Episode 81: Simple Changes to Reduce Anxiety, Depression, and ADHD in Kids & Teens with Kim John Payne, M.Ed

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Kim John Payne: 

Imagine a tap turned on and running into a cup. Now the tap turned on and the water running out is all the water is all the water of life. You know, I think it’s in the Bible, isn’t it the water of life, it’s all running into the vessel of a child. It’s all the playdates, it’s all the exams, they take the it’s the, it’s the sports clubs they’ve got to do, it’s all the stuff they’ve got to cope with. And that’s coming into what they’ve got to do in a day. Now, for many kids, that there’s a lot of spillage too much is coming into their cup, and that it’s spilling over the side, and that spillage. A lot of that is anxiety. A lot of that is depression. A lot of that is addiction, or the escape routes. A lot of that is defiant or pushback behavior. And I think essentially my work and you asked what my work was to use this metaphor. My work is to help us make a decision. Because do we do we want to spend our life mopping up spillage? Depression, anxiety, addiction defiance sessions? Do we want to spend our lives as parents mopping up or do we want to turn the tap down? And, and my work is largely in both those realms, but it used to be dealing with spillage, right as therapist, it used to be you know, one studies that and learns a lot about it. But it occurred to me why wait for the spillage? It’s obvious thought right? Let’s turn the tap down.

Silvia Hazel: 

Welcome back to the capital Integrative Health podcast. I am Silvia Hazel, a family nurse practitioner at CH and the host of our podcast today. In today’s episode, we are joined by Kim Jong Payne, a renowned family counselor, educator and author of the best-selling book simplicity parenting, using the extraordinary power of less to raise calmer, happier and more secure kids. We dive into the concept of simplicity parenting, which centers around reducing clutter distractions and unnecessary choices in a child’s life. To promote nervous system health and overall wellness. We explore practical ways to simplify our children’s lives including strategies for decluttering, simplifying schedules and creating a more peaceful home environment. Pain also emphasizes the importance of slowing down and being present with our children in order to build strong relationships and foster healthy emotional development. Whether you’re a parent, grandparent or caregiver, this episode offers valuable insights and actionable tips for simplifying your family’s life and creating a more joyful and fulfilling experience for everyone involved. So sit back, relax and enjoy this enlightening conversation with Kim John Payne on simplicity parenting.

Silvia Hazel: 

Welcome Kim, John Payne to the Capitol Integrative Health podcast. We are so excited to have you here today and to be able to discuss what we can do to best support the next generations. Before we dive into, you know, all the nitty gritty. Can you tell us a little bit about the work that you do today and kind of what led you to do that work?

Kim John Payne: 

Hi, Sylvia. Gosh, what a treat to speak to you. Yeah, yeah, my work. It started off actually working in group homes for kids who were really really struggling. Yeah, and I trained in psychology and Child and Adolescent psychology. I always add really quickly, and I’m okay now. Just about recovered. But yeah, that was my earlier work. I’ve also done a lot of work in trauma areas around the world, in war torn and refugee areas, and camps and such, and an educator and a writer, so that kind of spans span, sort of my work at it, like a lot of us these days, we’re doing different things, but there’s a thread that runs through it a little bit. And the thread that runs through it for me is you know, care for children and tweens and teens. Yeah.

Silvia Hazel: 

Yeah. I love that. Yeah, so you know, for for listeners who may not have heard about to you or the work that you’ve done in the past. Can you give us a little bit of understanding about potentially what your work is geared towards and focused on?

Kim John Payne: 

