Simplicity Parenting (16 page)

Maryanne came to see me about her six-year-old girl, Esme, who was having trouble falling asleep at night. When I looked at various aspects of their daily lives, it became clear that what Esme needed was more art. A lack of exercise is often the issue when kids can’t sleep, but a lack of creative expression can also make the transition into sleep difficult. As the daughter of a mathematician and an engineer, Esme’s home life was very organized and streamlined. She was a sweet girl, somewhat timid, and quite precise in her movements and speech. She needed to experience the flow of creativity, to relax her very focused and directed attention. The creative process involves a letting-go of conscious thoughts and ideas, and such opportunities for artistic release during the day help a child surrender into sleep.

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. As children reach school age, they can begin some simple crafts. Whittling and knitting, for example, develop graphomotor skills just as children are beginning to write. Beadwork and sewing, woodwork and candlemaking,
papier-mâché and ceramics. Especially when schools are dedicating less time to art, parents can make sure that art, play, and crafts are richly valued at home.

Music, like art, is an essential form of playful expression. From a mother’s heartbeat in the womb to the rhythmic cadences of nursery rhymes and lullabies, music surrounds even the youngest among us. Music can help children move and learn to coordinate their movements, channel energy, express their emotions, and connect with others. In the next chapter, which is all about rhythm in daily life, we’ll look at the sense of security and predictability that rhythm affords a child. As for creative rhythm making—music—these and other instruments of your own making can be fun: wooden rattles and egg shakers, drums, bells of all sorts, pennywhistles, harmonicas, and simple recorders, lap harps, thunder shakers, and rain sticks.

Books

The same principles you used to simplify toys can be applied to other forms of clutter in your child’s room. Books are often the second major form of excess, given that books are viewed in the same light as toys. As parents, we want to promote reading (play), so we figure that the more books (toys) our child has access to, the more they will read (play).

Who could argue? The premise seems logical, and it is based, again, on generous parental intentions. Storytelling, the precursor and larger context for books, will be addressed in Chapter Four. We’ll look at how stories nurture children, and how repetition is such an important part of the process. Stories can offer young children great security and assurance: stories that are heard again and again, lived with, anticipated, and known deeply. For now, I would just like to make a few practical suggestions around books, in keeping with this chapter’s primary goal: simplifying the child’s environment.

Hopefully, you have just taken major steps to reduce the number of toys that surround your child in their room. You’ve created space and visual ease. You’ve also created mental space and calm, making it possible for your child to engage with the toys they have rather than being overwhelmed by too many. You can do the same thing with books.

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. These are books that your child will return to again and
again, and you may choose to rotate books in and out of this favorites group as your child grows. At seven or eight you can add reference books about subjects your child is interested in, such as insects, horses, or airplanes.

Books offer such delight and satisfaction to children, conjuring magical worlds and bringing the wonder of our own right into their hands. How could it be possible to have “too many” of such good things?

It is a bit easier to imagine the “too much of a good thing” principle with books when our children have entered the “series” section of the library or bookstore. A child who is racing through “Number 23 of the Magic Tree House Series!” in a rush to pull ahead of their friend is not reading so much as consuming. When a desire for the next thing is at the heart of an experience, we’re involved in an addiction, not a connection.

Sadly, though, anything can be commercialized and trivialized through overexposure and excess. By establishing a consistent level of “enough” (simplicity) rather than too much (overload), we leave room for our children—room for their imaginations and inspirations, room for them to build relationships with the things that they play with or read.

We’ve all noticed children’s love of repetition. As we settle in to read to our three-or four-year-old child: “Again? We’ve read
Curious George
for the past three nights! Are you sure you want to hear it again?” Even as our kids grow into independent readers we often express surprise when we see them reading a book that we know they’ve read before, or when they ask to hear the same family story that they’ve heard so many times, they can recite it from memory.

Repetition is a vital part of relationship building for children. By repeating experiences and scenarios in play, as well as in storytelling and reading, kids are able to incorporate what they learn. Repetition deepens the experience and relationship for a child; it helps them claim it as their own. Children up to the age of seven or eight can be told and read
one story repeatedly for a number of days. The consistency and security of such repetition is very soothing for young children.

As with play, kids do not need any one magical book, the newest bestseller, or an endless stream of new books, to foster a love of reading. They need time, and mental ease. They need the time to read deeply, and sometimes repeatedly. They also need stories that leave some room for their imagination. You can evaluate the books you choose for your child with similar criteria to those I mentioned in evaluating toys.

Is it developmentally appropriate?
There is a great deal of “age compression” in books as well as toys. I’ve noticed it in several forms. Sometimes children’s books are written more for the adult reading than the child listening. They are full of little jokes and asides that mean nothing to the child. Some have very adult themes, especially as children reach “middle reader” level books. Because books are classified by reading level rather than content, parents of independent readers need to monitor whether their child should read a certain book just because they can.

