Welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John Payne. Oh boy, so glad you could carve out a little bit of time if you're working at home, driving in the car, whatever you're doing. I'm so glad you could join us.
So today we're going to be talking about a theme around rhythm, one of my favorite themes about kindling competency in children and what that's got to do with rhythm. But look, a quick little announcement before then. Coming right up in February 7th and 8th, we have our six-hour training on, for care professionals, a Simplicity Parenting care professionals training on what we call family life.
And that's based on the Simplicity Parenting book. And I personally lead that training three hours on Saturday, three hours on Sunday, on February 7th and 8th. And if you're a care professional, if you're a counselor, someone in the medical profession, an educator, early childhood provider, then this course, if you're helping parents simplify their life and balance their life, this is a wonderful program.
It's a simple little training. Well, it'd be ironic if it was complicated. To better help you help the parents that you support.
Okay, that's the training. So back to this theme of kindling competency. Now what I mean by this and its relationship to rhythm is it's really got to do with micro rhythms.
You'll see other episodes earlier in these podcasts that talk about micro rhythm. Micro rhythms, I'll just nutshell it because you can look back and find it, but micro rhythms have got to do with the little rituals, the little way we do things. The macro rhythms are the big clock rhythms like when, but the micro rhythms are the little how.
How we have our lunchtime and how we set out the dinner table or how we have our breakfast, how we have our bath time. And those little hows like for setting out of dinner that we together with a child, you know, we set the table and we do it in this way. And I, yep, for a little one, you know, I'd be, yes, I hold the tray and you put, that's right, you put the knife and the fork there, the spoon there.
That's exactly right. Well done. Now for the cups.
Let's do the cups. Now let's, and then, you know, and then the meal happens and then the clear away happens and there's all these little things. That's right.
We all take our bowls and we put them right there. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
We climb up on the little stool and we put them just in the right place, don't we? That's right. And so on and so on and so on. It applies to bath time, it applies to anything that you're doing.
It's a micro rhythm, right? Now for older kids, you'd voice it differently, of course, but it's still exactly the same. Just a different voice, otherwise kind of condescending. But the fact is they're doing the same thing in the same way over and over and over.
Now quite apart from this being very securing to children, because it builds, it builds a feeling of safety, it builds a feeling of predictability, but what it also does is it builds grapho, fine and gross motor skills. If you do something the same way with your, if you're a little child, let's say with your fingers and you and you're doing this little fine motor skill thing of putting out the, you're setting out the table, the silverware on the table, and you're doing that and then you're putting the cup, now your hand is wider, and you're putting out the cup on the table, and then you're clearing away, well then you're reaching over the table, you're bringing it towards you, you're grasping it, and when you watch children do this, and they then put their little hand below the bowl and they carry the bowl, put it on the tray or take it to the counter or whatever it is, and they do it in the same way every day, this is directly building neural pathways. It's establishing the motor skills, the big ones, the little ones, and the teeny tiny ones, and it builds this feeling of competency.
So on one hand it builds motor skills, absolutely, but on the other hand it builds a feeling of I can do this. It helps of course build a connection with an adult because you are helping them get used to doing it, but look honestly, after a while they go into autopilot and they just do it, and they do it all by their big selves, and it's astonishing what children can do if they get to do it over and over and over, and they know the drill, and they know just how to do it, and that feeling of satisfaction is a real point of not just safety but success, and they have that feeling of agency in their world, and there's not many things a child has complete agency over because they're little, right? Even if they're slightly older, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, they're still in that world where they're not fully in charge of everything they do, and you know rightly so of course, but through doing rhythmical home care, I prefer to call it home care as opposed to chores, rhythmical home care and micro-rhythmical home care, the children develop this sense of agency, of competency, and of developing the tiny motor skills, the smaller finer motor skills, and the big motor skills, which also lead them to a sense of developing where I am in space, it's called proprioception, because I'm reaching over, I'm pulling back, I'm taking this, I'm walking to the table, I'm making sure I don't spill, that as I bring to the table, all that stuff is developing a spatial, actually, where am I in space, a spatial intelligence as well. So for all those reasons, kindling this competency via rhythm is something that's beautiful to do for children of all ages.
Okay, so that's our episode that we're switching to this once a month episode on the platform you're listening to now, but I just wanted to give you a heads up over at the Simple Family Living site, which is just going so beautifully, so many people are now on this Simplicity Family Living home site, and so over on that site, the up-and-coming podcast, the next three, one will be looking at nutritious play, looking at play that is not empty calories, how can we have play be deeply nutritious to a child's emotions, that's one episode that you'll find over there. Another one is looking back, looking back and looking forward, and this, I think of it as the gift of anticipation, so you're looking forward to something, then you do it with the children, and then you look back and remember it, and we'll be digging into that a little bit more. And then an interesting theme, I think of as the sort of the slightly unexpected pathway to authenticity, it's some people call fake it till you make it, I don't know that it's really faking it, but it is a pathway to authenticity, and we'll be drilling down into why that is, why that is the case for parents, why if we do something, even though we don't feel particularly secure in it, the doing of it repetitiously will actually lead to authenticity.
Okay, so that's the other three episodes that you'll find over at the Simple Family Living site. Okay, that's it for this week. Bye-bye for now.