Well, my work, particularly it has been, I think, as a foundation, it’s interesting because where it ends up is sometimes not even recognizable, in terms of trauma, but my began, actually, it’s interesting. You mentioned Soviet because my work began working with kids who were traumatized back before that term was even known. And I was working with them in a group home. During the evenings, I worked from six o’clock to three or four o’clock in the morning, it was called the action shift. Because it was a lot would go on. But during the day I was going to college and training and so on. I did that for years. But I was attending lectures at the time. And it was in back in my birth country of Australia, and like in the United States, Australians have been through have been involved in all the global conflict, plagues. You folk in the US and US in Australia are being kind of shoulder to shoulder in that all through the years. And there was a lecturer being given to try and understand what was then called shell shock or trauma response. And so I went along to that. And the more that the professor, wonderful professor would talk about combat veterans who weren’t doing well, I was thinking of the kids in my group home, he was describing them. And so I asked him about it. And he said, well, it doesn’t comply with a lot of current research. We just don’t have data on that. Could you help me gather it? Right? So it was just an undergrad, but I thought, well, I’ll do what I can. But these kids in the group home were nervous and jumpy, hyper vigilant, particularly over controlling. And that’s exactly what he was describing. And so I started doing that. And then after my time, was over there, and I’d graduated, I volunteered and went to, I went to working in Jakarta, and in Southeast Asia, Indonesia, up into the Thai Cambodian refugee camps after the Vietnam War. And there again, I saw nervous and jumpy and hyper vigilant children, just the same sort of thing. And I could, you know, like any of us could get our minds around that because they were they were fleeing a war and terrible dislocation and yeah, so but they the same stuff again, hypervigilant, overcontrolling, very anxious, very nervous, a lot of night terrors, inability to sleep, and a lot of issues around weariness of new of new things, of new food of new people of new and new anything.

So, in your code, you’re almost called obsessional kind of looping type of behavior, and you could really understand it all that time, I was in contact with the professor back in Australia kept encouraging, keep gathering, keep watching, keep journaling, keep writing. And with his support. I then went to study what you know, what was then a very early field of trauma, childhood trauma, in and team. And so I did that in the UK, I went, I moved to the United Kingdom, because there really weren’t many courses on it anywhere. So I kind of put a course together myself a little bit in the postgrad stuff. But the point of this, the reason I mentioned the service, the third and last step, like one step was in the group home, then I saw the same sort of stuff in Cambodia, in Southeast Asia. But then I saw the same sort of stuff in the UK, through the door came kids, who were nervous and jumpy and hyper vigilant and over controlling and, and they, it looked for all the world like they were coming out of a war zone, maybe it wasn’t as absolutely as pronounced, but it was there. And so that sort of set me on a cause to try and understand what was going on. Because why should children in the West that had not been through a war? Or make the kids back in my group home? Who had been abused, or they were we did a lot of gang rescue, so it’d be involved in gay why wouldn’t ordinary kids from mixed socio economic backgrounds mixed ethnic racial backgrounds? Why did they look so similar? And that that’s really what set me on this course. All those years ago, because it’s 30 years ago now?

Silvia Hazel: 

Yeah. Wow. So kind of pulling together, you know, connecting the dots between, you know, different childhood traumas and how they’re affecting different sets of children across the world. What do you think? Is it or was it you know, that that those kids in the UK how, how was that showing up for them and what was the cause of that?

Kim John Payne: 

Yeah, because then later on when I moved to the US, it was the same deal. You know? It’s it’s a, it’s a really understandable question Soviet and one that I tried to not answer for a long time, because it was too disturbing. You know, I thought, I just, I’ve been in war zones, you know, saying I’ve got a hammer. So everything’s a nail, I thought I was kind of inventing it, you know, in your life, you, you’re involved in a lot of different environments. And you and you sort of transpose that and make some presumptions. But the more I tried to push it away, the more I wouldn’t be pushed away, and it kept rebounding right back. What I, what I noticed I did, I started doing a lot of home visits, because I couldn’t figure it out in the office, what was going on, I had a little bit of an inkling. And I checked it out.

And I started doing a lot of home visits a little bit like a social worker would do. But they were more informal, really. And I’d visit for hours sometimes in people’s homes and just and what the hunch that I had, which did pan out in that and then I started more academic studies in this was what these kids hadn’t been exposed to war. But they were living in an undeclared war on childhood, where there was just too much too soon, too sexy, too young. And they were being overwhelmed. Their nervous systems were being overwhelmed, they couldn’t recover. They were very controlling of siblings controlling of teachers, they would try and set the agenda for their parents, they would push back hard, or fall back hard, just become stubborn and refuse and be defiant. And I don’t mean, you know, like, clinically, I mean, it was just they were just hard to deal with. And it was much harder being them than it was to deal with them. And I started thinking that this was cumulative stress reaction. And it was like under the radar stress that built up day after day after day, because these kids were having to cope with the pace of life and expectations that very few of us ever had to cope with that it was, things are moving so fast. And there’s such a deluge of information, particularly through screens that were coming into and TVs and so on. And that’s gotten even more and more, of course, that their ability to assimilate all this information that’s coming towards them. And deal with all the high testing and exams, at school deal with all the overscheduling being expected at this just the expectations of kids has gotten so high. It’s like we’re trying to fit the first, like we’re trying to fit 18 years of development into the first eight years.

