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Welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John Payne. So glad you could make it for another week. Hope it's been an okay week for you with the kids.
Always just so much in a week, isn't it, with our families. This week I wanted to give a quick overview of the Soul of Discipline principle and how that relates particularly to children in that first sort of seven, eight, nine years. Before we do that, quick announcement.
This will be the last announcement of the Simplicity Parenting Discipline and Guidance Care Professionals Training. You may have caught the previous announcements about that coming right on up in April, no, May, goodness, May 2nd and 3rd. Three hours on Saturday, three hours on Sunday, led by myself and Nora Heldargo, our wonderful Training Director on this theme of discipline and guidance, which is a perfect bridge into today's theme of boundaries and discipline and guidance.
Some of you might be aware that we have this main overarching principle of the right kind of boundary for the right kind of age and the right kind of need. Okay, now just to give the quickest little overview, because you can find this in this catalogue and in the book The Soul of Discipline, but basically put that we go through, we're the governor of the family state when children are little, value-based, establishing values, establishing how we do things and we're the governor of that family state. Then as kids get to about nine, ten, eleven, around that age, some a little earlier, some a little later, but then there's the gardener.
The gardener phase of our parental gesture is that of listening in, coaching the children, coaxing, coaching, weeding, pruning, watering, good behavior, pruning, how difficult, and then making a decision, right? So listening, coaching, deciding. So a child at that age really wants to be heard. They want their voice to be heard, but they still need us to make that final adjudication.
They need to understand that. And then around 14, 15, then the final metaphor is that of the guide. Teenagers can be spectacularly disinterested in our opinions, but they are interested in their direction, in their likes, their dislikes, what they want to do, how they want their weekend to be, how they want their life to be, you know, and everything in between.
And in that role, I think we're really guiding them. So the key question and the key dynamic is, you know, don't get distracted from your direction. Okay, so there we have it.
Governor, gardener, guide. All right. Now, when we're in that early phase of the governor, or when we need to take older kids, you know, 13, 14, 15, back to that governor phase, because they're really bombing out, you know, when we're trying to guide them or trying to be their gardener, and they just need to default right back to having us, you know, set the family values up again, because it's not going well.
They're blowing us off. Okay. So here is a tip, and it's an important one for the age we live in, is that there can often be a gray area or a misunderstanding between a governor and an advisor.
An advisor will advise the governor, right? So the advisor is not making any decisions. The advisor is there trying to steer the governor towards a solid decision. Okay.
But that's not the governor. Where we are the governor for little kids, because unless we're the governor, then it means that kids start to feel a little unsafe. They start to not know who's in that leadership position, who's setting the family norms, the family values, the family rhythms.
They're not quite sure. And an advisor advising kids on rhythms, on values, on family norms, that offers the children, you know, the option of listening to the advice from the advisor, or not listening. No, no, thank you.
A lot of that comes when we give too many choices, or when we couch our instructions, because we want to be respectful, and we couch them as a request. You know, shall we all get into the car? Who would like to put on their coat now? Now, I know we do that, because we want to be polite and respectful, but a child, shall we all get into the car? No, no thanks. I don't know if they genuinely think sometimes they're being offered an option, or if they're just being little rotters.
Not sure. But it's not a good thing to say to a child, who would like to put their coats on? Right? Now it's time to put our coats on. Off we go into the car now.
You know, that is the governor. The advisor is who would like to put their rain boots on, or should we put our rain boots on today? I wonder, do you think it might rain? That is setting the little child up as the governor, and taking your advice. Now a child will, on one hand, be okay with doing that.
Like, oh okay, I'm the boss. All right, I get to put my rain boots on, or not. I get to choose.
Outwardly, things go a little easier when we do that initially, but you do that habitually. If there is a misunderstanding between being an advisor and a governor, therefore by default, you set the child up to be the boss, that is not going to end well. It doesn't end well in terms of boundaries, but it actually doesn't help the child at all in terms of them feeling safe within the fold.
Note the word fold. They're folded in to the fold of the family. They're brought in to that warm fold, that safe fold.
They're folded in. So when we're contemplating, gosh, am I really a governor or am I an advisor? Do I drift into advising? Because then the children will drift in to being a governor, and there's a drift that occurs. If that's happening, or you just want to check out, maybe that's happening, maybe it's not.
Over this coming week, just have a little listen to yourself. Just sort of occupy that place up on the balcony where you're watching yourself as a parent, and just check it out. Are you giving too many choices, too many open-ended choices? Not closed-ended.
The you may choices are different. You may choose between toast and cereal for breakfast. That's governor.
What would you like for breakfast? That's the advisor. And your day just got off to an awfully difficult start if those words escape you of what would you like for breakfast. That's the advisor.
In fact, I would say that's the butler, actually. We can go even further along the spectrum from the governor to the advisor, yeah, to the butler, where we feel like we're there serving the children. So check it out.
See what you think. See if you drift into advisor or butler sometimes, and see what you can do to haul it back to being that governor. And there's lots of advice in these podcasts about getting back in that alpha role, in that authoritative governor role.
Okay, I really hope that is helpful. Don't forget the discipline and guidance, care professional training coming right up. And look, if you're watching this video after that has, you know, after the May 2nd, 3rd date has passed, don't worry about it.
Just go to the website, click on it, the interest list, and we'll let you know when it comes up another time. Okay, bye bye for now.
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