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Authors: Kim John Payne, Lisa M. Ross
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bombarding them (and us) with the distractions of so many things, so much information, speed, and urgency. These stresses distract from the focus or “task” of childhood: an emerging, developing sense of self.
As parents we also define ourselves by what we bring our attention and presence to. This is easy to forget when daily life feels more like triage. By eliminating some of the clutter in our lives we can concentrate on what we really value, not just what we’re buried under, or deluged with. With simplification we can bring an infusion of inspiration to our daily lives; set a tone that honors our families’ needs before the world’s demands. Allow our hopes for our children to outweigh our fears. Realign our lives with our dreams for our family, and our hopes for what childhood could and should be.
Yet simplification is not just about taking things away. It is about making room, creating space in your life, your intentions, and your heart. With less physical and mental clutter, your attention expands, and your awareness deepens.
Again and again parents have told me how a simplification regime gave them a greater sense of ease and allowed them to see beyond what their children tended to do or not do, to who they were. We see it in flashes, of course—our children’s telos—but seeing it within the push and pull of everyday life takes patience. It isn’t always easy to recognize the oak in the shape of an acorn. After all, our parenting may be affected by too much clutter and stress, just as our children’s behavior is. We can become trapped in our own amygdala hijack, a sort of emergency response to parenting, characterized more by fear than by understanding. But with fewer distractions we can develop a wider perspective, the broader view of our own best parental instincts. This is the view that takes in your child, in their wholeness. It honors their pace, and their needs, their gift for soaking in their experiential “now.”
Why simplify? The primary reason is that it will provide your child with greater ease and well-being. Islands of being, in the mad torrent of constant doing. With fewer distractions their attention expands, their focus can deepen, and they have more mental and physical space to explore the world in the manner their destiny demands.
As a parent your attention will also expand with a little less mental clutter in your life. And your awareness of your child will deepen. Beyond all of the benefits of simplification that I’ve outlined, there is another. It is one of those slow creepers, an unexpected joyful suffusion, something most parents would not have thought possible. The most elemental and powerful reason to simplify is this: As your awareness of your children widens and deepens, so too will your love.
You may be wondering how you can possibly make changes in your family’s daily lives when you’re already so busy. It’s one thing to embrace the ideas in this book but quite another to implement them. Where do you start? How can you marshal your best intentions and put them into action?
I’ve found that the simplest path to real and lasting change is through the imagination. “Nothing happens unless first a dream…” When you create a mental image of your hopes, you chart a course. You create a picture that you can then step into. Like a lasso thrown around a star, your imagination navigates the surest path to your goal.
Here, and at the end of each chapter, I invite you to relive some of the ideas and images we’ve covered and to imagine how they might work in your own home.
Imagine your home …
as a place where time moves a little slower.
becoming less cluttered and more visually relaxing.
with space, and time, for childhood—and with time for one another every day.
as a place where play and exploration are allowed, and honored.
having more ease as you begin to limit distractions and to say no to the stress of too much, too fast, too soon.
as a sense of calm and
As parents we also define ourselves by what we bring our attention and presence to. This is easy to forget when daily life feels more like triage. By eliminating some of the clutter in our lives we can concentrate on what we really value, not just what we’re buried under, or deluged with. With simplification we can bring an infusion of inspiration to our daily lives; set a tone that honors our families’ needs before the world’s demands. Allow our hopes for our children to outweigh our fears. Realign our lives with our dreams for our family, and our hopes for what childhood could and should be.
Yet simplification is not just about taking things away. It is about making room, creating space in your life, your intentions, and your heart. With less physical and mental clutter, your attention expands, and your awareness deepens.
Again and again parents have told me how a simplification regime gave them a greater sense of ease and allowed them to see beyond what their children tended to do or not do, to who they were. We see it in flashes, of course—our children’s telos—but seeing it within the push and pull of everyday life takes patience. It isn’t always easy to recognize the oak in the shape of an acorn. After all, our parenting may be affected by too much clutter and stress, just as our children’s behavior is. We can become trapped in our own amygdala hijack, a sort of emergency response to parenting, characterized more by fear than by understanding. But with fewer distractions we can develop a wider perspective, the broader view of our own best parental instincts. This is the view that takes in your child, in their wholeness. It honors their pace, and their needs, their gift for soaking in their experiential “now.”
Why simplify? The primary reason is that it will provide your child with greater ease and well-being. Islands of being, in the mad torrent of constant doing. With fewer distractions their attention expands, their focus can deepen, and they have more mental and physical space to explore the world in the manner their destiny demands.
As a parent your attention will also expand with a little less mental clutter in your life. And your awareness of your child will deepen. Beyond all of the benefits of simplification that I’ve outlined, there is another. It is one of those slow creepers, an unexpected joyful suffusion, something most parents would not have thought possible. The most elemental and powerful reason to simplify is this: As your awareness of your children widens and deepens, so too will your love.
You may be wondering how you can possibly make changes in your family’s daily lives when you’re already so busy. It’s one thing to embrace the ideas in this book but quite another to implement them. Where do you start? How can you marshal your best intentions and put them into action?
I’ve found that the simplest path to real and lasting change is through the imagination. “Nothing happens unless first a dream…” When you create a mental image of your hopes, you chart a course. You create a picture that you can then step into. Like a lasso thrown around a star, your imagination navigates the surest path to your goal.
Here, and at the end of each chapter, I invite you to relive some of the ideas and images we’ve covered and to imagine how they might work in your own home.
Imagine your home …
as a place where time moves a little slower.
becoming less cluttered and more visually relaxing.
with space, and time, for childhood—and with time for one another every day.
as a place where play and exploration are allowed, and honored.
having more ease as you begin to limit distractions and to say no to the stress of too much, too fast, too soon.
as a sense of calm and
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