You know, and we’ve gotten way ahead of the ability of the brain to be able to assume and the nervous system to assimilate that we’ve gotten about 900 years to be specific about 900 years ahead, the brain will adapt if we kept off the expectation of kids today and didn’t raise it any higher. A friend of mine who’s an evolutionary neurologist said, Yeah, kids brains, we’ve gotten about 900 years ahead, that they will not adapt. They are not and what’s happening, the way the the sort of pitcher that you know, in terms of literature you get is that the sympathetic nervous system is overwhelming, the parasympathetic. And what I mean by that the sympathetic nervous system is what we all have, and it’s the child taking stuff in. It’s the busy day, it’s all the things that are going on. It’s all it’s, it’s all good. But there’s a lot of it these days, it’s taking in, it’s being stimulated, it’s reacting, taking in stimulated, stimulated, reacting, alright, and then that’s the high point.

And then imagine a wave, there’s, there’s a place where it comes down, that’s the parasympathetic, and that’s the calming, that’s the it’s almost like digesting to put it in, like emotional digesting, where we soothe and where we calm, and kids are given a chance to decompress. And then then comes the next day where they’re stimulating. It’s a little bit the way I think about it. As a pitcher I have often come back to it’s a metaphor. I hope it helps is that imagine a tap turned on and running into a cup. Now the tap turned on and the water running out is all the water is all the water of life. You know, I think it’s in the Bible, isn’t it? The water of life. It’s all running into the vessel of a child. It’s all the play dates. It’s all the exams, they take the it’s the it’s the sports clubs they’ve got to do. It’s all the stuff they’ve got to cope with. And that’s coming into what they’ve got to do in a day.

Now for many kids, that there’s a lot of spillage too much is coming into their cup, and that it’s spilling over the side. And that spillage. A lot of that is anxiety. A lot of that is depression. A lot of that is addiction, or escape routes. A lot of that is defiant or pushback behavior. And I think essentially my work and you asked what my worth was to use this metaphor. My work is to help us make a decision. Because do we? Do we want to spend our life mopping up spillage? Depression, anxiety, addiction, defiance, possessions? Do we want to spend our lives as parents mopping up? Or do we want to turn the tap down? And in my work is largely in both those realms, but it used to be dealing with spillage. Right? As therapist, it used to be I know, you know, one studies that and learns a lot about it. But it occurred to me why wait for the spillage? I mean, it’s obvious thought, right? Let’s turn the tap down. How can we turn the velocity and the volume of what kids are expected to do? Because it’s become and here’s the key thing is it’s become the new normal, or the new abnormal. It’s become ubiquitous, it’s so widespread now that if you look around your neighborhood, you see all the other kids doing it. All the other kids are wildly over committed. They’ve got all they’ve got all sorts of high stakes testing coming up. They’ve got college things on their mind they’ve got and then debt that they incur through college, and how do we navigate all that they’ve got often tensions within their own family, they’ve got a lot of school pressures coming at them as well. And all that is if there’s too much of it is spillage. And I think for the parents I work with, and I still have, you know, a family counseling practice to this to this day,

You know, I’m still very current is that is it’s worth pausing and just sitting and thinking, Where are the areas where I could turn down the tap, like what is essential in my child’s life in my kid’s life, what is essential, and what really is not essential, where, let’s say they’re playing a couple of different sports or one it just one example of it. But let’s say they’re on a, you know, a travel team and on a youth team and whatever, and they’re also being expected to do homework, they’re also being expected to do a bunch of other stuff within the family, you know, and, and keep up with their schoolwork and their grades and so on. And we might say to them, you know, what we need to let go of, is that second team? Is that even possible? Or could we even plan next year to do one sport per season? And what about we have summer off? Or what about we have winter? Of? What about? If it’s all getting too much? What about if we possibly can explore with the school to get you some tutoring not so much on a specific skill set area, although it might be that too. But just in terms of Executive Managing of all the schoolwork? Can we help you with actually just getting this? You know, back in order because it’s really gotten out of whack? And the pressures of it are too much. Where is it socially? You might explore that with a child where is it socially, that you feel you’re over committing?

