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

by Kim John Payne

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. As you simplify life the laws of the universe will be simpler. —HENRY DAVID THOREAU

We want our family to be a container of security and peace, where we can be our true selves.

developmental psychologist David Elkind notes that children have lost more than twelve hours of free time a week in the past two decades.

As parents we must not become “harmony addicted.” It’s tempting to hope that every day might be a sort of “rainbow experience” for our children.

Most children, no matter what their age, can reset their emotional clock given two or three quiet days. One restful, simplified weekend is usually enough to make the difference, to break a soul fever. It affords enough space and grace to loosen an emotional knot.

“You don’t have to tell me what’s up, but I can tell something’s going on, something’s bothering you. In this family, we pull back, take some quiet time. Let’s figure out how we can do that for you.”

Choose the ones who love your child to bits and tell them: “Look, this is your job as [fill in the familial relation]. Remind me of everything that is wonderful about Henry.

Steve Biddulph (author of Raising Boys) doesn’t equivocate. He says, “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.

The average ten-year-old has memorized three hundred to four hundred brands, and research has shown that by the age of two, kids can recognize a specific brand on the store shelves and let you know—with words or the ever-effective point-and-scream—that they want it.5

If your child has many versions, or copies, of the same toy, consider reducing the number to a more manageable and lovable little group. This is especially important if the original toy (not the “clones”) is one your child has imbued with special affection and loyalty. Our best intentions to increase the circle of love surrounding our child can have the opposite effect. By overwhelming a true connection with too many superfluous ones, we can send a message that relationships are disposable.

Rattles, nesting cubes, cloth dolls for babies, silks and scarves, heavy woolen blankets and cloaks, the pliancy of beeswax and clay as they warm to touch, a basket of smooth pebbles that change color when wet, solid wooden blocks and shapes, gnarled roots and sticks, beanbags.

Even toddlers can have their own “real” kitchen tools, such as a workboard or mat, apron, wooden spoons, vegetable brushes, rolling pin, pots and pans, whisks and spatulas, with cloths for polishing apples and tidying up. Garden tools also should be real: a wheelbarrow or garden cart, garden gloves, with a small, but real shovel, rake, and trowels.

Dress-up clothes, hats, and accessories are wonderful play tools

for all of this “primal” exploration are buckets, nets, shovels and kites, scoops, bubbles, baskets, and containers for pouring and collecting.

Honor your child’s efforts with real tools for their work, their own apron hung where they can get to it whenever the need or desire strikes. A pocket organizer hung on the back of a door might include space for a child’s small broom and dustpan, a dust cloth, and other “tidying up,”

These and other toys inspire active play: bikes and balls, skates, swings and scooters, climbing ropes and jump ropes; play structures or gates to climb over, tunnels to climb through, balance beams, Hula Hoops and basketball hoops, blocks, trucks, and construction toys, sleds, snowshoes, marble runs, hopscotch, and foursquare.

There should always be a place in a simplified children’s room for a big pad or roll of paper; sturdy crayons (thick for toddlers) and pencils; paints; some kind of modeling medium, such as beeswax, clay, or Play-Doh; fabric; scissors; glue; and some dedicated space for art.

For children before the ages of eight or nine, you might have one or two current books accessible at any given time. A dozen or fewer beloved books may find a permanent place in the room, perhaps on a bookshelf.

Then she gave her a choice. They could either read it together, now, and be able to talk about it as they read, or Ashley could wait another year to read it herself. With a great harrumph, Ashley chose to wait.

Winters in the Northeast are long and dark. My eldest daughter, who gets up earliest for school, loves coming down in the morning as there is a candle lit just for her to eat her breakfast by.

So, while your child may not know the pattern of your days by their consistency and repetition (rhythm), you can provide markers and previews of their day, thereby letting them know what to expect (predictability). A single mom I knew used to do this previewing with her little daughter in the sandbox. Her sandbox was actually inside—a sand table more than anything—and she used to sit there with her four-year-old and talk about what the next day would be like. As she spoke, she would move a little car around in the sandbox, stopping at the wooden “school” or “grocery store.”

