeatedly got teased and left out.
It made me sad and uneasy and puzzled that they had to endure this kind of treatment. I also observed others on the playground who, despite their obvious physical and cultural differences, deflected mean comments, stayed in the game and found friends. The key to their success? They didn't react to taunting.
And they did this in a handful of ways that drew my attention. This is even quite young. I was watching this with real interest.
The main thing I noticed was that they didn't display anger or fight back aggressively. They kept their cool and stood their ground. I admired their courage and wanted to figure out how they did it.
And here are some of the things I noticed. I don't know if I wrote this in the book, but I actually got home and made some notes of this. I so wanted to figure it out.
I guess I was interested in human behavior at a pretty young age, because this is elementary school and into middle school. So here are the points. Some kids would agree with the insult or jab, saying things like, yeah, I know I'm not good at running, but I still like playing.
Children with a good sense of humor would make people who tried to tease them or marginalize them laugh. One boy I knew had a peculiar habit of walking on his toes. He was told derisively that he was an airy fairy ballet dancer.
So the next time he played four square in the schoolyard, he pirouetted and twirled after hitting the ball. It cracked everyone up. His would-be tormentors shook their heads, smiled, and stopped teasing him.
I still remember him doing that. It's edgy, right, to do that, but it sure worked for him. Some kids would respond by repeating a bland phase.
So? So what? Whatever. Yeah, I've heard that before. And they did this every time a potentially mean comment was made.
Some little kids just say things like, so? So? One really effective strategy I noticed was to simply state the obvious by something saying like, go ahead. I can't stop you saying that. One classmate whose family had emigrated from Eastern Europe, an Eastern European country, would say with a shrug of his shoulders, it's a free country.
This non-combatative approach struck me as being particularly effective. Not only was he saying something that was true and therefore irrefutable, but he was also relaxed and pretty matter-of-fact about it. His attitude and the manner in which he sort of conducted himself drew others towards him.
I figured it was because they felt safe in the company of someone like him. I sure did too. I still remember Georgie just dealing with it so well.
And it made others, including myself, admire him, actually. Later in my teens, I joined an elite youth soccer team. We played in front of large crowds with scouts from top-ranked teams present, and there was an intense pressure to win.
Players often trash-talked their opponents to try and throw them off their game. They would say some pretty horrible things. It was hard to ignore, but armed with the strategies I'd observed over the years, I'd either state the obvious.
I'd say things to players like, yeah, go ahead, say what you like. And this was right in the heat, like tens of thousands of people ranting and screaming, you know, from the stands. And I'd just, you know, someone who trash-talked me, pretty much that sort of stuff I'd say.
Or I'd crack a joke about what was being said. I'd say, yeah, I sure messed up. Probably best to kick the ball when it was actually there.
I still remember saying that, and this brute of a player cracked a smile. It was interesting. This was not only deflecting the mean or sarcastic comments, but it made my opponents laugh.
They'd smile and say, good job, when we shook hands at the end of the game. I made some pretty good friends amongst the players of the teams we played against. We even started hanging out before our other games, in spite of the fact that we were supposed to be the opposition.
I used to bug my coach, actually, me doing that. When I became a teacher and a school counsellor, I started teaching children the ways of dealing with teasing, being left out. But it was also clear to me that the issue needed to be approached from the other side.
Our school needed to take exclusions issues really seriously. When I became an outside consultant, I developed, with the help of students, a school-wide anti-bullying program called the Social Inclusion Approach. Now, that's been folded into Integrative Student Support.
And I introduced this in thousands of schools over the next 30 years. This approach has led to systems where older kids are trained to intervene and ease in potentially difficult situations in corridors and playgrounds. The Student Social Action Committee, as they're known, have been very helpful in making playground culture more inclusive by building willingness amongst children to reach out for help when social tensions arise, so the older kids can engage on the spot in problem-solving.
That has been a game-changer in so many playgrounds around the world where these older kids get involved. It's hard to not be just so proud. We can be so proud of these 12-, 13-, 14-year-olds and above getting involved as social citizens in their school.
This type of work is critical because unless targeted children are coached and cared for by older kids, teachers, and particularly parents, the taught tools they can use to help them learn and to stand up for themselves won't be as effective as they could be. And while it's essential that schools develop processes to help prevent and deal with bullying and teasing, exclusion, marginalization, the fact that remains that teasing and exclusion happen outside the scope so often of a teacher's supervision. So often the teachers, no matter how switched on they are, can miss some of this stuff.
I know that. I'm very interested in this sort of theme. Obviously, I co-authored a whole book on it, but there were things I would miss.
We must teach children who are being marginalized to become more self-reliant in those situations. This is why there are these stories, actually, in this book. One parent wrote a review, I forget where it was, saying this is victim-shaming.
And man, that really affected me. I thought, gosh, how could this possibly be seen as victim-shaming, to actually give our children the tools they need to stand within their own strength? It doesn't mean the school's off the hook or the team, if it's happening in a sports team, are off the hook. But yeah, it's giving our children the strength they need.
So we'll end there with today's reading. I'll pick it up next week in how to speak with your children about being reactive. Actually, really practically, how to zoom in on that.
And then, as I said, we'll begin with a story that will illuminate this quite a bit more. I sure hope that's been helpful. Hope you can tune in in the coming weeks, because this will be sort of gathering momentum as we go.
And don't forget, the registrations are now open. If this theme interests you as an educator, a care professional, for any sort, then do join us for these care professional trainings specifically on this theme. And if you're watching this video, listening to this audio after that date of November 1st and 2nd, don't worry about it, because there's an interest list.
So next time we do this, if you put your name on that interest list, we'll let you know as soon as this care professional training comes up. It's about three hours on a Saturday, three hours on a Sunday, and I personally lead that training. Okay, I hope that's been helpful.
Bye-bye for now.