Now this is a tough one for a 9, 10, 11 year old but for 13, 14, 15 year olds really tough because they want to be with their friends. A lot of the time. I think it’s worth just being really transparent. With a teenager I have two teenagers, right? It’s worth being really transparent. To say to them, I get it that the stuff that’s going on with your friends and you want to be engaged. But where do we actually just shut down the phones? Where do we shut down at night? The engagement on what I call antisocial and networking. Like what do we where do we quiet and that one down? Where do we quiet and even the in person friendships? Where do we quiet those down and being really upfront and saying that the brain the brain sciences, you need to have time downtimes in order to do some brain sweet stuff. Eat, sweeping, you need to detox you need to just be down, have enough quiet time.

Quiet time is not nothing. Quiet Time is cleansing. And so how can we cleanse in this way ready for the next day. So that so that, you know what you’re what you’re doing is more what you want to do and achieving what you want to achieve. And there’s some, there’s some tough conversations, but I think unless we have them, our kids are just maxing out.

Silvia Hazel: 

Yeah. So I think that that’s kind of like the perfect segue into simplicity parenting, which is, you know, one of one of those books that you’ve written. So how would you say that, you know, one would have this conversation with kids, you know, what does simplicity parenting looked like, you know, beyond just, you know, paring down outside activities, as are there other things involved in that as well.

Kim John Payne: 

Yeah, I mentioned a couple in passing, but just to emphasize them, but to go to go back one step. One of the things I think of it is out there in here, out there in the world, there’s a lot of stuff we can’t control as parents a ton of stuff we can’t control. And one of them is that the world is pretty choppy at the moment, pretty disorganized. It just feels it feels there’s a lot of pressure going on. So one of the things that a lot of parents and I’m not just saying this just from me, because, you know, we’ve trained about 1200 Simplicity parenting coaches around the world, it’s a lot we get a lot of feedback. 1200 is a big number. And we get a lot of feedback. And it’s cross cultural feedback. It’s crosses, income bracket, the feedback we get. One of the things that is fairly easy to do is to declutter and organize your house. The reason I say that is not random at all, for little children right through to teenagers. If you have a house that has a bit more spaciousness in it, and you declutter, you get rid of the stuff that is just not necessary for little kids. It’s all the toys and, and all the stuff they simply don’t play with and they don’t need. But your own stuff, whenever you declutter what you’re doing and you organize, and things go in certain tubs or certain baskets, some parents even like to start label labeling them, you seasonalized clothes, you know, so they’re not all just out there with a teenager largely on the floor, but the, but you start to just trim down all the stuff that we have. And what it does is it gives a feeling of spaciousness, because out there, there’s not a lot of spaciousness out there in the world, it does feel a little bit oppressive, little bit pressing, perhaps.

So when a kid comes home, just to come home to a relatively clean house with rather, even if it’s a really small, little place, in fact, especially if it’s a small place, just to have things put away and to know where to put things away so that everyone knows that and to haven’t had that feeling of, okay, there’s space here, out there. Not so much out there. Not so not organized. You know that we’re doing lockdown drills at school when the police are there, you know, it just feels this pressure. When I come home, it’s almost like an outbreath we can’t do much about the lockdown drills, for example, at school. That’s one example. But we can give that feeling of spaciousness at home. And one small hint Silvia is a lot of parents over the years have found it important. If you do want to declutter and simplify and add spaciousness to your home. Then start with your own spaces first, like do your own bedroom. Then if you have a study, do your study area. And then Step two was do communal areas like kitchens and lounge rooms. And then step three, only then do a kid’s space. Because if you go straight to the kids space, I say hey, don’t mess with my stuff. Right? But as if you if you’ve modeled it in your own space, and then in communal spaces, it feels good. And if you take if you take a month or so about it, so by the time four weeks are up, the kids have experienced it feels really good in our lounge room is much more space.