In general, for greater predictability, you want to try to reduce the ways that your children are caught by surprise. I often see toddlers being scooped up from behind by their mom or dad. Granted, if you are in a busy parking lot or a dangerous situation, you need to use any means you can to protect your child. But otherwise, I think of this approach as a mini-shock, a surprise that, when done habitually, says “my world rules” instead of “we’re doing this together.”

If your children are older, approaching or in adolescence, family meetings can do what previewing does for younger kids. Sometimes tied to Sunday supper, the meetings take place with everyone hanging out for fifteen or twenty minutes beyond the cleanup of the meal. The previous week is reviewed: What worked? What didn’t work? What were those things we meant to tell one another, before we forgot? The following week is then discussed, with everyone’s plans, and the necessary logistics, rolled out on the table.

To make any activity more rhythmic, it’s helpful to connect the process with a bit of melody, especially for kids five or under. The steps along the way can be sung—no arias needed, just a singsongy delivery. Washing hands before dinner? That’s it! “A little soap, a little water, rub and scrub until the bubbles come!” Hand washing is then tied (in time) to the meal, it is tied (in feeling) to the physical sensations involved, and it is tied (aurally) to a little melody, heard and also sung.

We make “scarecrows” of our daughters’ outfits for the day by completely “dressing” a hanger, topped with a hat in the winter.

Every night, as a family gathers for dinner, they do “favorite things.” One by one, they mention something special from the day … something they did or saw, something that stood out.

you find yourself looking, wondering: What will be today’s “favorite thing”? What beauty can I notice in my child’s actions today?

When children make the food, they’re less likely to throw it, or refuse it.

Studies have shown that the more often families eat together, the more likely it is that kids will do well in school, eat fruits and vegetables, and build their vocabularies, and the less likely they will smoke, drink, do drugs, suffer from depression, struggle with asthma, or develop eating disorders.

What can kids do with powerful emotions, when they so often feel powerless? Well, there are three areas where kids can exert control and win: eating, pooping, and sleeping.

There are seventeen thousand “new food products” introduced to shoppers in this country every year.

recalibrated by the hyperactivity-inducing effects of food additives, sugar, and caffeine. Such foods are the enemies of rhythm. You can’t flow through speed-crash-and-burn.

7UP has more than tripled its amount of sugar in the past twenty years; the average can of commercial soda contains the equivalent of ten teaspoons of sugar.

If you want your child to try a new food (or food group), you need to have them try it at least eight times.

start with a very small quantity (let’s use broccoli as an example) and offer it with butter and salt.

Family dinners get much simpler when they’re predictable: Monday pasta night, Tuesday rice night, Wednesday soup,

dollars extra every week on food so that the boys’ friends could come over often and have meals.

CASA found that a majority of teenagers who ate three or fewer meals a week with their families wished they did so more often.5

Without sleep we’re reactive, unable to approach new things or changing circumstances with strength and resilience.

Einstein once said, “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”

Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop. —OVID

It was in the early 1980s when David Elkind’s now-classic The Hurried Child first questioned whether kids were being pushed toward adulthood or “super-competency” because parents lacked the interest or time for child rearing.

“accomplishments.” In 2001, Alvin Rosenfeld and Naomi Wise’s The Over-Scheduled Child: Avoiding the Hyper-Parenting Trap looked at “parenting as a competitive sport” and how it has led, among other things, to a loss of leisure time for parents and children.

Sigmund Freud thought of frustration as the precursor to learning.

With apologies to Freud, I would like to shift that slightly to say that boredom is often the precursor to creativity.

organized sports for children are getting more complicated, competitive, and demanding. This is what’s known as the “professionalization” of children’s sports, and with it often comes premature specialization.

The New York Times reported that in interviews with more than two dozen sports medicine doctors and researchers, the factor that was repeatedly mentioned as the primary cause for the sharp rise in overuse injuries among young athletes was “specialization in one sport at an early age and the year-round, almost manic, training for it that often follows.”9

Data indicates that sports participation peaks at age eleven and is followed by steady decline through the remainder of the teen years.

The Josephson Institute of Ethics found in its Sportsmanship Survey that 72 percent of both boys and girls say they would rather play on a team with a losing record than sit on the bench for a winning team.