Simplicity Parenting – Kim John Payne

Kim is a soft-spoken man, a therapist and educator, a husband and father. And he is an observer. Having worked for many years with children in a variety of settings, he noticed that typical English children were exhibiting many of the same signs of trauma as children from war-torn areas. These behaviors included nervousness, impulsivity, lack of empathy, lack of perspective taking, lack of resiliency and hyper-vigilance. For the English kids, though, there was no identified traumatic event to account for their symptoms. Kim concluded that what was happening with these children was an accumulation of little stressors, or Cumulative Stress Reaction.

Children NEED stress in order to test themselves and prove to themselves that they are “enough.” Through facing stress, they learn and grow wise and strong and resilient. The cumulative stress that Kim talks about, though, is different from these “character building” stressors that actually make children stronger.

Cumulative Stress Reaction occurs when frequent, “little stresses, collectively, drag on a child’s ability be resilient: mentally, emotionally and physically.” (Simplicity Parenting, Kim John Payne)

According to Kim, Cumulative Stress Reaction interferes with concentration, a child’s emotional baseline of calm, a child’s sense of security that allows for novelty and change and a child’s focus — not just their focus on the obvious task at hand, such as completing homework or chores, but the TRUE task of childhood, which is “an emerging, developing sense of self.” (KJP)

What can you do about it?

Get a copy of Simplicity Parenting by Kim John Payne. Read it. Then contact me, if needed, for support and guidance as you transform your home, family, marriage or classroom. You will create a new Golden Age for your family — a realignment of your cherished hopes for your child with your actual everyday life. (YOU will be happier and more peaceful, too.)

Can I promise that good things will come from Simplicity Parenting?  Quite simply, yes!