Now when I go into the kitchen and I want a pair of scissors. I know which drawer to go to, and I know they’re always going to be there more or less. You know, I know. There’s this feeling of I know where stuff goes. And that’s very, very settling, that’s a little part of the turning of the tab down. It’s, it’s not doing less stuff, it’s having less stuff, knowing where that stuff is. So that’s one level

Silvia Hazel: 

Would you see then that, you know, potentially having more clutter is is kind of working on that sympathetic nervous system, it’s like adding more stimuli and, you know, decreasing that as allowing the child to feel more safe more into that parasympathetic side.

Kim John Payne: 

Totally, totally. And, again, you know, I work with dozens of parents every week, and this is just, this is just a really consistent piece of feedback. You know, for years now is an even like, if a mom decides, Okay, I’m going to declutter and organize ad space, it’s not just decluttering and organizing and adding space. And let’s say my partner, if it’s a husband, if it’s a man, my partner, doesn’t, there’s not into it as a pack rat, right? Or, or just likes having lots of stuff. But sooner or later, you’re going to catch him coming into the decluttered space sitting there and reading. Because people like being in spaces like that, they just do, it’s human instinct to want space.

You might notice on an airplane, it’s people with money, buy seats, to have space, it’s a desirable thing, to have space. Rather than feel we need to earn lots and lots of money to have this huge house, we can make our smaller houses feel spaciousness, it’s kind of, you know, it’s just like, why wait to be rich. They may or may not come right. That another thing we noticed, that is very soothing, and drains down that carp is having predictability and rhythm in homes we’ve noticed this for years now is that families that like have have, like big, I think of it as the big win and the little house rhythm and I don’t by rhythm, I don’t mean boring, cold, bossy routine. I don’t mean routine. I mean, warm, fun connecting rhythms. That’s right.

So there’s a shape and a form to the day. So that there’s a shape to our meal times as much as possible. We have our meal times we have we have breakfast together and don’t do a grab and go. Or even if we do have to do a grab and go, the grab and go places are set out, the food is set out, you know that there’s a rhythm that as much as possible. And this is just we do what is possible, right.

But as much as possible. When a child or a kid, an older kid knows that something is coming up. And then it comes up. That’s very soothing. They know that we have dinner together. And then we have dinner together. It’s really soothing. It’s a little bit like for it’s not until the early 20s that the executive brain really starts to activate and myelinate properly. The big picture executive brain, the frontal lobes and their neocortex. So the beat the big picture brain, it’s a really slow cooker, it takes a long time. So in the meantime, when our kids are growing up little ones, little kids, early childhood, middle childhood, between ages, and then later childhood, the teenagers. Those three stages early, mid later childhood, it’s really important that add all those stages, and it’s very soothing to them, when the day is got a shape to it. Because their brain can’t make a shape of it. Not really, you think teenagers can and then you just look at the way they live and look at what they do in their set projects. That school it’s like it’s all coming in at the last minute for so many kids, not all of them. But in that larger big picture planning is not something even a teenager is good at yet some of them are a little bit better than others, but mostly little kids and middle years.

And through the teen years. When we have rhythm. We actually it’s almost like we’re putting a scaffolding up. And we’re giving them that the executive like we’re giving them that kind of executive way of navigating their days. But the aim of the scaffolding is that over the years we take it away as their own executive functioning kicks in. We take the scaffolding away someone once said to me, it’s a little bit like a rocket launcher, like those big rockets that go into outer space as you have those big like Jaws that hold it, those great big sort of buttresses that hold a rocket that’s about to shoot up into space. But as the rocket ignites, the buttresses fall back, and the rocket takes off, which we hope is in the late teens, early 20s. But until then, if you took the, the buttressing, those arms away, the rocket would fall over, there’s nothing there to hold it. And the other end, the other piece, just in terms of the brain science, is that when we’ve got rhythm in a day, and the day is fairly predictable, more or less, as much as we can do, then the amygdala doesn’t start kicking in because the amygdala, the reptilian brain, the fight, flight, freeze, or flop brain, that’s the anxiety brain, the fear brain, the fighting brain, the defiance, all that stuff, that brain can just stay in its place, that really ancient survival brain doesn’t need to become activated. If a child has got a bigger picture rhythm around the day and as much as we can possibly do. And even if they’ve got a bumpy life and a choppy life, and things are not easy, having rhythm allows that bigger picture. And it says to the to the nervous system of a child, you know what, that’s a hard day that was choppy that I had to do this, I had to do that there was that situation at school, which wasn’t very safe or on the bus, someone you know, was mean to me, like, whatever it was it was going on. But if I come home, and I know what’s happening.

