Welcome back to the Simplicity Parenting Podcast with me, Kim John Payne, glad as always that you could make time today to join us. So this week's podcast is going to be on what I call a news cleanse. But before we jump into that, the other podcasts over at the Simple Family Living site, you might remember we have one podcast now publicly available per month.
And then each week in the Simple Family Living site, you can find that at simplefamilyliving.org, there's three other podcasts. And this week, let me see, there is, yeah, there's one on how to deal with children's continual complaints, and how to work with annoyances, their annoyances. There's another one about emotional self regulation, and how to coach kids up to giving you the space you need when when you're frustrated.
And there's another one actually about previewing for kids who get anxious with previewing. Previewing is so important to have children know what is coming up, but for some kids, it makes them anxious. So those other three are over at Simple Family Living, do go on over, you know, and access them there.
Anyway, on with the show, as they say. News cleanse. All right, so a lot of the news right now, it goes without saying, is hard.
You know, there's so much polarization, so much conflict, it's, it's really outside where our circle of control, you know, the it's, it's certainly in our circle of concern. But it's not within our circle of control. And the more we act, expose ourselves to things that were that are very concerning, even upsetting, that are not within our control that we can do anything about, the more that's going to lead to anxiety.
And the more that takes us away from our children and from being able to be present. You know, the news is also set up now, so that it is, this is some time ago when a lot of news went into cable network TV. But now it's even more so with autoplay, you know, in various social networking sites, you know, YouTube and as well, you know, you've got this, you've got this sort of doom scrolling, it's become known as, hasn't it? Where, where there's these, it used to be, like, you'd watch the news once a day, way back in our maybe parents, grandparents day.
And then it became half hour hourly, and then half hourly news cycles. And now with autoplay, down the side of our screens, it's just continual, continual. And every time we hear a news report, about exactly the same thing.
We heard it half an hour before, on the radio, maybe, but we hear it again. Every time we hear it, again, even though we've heard it, it actually has a brain trigger, it triggers the the amygdala, the fight flight freeze control brain, because it reminds us of the trauma, it reminds us of the stress. So that reminder that we get builds up this emotional trauma trigger.
And, and that memory builds up, that is then released, and released, and released. So it's not good. Because it takes us away from being present with our kids, it takes us away from being there with them, because, and, and children, no matter what their age, have that sort of that connection with us that they know, they can pick up when there's a baseline anxiety going on for us about the news about the catastrophes that are happening in the world.
And they pick that up, they absorb it almost through osmosis through an emotional osmosis. And they also feel a that our attention is elsewhere, or at least part of our attention is elsewhere. Quite a number of parents that I've been speaking with over the last year or two, have gone on this News Cleanse.
And here's, here's some of the things that seem to have been successful. Because the feedback from News Cleanse regime has been really excellent. The parents who have gone on it, like say, say to me, Kim, let everyone know about this.
I'm letting everyone know about this. Or as many people tune into this podcast. So the first thing is to appoint a catastrophic buddy.
So if something really catastrophic happens in the world, there's someone who will tell you about it. All right, so, so that you don't get this, this, this FOMO, this fear of missing out, there's something really bad is going to happen, you need to know about it, you need to know about it to protect your kids. So, so when you appoint a catastrophic buddy, they'll tell you about it.
So you don't, you can let go of that, that protective instinct, which leak keeps leading us back to the media. It's very understandable. But if you've got someone there who let you know of something that you really need to know, and you trust them, then that takes care of that.
Other parents have said they they have gone away from visual news to auditory. And others have engaged in a once a day. So in the morning, generally the morning, they will listen to a news report.
And some stations now I know NPR do this, they do like a five minute summary of the day's news. And so you take in what's happening, what has happened yesterday, what is happening in the world overnight, while we've been asleep, and you know, things might have crept up on us while we've been asleep, we we tune into that. And that's it.
No more, no more news throughout the entire day. If you've got a habit of, you know, you come in, you turn the radio on, you turn the TV on, you turn the computer on, and you get the news. If you've got a habit of doing that, other parents have said to me that they actually find two or three podcasts that are soothing, that they like to listen to, that give them a feeling of ease.
Because we're again back to kids absorbing through osmosis, our emotional state. So why not listen to the many podcasts now available? Why not listen to something that gives you relaxation, or joy, or interest, because our children will be absorbing that. The other thing is to to move in, at the same time you're withdrawing that from your life, is to move in closer to your children, and use that time that you would normally have with news to just maybe do a little I remember when story with your child, or just sit beside them on the sofa if they're a teenager, and just massage their feet.
There's very few teenagers who can who can resist that, and actually it's incredibly helpful by the way, because their feet are growing at such a rate you don't want to have prolapsed arches. Anyway that's a by the way thing, but you know just sit with them, be with them, play with them, tell them a little story, and make a point, make a conscious point of moving in closer with the kids. Some parents have said when they like they when you look at it, when they look at their day, there's certain times they check out the news.
So they substitute those times, so that they say okay at that time I'm going to tell a little I remember when biography story to my child, or if the tendency was to listen to the news at another time, okay I'm going to sit with my teenager and just hang out, massaging feet or not, but I'm just going to hang out. So you actually make a plan at the time when you would normally be with catastrophic news, to do something that is connecting to the children and not disconnecting. And other parents have said they go on a news cleanse for about a month, about 28 days to a month, about a cycle of the moon or whatever it is you know, but about a month they cleanse themselves of the news.
Interestingly enough of the many parents who have done this, very few go back to actually the same news consumption as they had. You now have kind of got things you know back in whack, can you be in whack or out of whack, anyway you've got things back, you've restored balance to your life. Other parents have said to me they want to listen to the news but they don't want to listen when they go back into the news to giving attention to people in the news, leaders and such, who are feeding off attention.
There are certain people who feed off our attention through being very provocative. Certain politicians do that, certain news presenters do that, and they say we're just going to avoid that. We've realized that we were feeding something that we didn't agree with, we didn't like, but it held our attention and we're not going to do that anymore.
So this is a news cleanse. These are a bunch of different ideas about how you can go about it, but one thing for sure, it really helps us draw closer and build a better connection with our children. Okay, good luck.
Bye-bye for now.