Mary, a client of mine, told me this story about her daughter, Ashley, who was a very precocious reader. When she was eleven, Ashley came home with a novel she had checked out from the school library. Mary had heard of the novel, and knew that it was a very popular coming-of-age story more appropriate for teen readers. She read through it that night and confirmed her impressions. Mary spoke with Ashley the next day before school. She told her that the book had been getting a lot of attention, and she understood that Ashley wanted to read it. 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.

Is the book based on a product or television character?
As
we saw with toys, product marketers have children firmly in view. The pressure to buy is intense and pervasive. There are books based on television characters, movies, even on products such as M&M candies or breakfast cereals. I think we can draw “lines in the sand” around our children. We can say no in our own homes to the commercialization of childhood. When you picture reading with your children, or them reading alone, imagine the circle of light around them as an “ad-free zone.”

Does it tell an unfolding story or is it “all over the place”?
Like a toy that does too much, some books are very fragmented, graphically intense, and lacking cohesion. Is the book designed to engage the child’s imagination, or to “stimulate”? This distinction is important because kids take a book’s images into their sleep. A book read at bedtime nourishes a child’s dreams. The images and the archetypes of the story follow a child into their sleep and into the unconscious “practicing” for life that they do while dreaming.

I am not suggesting that everything a child reads needs to be conceptually “neutralized”—all bunnies and flowers, peace and love. Can a seven-or eight-year-old child read a fairy tale in which the little tailor mouse’s tale is cut off, or a dragon attacks? Yes, I believe that a story with room for a child to “imagine into it” affords them some distance, some power and grace to manipulate the images and story in their own mind. I am more concerned by books that are like flashing billboards. Some books are designed to provoke a reaction rather than engage the imagination.

Another way to judge a book is by the play it inspires. Books that are read to a child, or that they read, are often taken right up, incorporated into their play. Is the play engaging? Does the interaction go well? Or is the play corrosive, causing more issues and problems than fun?

Clothes

With the exception of teenagers, the younger the child, the more times a day he or she will dress and undress. Can you imagine a time-elapsed film of a day’s wardrobe changes for an infant, or an active three-year-old? Don’t forget the shoes-and-jacket shuffle at the back door (times ten), the pajama interludes, the “what’s that food?” T-shirt game, or (cue the
Space Odyssey
music) the long, very long, extremely long “let’s play in the snow” suit-ups. Clothes are some of the most transitional items of childhood. Almost as soon as they fit properly, children grow out of them. And the transitions of “in and out of clothes” punctuate each day.

When you simplify a child’s clothes, you simplify daily life. Each one of the transitions around clothes is made more difficult by clutter and excess. As you did with toys and books, you can reduce the number of clothes available to your child to a manageable, accessible, and streamlined mix. The clothes in your child’s wardrobe or bureau should fit now. Clothes they’ve grown out of can be given away or stored, and
clothes that are still too big should be left in storage. All but the current season’s clothes can be labeled and stored in boxes or bags. I save those little silica packets used in packaging (you see them sometimes in shoe boxes, or with vitamins), and throw those in with clothes to prevent moisture.

When the only clothes available are the ones that fit your child, and the current weather, the closet is no longer a jungle to be hacked through. Even a three-year-old will begin to recognize the pattern of drawers, and be able to get a shirt or a sweater themselves.

At any given time your child may have some clothes from friends or relatives whose children have outgrown them. There may also be gifts, and one or two items for special occasions. Beyond these, your child can have a mix of fairly basic items. Your little one’s clothes don’t have to make a “statement” beyond the obvious ones: “I’m dressed and ready for school” or “I’m comfortable and ready to play.” Your child has better things to do than to be a walking advertisement for mall stores or brands. Simplify your choices in shopping: If you find a pair of jeans that fits your child, and your budget, consider buying a few. Having fewer choices simplifies getting dressed. Young kids can still adopt all sorts of flash and style, playing with different looks, roles, and fashion statements in their dress-up play.

Variety and style are usually much more important to parents than to preadolescent kids. “Choice” is so often a false distinction, when a child is more interested in what they are going to do, once dressed, than in the clothes themselves. As adults who value individuality we are so convinced that children need variety and style to assert their individuality. But the identity building that children do through play is much more fundamental than any external look they may adopt. By limiting choices in the early years you give children the time and freedom to develop an inner voice. Simplicity provides the ease and well-being to develop a strong sense of self. And believe me, there will be no lack of personal expression—through fashion and otherwise—when that strong sense of self reaches adolescence.