I basically know the drill, I come home, and I know, there’s a snack set out for me, if that’s possible. I know if possible, we’re going to have dinner, or I help prepare dinner or whatever. But I know, I know. After that, I know what we’re going to do, we sit around in the lounge room. And again, if this is possible, if you’re not working second shift, but you know, I know what what’s going on. Even if even if mom or dad is working. second shift, I know that I know what they’re doing. And I know, I know the shape of my life when I get home. Because we can’t control the shape of a kid’s life out there in the world. Not much. Other people are in charge of that. But what we can do is give them the shape when they come home. So home is a little bit of a place as much as we can possibly make it to decompress. And any little bit we do any little bit will help the parasympathetic nervous system. And it will help basically, when you got the sympathetic and the parasympathetic, the stimulating, brain stimulating nervous system, and the relaxing. That’s a resilient kid, when that is in balance that’s resilient. When it’s out of whack. That’s anxiety. And so, so one of the ways in which we can have a resilient kid in our family, and actually, I think in some ways, actually, so they have a resilient family.

Actually, it’s not just for the kids, is to have as much rhythm and predictability as we can. And I’ve mentioned this word predictability a few times. And just briefly on that, if we consider at the end of that, like after supper, after kids have eaten is a good time to do it. Or at bedtime. If you’re if you can be there with them. I still find even tween ages and teenagers like you’re just to sit with them a bit. They’re so sweet, even great big ones. And you talk about the next day, hey, this is happening. That’s happening, then we’ve got this going on. Yeah, yeah, tomorrow, actually. Yeah, that’s right. And they get the shape of the day. You see, we’re back to the executive brain. They don’t really have that yet not so much a little bit, but not so much that society thinks the executive functioning of kids is it presumes way too much. And this is just the hard science, not just my opinion.

Teachers often presume really heavily that kids can handle all these projects and the timing and all these different subjects and kids often need help with that. Right? But if we preview the next day, and we look ahead and even preview, like what’s coming up tomorrow, that’s hard. What are you looking forward to? What’s so there’s three things what’s happening, big picture. What’s coming up, that is hard. Is anything coming up hard tomorrow? And the third one is are you looking forward to anything is anything good happening tomorrow? And so you might say to say to a 12 year old is it anything hard coming up tomorrow? And they might say, yes, that that teacher that really doesn’t like just, I don’t know, she didn’t like me Oh, like, and you might just get this like, or yes, we have to go on that stupid school trip and like on the bus I have to sit next to because kids don’t care where they’re going. They’re worried about next.

And is there anything you’re looking forward to tomorrow? Yes, when we arrive there, in my project group, Miguel is going to be in my project group. And he and I work really well together. But I’m not allowed to sit with him. But we’re in the same project group. And we’ve got some really good ideas. And so you, you get to hear a little bit about what’s bugging them? What, right? So three things again, big picture, what do you look like? What’s the shape of the day? Then within that? Is there something that you’re looking is that is looking hard? And is there something that you’re looking forward to, if we can do that for our kids, it’s taking control as much as we can have the parasympathetic of the soothing, it’s turning down the tap, it’s letting them go to sleep, not being so anxious. And some parents have said to me over the years, isn’t an anxiety producing, talking about the next day with it with a kid in my experience is not really, maybe occasionally that might come up, you keep an eye out, but not really no, not so much. Just to get the shape of things before you go to bed. And before you try and sleep otherwise, the kids laying there, and they’re trying to process and they can’t sleep, and they stay up. And they get up again and start playing video games, or just they start distracting themselves from sleep. But the moment they get up and go to an iPad, or their computer or their phone, that’s more that’s more sympathetic nervous, then they’re stimulating themselves more, which means that sleep is disturbed even more. Right? That’s a couple of a couple of ideas. And the big one, of course, is alluded to three or four times now. Is the screen overload. That’s, that’s hard, isn’t it? For All? Any parent? That’s a tough one.

