Simplicity Parenting: Using the Extraordinary Power of Less to Raise Calmer, Happier, and More Secure Kids

by Kim John Payne

“If either parent spends more than ten hours a day at work, including travel, then their child will suffer. Fifteen hours a day almost guarantees damage. Emotional problems, addictions, suicidality, depression, poor school performance—all are increased by parental absence through the workplace demands made on us. Children are especially vulnerable to the absence of the same-sex parent as themselves. Boys to dads, and girls to mums, although the opposite-sex parent is obviously also important.

There are no great stunts, really. With care, and a bit of luck, there needn’t be. The cape around your shoulders—the heroism of parenting—is well earned and deserved. But the cape is not for flying, or special effects. It is a symbol of heroic consistency. Heroic. Consistent. Simple. Lifelong. Love.

Think of boredom as a “gift.”

All right, the “gift” of boredom is hardly a gift for you, if your child continues their “I’m bored!” laments. My suggestion is to flatline it. Out-bore their boredom with a single, flat response: “Something to do is right around the corner.” “But Daddy, I’m bored!” Here you become a broken record. You become the most boring thing in the universe.

Imagine a kid whose very busy schedule looks like a “cropped field,” with rows of activities, classes, and sports, places to go, and things to do. I worry that such a daily life can sow unexpected seeds. It can establish patterns of behavior and expectation that become ingrained, difficult to alter. So much activity can create a reliance on outer stimulation, a culture of compulsion and instant gratification. What also grows in such a culture? Addictive behaviors. You can see the shadow of overscheduling in this definition of addiction given by my colleague Felicitas Vogt: “an increasing and compulsive tendency to avoid pain or boredom and replace inner development with outer stimulation.”

I have seen it. I’ve seen how loading up a child’s days with activities and events from morning to night can dig a developmental groove in their beings. It can establish a reliance, a favoring of external stimulation over emotional or inner activity. A child with a room full of toys has been set up to be dissatisfied. They’ve been programmed to imagine that pleasure depends on toys, and that the next one might be better than the rest. Likewise, a child who doesn’t experience leisure—or better yet, boredom—will always be looking for external stimulation, activity, or entertainment.

Aren’t a good many of your days quite ordinary? It seems sacrilegious to admit it, especially when we’re forever encouraged, and encouraging others to “Have a great day!” Yet I’ve found that embracing the beauty of an ordinary day is very helpful in simplifying our children’s schedules.

If we hold on to the exceptional—if our children adopt that as their measure of success—most will fail, and almost all of them will feel like failures. There’s freedom in embracing the ordinary: freedom, and possibilities. Because in most things, the exceptional is not really what we want for them anyway. What we want for our children, truly, is engagement. We want their love of the cello to grow, to evolve and endure throughout their lives, whether or not they perform…whether or not they are ever exceptional cellists.

The “messiness” of free play, with its many changes and possibilities, builds an inner flexibility.

A child’s love of an activity is not enough to protect him or her from the effects of pursuing it too much, and too soon.

Balance is what we’re after in simplifying our family’s schedules. And once we cross our kids’ names off the “Race of Childhood” sign-up form, time opens right up. Time for rest and creativity to balance activity; time for contemplation and stimulation, moments of calm in busy days, energies conserved and expended; time for free, unscheduled play, for ordinary days, for interests that deepen over time; time for boredom; and time for the joy and infinite passion of anticipation.

The more you say, the less you are listening.

It’s a misnomer to think that we’re “sharing” with our children when we include them in adult conversations about adult concerns. Sharing suggests an equal and mutual exchange, one that’s impossible for a child to offer and unfair for an adult to expect.

Children need to know that they have a place in a good world, full of promise.

Before you say something, ask yourself these three questions: Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary? And I would add: Will it help the child feel secure?

A partnership that is balanced in terms of parenting yields benefits for all: a strengthened partnership and much less hovering.

But the work of childcare can expand to fill most every crevice. And for one person to really get a break, to really let go of a task mentally and physically, the other must do it consistently, with no need for requests or reminders.

Don’t talk too much to children aged nine or younger about their feelings.

When your children are young, let the world of doing be their domain. There was no real help for Sophia’s dilemma except to let the lion leave the fraidy-cat behind on the driveway. That bike had to be ridden; words wouldn’t have helped. Often when young children feel emotional about something—when they’re angry or hurt or sad—they need to put it right by doing. They need to have a hug or give one, to dig a hole or find the dog, they need to draw a picture with a lot of green in it, or make something. They need to work it out by doing. If they need to talk, it helps to know that you’ll listen. They might need to throw something (hopefully not at their sister), to throw it again and perhaps again, until they’ve made a game where one bounce is a win but two means you’ve fallen into molten lava. They need to engage in the world, to put the feeling right in some physical way. And with that, sometimes they may need a bit of help.

My final suggestion for backing off from overinvolvement is a simple one. I’ve seen it make a profound difference, however, in some parents’ attitudes, and the emotional climate of their parenting. It is a meditation, a mental exercise for the end of the day that will take just a minute or two. Before falling into sleep, remember the ordinary moments of the day, the moments with your children that meant something to you. This simple exercise is like a spiritual corrective lens. In your vision of your children, it helps restore the prominence of “who they are” over “what they need to do” or “what they need to work on.” Review the images; revisit the funny yet strangely insightful thing your daughter said, the gesture your son made that surprised you. Think about how your little one climbed up on the bench by the window at three o’clock, somehow sensing that her sister’s bus would arrive soon. Remember how your twins looked at the park; the newly minted freckles on their cheeks; their pride in mastering the jungle gym rings. Remember the way your daughter looked minutes ago when you checked on her: horizontal on the bed with her arm flung back over her head, as though she’d tried to outrun sleep. Relive those moments, and give them their due. Let the images rise to the surface of your day. Let them fill the emotional waters that will lull you, in waves of appreciation and wonder, into sleep.

The cost of the ticket—and it was ridiculously expensive—was worth it if only to discover a new term: “purchasing friction.” As hard as it may be to believe, that is how the people who market stuff to our children see us, their parents. We are what stand between these companies and their increased sales, and their collective goal is to remove us from the purchasing equation.

We are the safe harbor from which our children launch out into the world and return to safety, repair, and resupply, ready to launch again.

It is at the intersection when a child’s wishes meet our adult direction and guidance that the all-important formation of a child’s character takes place.

It is values that need to be at the center of our family, not children.

To be able to recognize the needs of others, and that there are good things to learn from good people, are at the core of empathy. Empathy has so much to do with future effectiveness, success, and happiness.

As choices are reduced, pressure is lifted. A child has the time and freedom to have their own thoughts. They can find the ease to slowly forge an identity, an identity that is more than the sum of their choices, preferences, or purchases. More than a “brand identity.”

Several things happen when you have too much stuff and too many options: Decisions are more difficult, and expectations rise. If I have all of this, what else might I have? Or, more commonly, “What’s next?” Unwittingly we are passing on this surfeit of choices—and its consequences—to our children. What’s next?

After all, they do the same for you all of the time. What better reminder do we have than our kids of our own best selves, our less stressed and more carefree selves? In their silliness we see the echo of the way we used to be: when we were kids, yes, but also before we had kids, or even two weeks ago, before all of the stress of those year-end corporate meetings. Their joy, their infectious enthusiasm, their sense of “mission” as the poor dog is dressed in boxer shorts, cannot help but cajole you, and beckon you, to lighten up. My point is this: Rescue their childhood from stress, and they will inevitably, remarkably, day by day, rescue you right back.