(Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)
Welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John Payne. You did it, here we are again, you made the space for this brief little podcast. They're mercifully brief, aren't they? And over at the Simple Family Living site this month, the three other episodes are, there is one about how to work with kids' disruptive behavior when they get goofy, when they clown around, which is often a sign they're not coping.
And so how to kindle their competencies in order to deal with that clowning and goofy and disruptive behavior. We'll also be talking about how to have a loving, kind, but very firm no. And we walk around this, how to give children boundaries, how to have the word no appear as a part of your toolkit, but have you be grounded.
And there's some very specific strategies about being grounded in the no, so that it's quiet, but it's firm, and avoid that sort of frustrated shouting kind of no, that often comes up. And then finally, we will be looking at how to have playdates, if you're a low or no screen home for children, how to have playdates with kids who are heavily screen affected, who are adrenaline, cortisol, but really dopamine affected. And rather than exclude those kids from your children's lives, how to have brief but specific strategies around how to make playdates like that have a greater chance of working out.
Okay, so that's over at the Simple Family Living site. There's a link right below in the show notes. And you can go right over there and have a free trial of that site, take it for a test drive.
And I also hear these three other episodes. This week, we're going to be exploring the space between a child and a parent. It's an elusive subject, you know, the space between, but this space between is alive, you know, between a child and a parent, it's constantly we're in flow with a child, there's a current moving between us throughout the day, you know, and those currents can get very easy and flowing and, and just calm.
And they can they can also get turbulent, can't they? But there is a there is a space, it's not just our emotion within us, and the emotion within a child or the feelings within us. Our feelings radiate, you know, our emotions radiate, our sense of who we are, in that moment, radiates out. And I think it's important to remember that space is alive, and it's not a void to be filled with words.
If we can get this sort of larger concept down and trust in it, just trust in the love, the care that flows between us, you know, you can, sense when someone cares for you, when someone loves you, you and there is that there is that flow between you. And we often talk about that, don't we that we're in flow that we're in sync, and there's, there's, there's all kinds of words to describe it. But the tendency to fill a space with words, to fill a space with actions, with busyness, with doing a lot of that melts away, when we know that that space is alive.
And we can just trust it, you know, we can just trust that, that even if we aren't talking to a child, and even if we aren't doing things and busily setting up and craft projects and getting them here and getting them there, if we can just trust that when we're, we're present with our child, when we're just hanging out, you know, with our child, that there is a silent flow going on between us. I mean, you know, the more, I guess, scientifically, we know that the children are watching us, and watching us very carefully, particularly little ones, younger ones. And inwardly, they're already moving, those mirror neurons in the brain are already washing the dishes, even though they're not moving a muscle.
Now we, you know, and then, as I've mentioned before, you know, we hear that dreaded scrape across the floor, and here they come to help us wash the dishes, to help, you know, us fold the clothes, and we think, oh, boy, this is gonna take a while. But, you know, that they, there is something going on inwardly in a child. Now, also, there are mirror neuron clusters around the emotional centers of the brain.
And it's interesting how that works, isn't it? Because you could say, well, a child feels what we feel, right? And we know that, you know, sometimes, if we're feeling sad, or happy, or, you know, it does, we know that that is being picked up by our kids. But that's, that's being communicated. And how? And it's via the space between us.
That is the conduit for that communication. It doesn't just happen by accident. There is something being, being communicated through the space between us.
And, and if we can relax into that, and relax into that wordless flow, then a lot of life starts to, to simplify. A lot of what we feel in terms of busy work can, can be set aside, because we just don't need to go there. And slowly, slowly, our children start to also trust that space.
You know, they, they, they trust the little examples are they trusted in the car, you know, we're traveling somewhere. And if we can resist giving our kids iPads and phones, and just let them be, it's a, it's almost like a prototype of one of those few spaces of just being. And I think we've got to recover that, that those car ride spaces to just being spaces.
But then you can build out from there. So that, you know, if there's a Saturday morning, where nothing much is going on, and initially, as you're learning to trust this space, a child say, I'm bored, nothing to do, this is boring, or whatever, then it's okay. You know, it's, it's okay that you're bored.
It's fine. It's, it's hard, but it's fine. And just your sense of wordless care, of, of love for a child in those moments, will be, will be communicating.
And the more we can trust this, the more our children will learn to decompress, they'll learn to relax, will learn to not fill the space with busyness and words. And it's in any way you look at it, it's, it's just healthy, it's healthy. For a child's nervous system, it's healthy for our nervous system.
But most of all, it's healthy for our connection. That, that ability to just be together is some of the most precious and beautiful moments. Only modern society has, has started giving us this, this unspoken message that, that this is not okay, we should be talking, we should be doing.
And if we can just trust that space is alive, then a lot can start to shift in a home. I hope that is helpful. Don't forget, if you'd like to speak to me or one of our team about the issues that are coming up for you, the support needs you might have, just go right to the show notes or to Simplicity Parenting and you'll, you'll see Request a Consult and love to hear from you.
Okay, bye-bye for now.
(Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)