Silvia Hazel: 

Yeah, absolutely. So you brought up several really interesting points there. And, you know, the work that we do at CH and also that I do, in general, and specifically is working with people who have chronic illness, I’m working with children, sometimes who have chronic illness, and just seeing the nervous systems that these children have, and always trying to find ways to support them. Because knowing that the nervous system, if that is out of out of balance, it’s going to make our heart our time a lot harder and trying to get them well. So taking all of those recommendations, do you think that those would be helpful for those children who have chronic illness or who have you know, diagnosed disorders, whether that’s add ADHD, you know, any psychiatric manifestations, or, you know, some of the things that we deal with, when we deal with, you know, chronic Lyme, chronic mold exposure, that sort of thing? What are your thoughts on that, and kind of how that impacts the body

Kim John Payne: 

There’s two things there. One, just dealing with the immune system and the endocrine system. With the when you have the nervous system, balanced, you know that when you bring it I know, I know, you can’t say in whack, I don’t know why you can’t say it because you say out of whack. But when you bring it back into back into balance, then the immune system is it doesn’t become so depleted.

There have been study after study done into that with the mind body connection, that when a child’s helped to unstress when they’re helped to get the natural flow of life, particularly if they have chronic illness. It’s even more important to live a simple balanced life. It’s super important at that stage because then it builds their forces up their immune system that builds the endocrine system up which is the flow of fluid around the body and that is up building to have a child have downtimes is up building. That could be a t shirt right so but but there’s that aspect to it. Then there’s the other aspect of add od The OCD PDD there’s no shortage of DS in our pathologizing society, no shortage of DS. But in a study that a clinical study I did with my colleague Bonnie River into into ADHD, which by the way, I think is a I know we have to use that term because what’s what’s recognized, but it’s not deficit, it’s it’s not attention deficit, that attention excess, it is not a deficit. In fact what I call it is API attention priority issues. And he needs attention priority support. That’s because their attention is just fine. It’s just that it’s not prioritized very well. That’s another conversation at a time. But what I found over the years over and over and over because their whole clinical world was my world. That’s where I came from. And I’ll put it this in a nutshell, right, is that, and I write about this in a couple of my books. But all kids are quirky, right? They all have their funny little quirks that makes them so lovable and so infuriating, too, sometimes, but it’s their little quirks. That’s just their little character. That’s who they are.

Now, what myself and all these 1000s, hundreds and hundreds of, of coaches and 10s of 1000s, hundreds of 1000s, really, of parents over the years that have discovered simplicity, parenting and balance in their lives. And this way of approaching things, what happens, I can’t tell you how many times there’ll be a parent of a child who is being diagnosed with ADHD, or OCD, or odd, or whatever it is, when they simplify and balance a parent and an apparent does as much as they possibly can. That child almost moves along a spectrum and becomes just quirky again. Because the amygdala, the fight or flight brain and the basal ganglia, the filtering brain can now just do what they’re supposed to do and no more. Now the child’s not reactive, nervous, jumpy, hyper-vigilant, you see, we’re coming back to the combat veteran. They’re not behaving like combat veterans anymore.

Kids with ADHD are behaving like combat veterans, very often, you know, OCD, that is what that is absolutely known of combat veterans that aren’t doing so well. So if we, if we calm their lives down, give the sympathetic nervous system its chance, turn down the tap, those kids become just like the child who was diagnosed with ADHD just becomes the busy boy, again, the busy child. The child, who is diagnosed with OCD, obsessive-compulsive disorder, moves back along the spectrum, and just becomes the kid who to be orderly likes things doesn’t like surprises. That is very orderly in the way. But here’s, here’s the thing about this sob and perhaps as a way to round off tonight, we have to finish up soon, but is, is the parents will parents have often said to me, Look, I feel like I’ve got my little child back again. Can I should I just keep? Can I just keep doing this? Absolutely. And what they discover, and this is again, a pattern of just countless numbers of feedback over the years. Is that is that the same thing? That is their disorder. If you keep simplifying and give a child as soothing alive as you possibly can, with all that is beyond our control, but whatever we can do. That’s when the child’s gift, the same thing that is their disorder is their gift. Same thing. The child, let’s what’s the child who is odd, oppositional defiance disorder. Their quirk is they’re feisty. Right? But their gift is that they’re fearless. And they’ll stand up for us for the week. They’ll stand up for kids who are who are picked on they’ll, they just, they’re socially brilliant at helping.

