Simplicity Parenting

Friday night, I attended a lecture with my friends Liz and Beth titled "Simplicity Parenting." The lecturer was Kim John Payne, an Aussie psychologist who has researched the effects of technology and pressure on child development. Here is the workshop description:

"As the pace of life accelerates to hyperspeed—with too much stuff, too many choices, and too little time—children feel the pressure. In this lecture Payne will share ideas for helping you reclaim for your children the space and freedom they need to allow their attention to focus and their individuality to flourish."

Dr. Payne gave a 2-hour lecture on the need for parents to be the “climate controls” for our households, to simplify our lives and those of our family in order to hone in on the truly important qualities that promote love, health, safety and trust in our children.

Here are Payne's 5 Steps to begin Simplicity Parenting, and my interpretation of each:

Step One: Simplify your environment
This means going to your child's room with a trash bag and removing 50% (!!!) of the toys and books, to be put away and rotated back on through in a month or so. The idea is that by simplifying his toy options, he will delve deeper into these book and toys and won't be "bored" with his stuff because you're always rotating in new things.
Step Two: Simplify food and mealtimes
The discussion here was focused mostly on routines and schedules around meals...The expectation that the whole family will sit down together for the whole mealtime "X" number of days per week.
Step Three: Simplify your family's schedule
Over-scheduling kids with activities takes away from the "creative play" time needed to develop all parts of the brain. It's good to be bored. Creativity and meaningful play arise from boredom. Don't jump through hoops to always make sure your child is always entertained...
Step Four: Simplify the amount of information and involvement about the adult world
Children don't need to know everything about everything! Children do not need to be a part of every adult conversation,sometimes there are things they are better off not knowing. Dr. Payne's 3 rules here were, "Don't say it in front of your kids unless it is:"
1. True
2. Kind
3. Necessary
Step Five: Step away from the screen
Including school, the average child aged 8-18 spends at least 9 (NINE!!!) hours per day, 7 days per week in front of some type of media screen (TV, computer, GameBoy, cell phone, etc). This is considerably more time than most adults spend at work. For children, this is precious time lost from creative play, reading, writing, etc.
That just speaks for itself!

This was an interesting lecture and certainly provided me some food for thought...