I can’t tell you how many kids who’ve been diagnosed with odd, simplify their lives balance their lives, and they become the go to kids for that have been they’ll go in and they want to be with them if they’re being picked on and also, could you help me and although just stand up for kids who are being marginalized who are being dehumanized, and yet when they were being overwhelmed, all they could do was flying back. Because the amygdala, the survival brain was saying, fight. But when that life is calm enough, and they don’t have to fight for survival anymore, then these kids are beautifully confident and fearless and will stand up for others, not just themselves.

Silvia Hazel: 

That’s beautiful. And I assumed that it would be like that for a lot of those other quirks turn disorder.

Kim John Payne: 

It’s the same, you know, it’s the same. Like a, like an ad, add inattentive type, the child who just drifts away, can’t focus can’t focus driving their parents crazy, you know, with, with just not being able to stay on task, you know, not doing well at school. They’re not particularly problematic. But you know, in terms of behavior, but to just, well, that child is often they’re not fighting back, let’s not fight, it’s flight that is moving outside themselves, it’s fleeing just outside, I’m just excavating and going away, I’m not present. Right, it’s all too much, I’m just going to move away from it. But when it’s not all too much, then that child comes back into themselves. And that dreamy child is the amazing artistic child, they can dream stuff up. But now the world is safe enough for them to manifest it, to do it. Whereas before they were dreaming, but moving away. Now they dream. And they move to and they can do the amount of art and beauty, music and the amount of just that also artistic socially as well caring for others. Now they can, they can notice stuff in that lovely light way. And now move in and grounded. Not saying this is all our fault.

I mean, I’m not saying that kids who have any kind of disorder, it’s our fault. It’s not that they all have their quirks, it’s not anyone’s fault. Got to emphasize it. It’s not. But what we can do in our own small way. And it might not be the whole story by any means. They may need medical support, and they may need all kinds of other mental health support. But what we can do in our small way is is that the cup drain down and play our part as parents along with the other supports that a child might need at that part that point in their lives.

Silvia Hazel: 

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I love that. I think, you know, we’ve, we’ve touched on a lot of things today and kind of talked about how parents can be supportive to their children in regards to helping them to ideally rebalance the nervous system, but also just protecting them as much as we can from the outside pressures of and scheduling and whatnot, but interested to know, how can listeners who are kind of looking to get more information on this? And how to support their kids? How can they learn more? What would be a good resource for them?

Kim John Payne: 

I know what the quick question is Sylvia, and I’ll come to that, but really, with the resource that we should be going to as parents as into our hearts and instincts. Because we know this is all too much for kids. We know we’re in at a gut-brain level. We know this is just disliked this is weird. It’s too much. So I would say the most of the resource is into one’s own instinct. But I know what you’re asking the other resource. And this is actually truly a resource is the website simplicity parenting, that we have so many resources there. And then the podcast simplicity parenting just has. It’s a little podcast, it’s just 10 or 15 minutes. It’s the small little bite-sized things. That’s another place to go to as well.

Silvia Hazel: 

I love that. That’s great. Yeah, I’m sure that people appreciate the fact that it’s nice and short. Just little tips here and there. So that’s really helpful. Thank you for sharing that. Well, I’m so grateful to you, Kim for joining me today. This is a topic that is so very near and dear to my heart personally. So it was such a pleasure to be able to discuss this with you and I’m very grateful.

Kim John Payne: 

All right, lovely to be invited. Thanks, Silvia. Bye bye for now.

Silvia Hazel: 

Take care.

Dr. Andrew Wong:

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