Simplicity Parenting (5 page)

So often we need to find our way to a goal by identifying and discarding what that vision is not. Family is not disparate relationships between individuals and machines, in separate rooms of a house. Childhood is not a race to accumulate all of the consumer goods and stresses of adulthood in record time. Simplification signals a change and makes room for a transformation. It is a stripping away that invites clarity.

Reacquainted with their dreams for their families, parents and I talk about how a simplification regime might help them change course, how simplifying might make room for a shift, a realignment of their hopes with their everyday lives. It would be great if simplification involved nothing more than backing a dumpster up to the house and discarding piles of stuff. Unfortunately, there’s more to it. Children can be overloaded by more than just the physical things bulging out of their closets. But as you’ll see, there are simple “tossing out” or “whittling down” steps at each level. Parents and I discuss the four levels of simplification: the environment, rhythm, schedules, and filtering out the adult world. We touch on all of them, and discuss which aspects of the regime feel the most doable. Sometimes I am surprised; some parents want to dive into the more difficult arenas of schedules and filtering out the adult world right away, while other parents cautiously express a willingness to see “a few less” toys around the house. Often a modest goal is an instinctual first step toward something larger. Somehow parents know where to begin to create the necessary space—in their intentions and their lives—for a transformation. Marie’s parents chose to address Marie’s home environment first, as I’ll recommend you do too. Her story shows that by starting with the doable, we can pave the way for broader changes.

Marie was a bright, energetic five-year-old just beginning kindergarten when I first met her parents. She had had a series of babysitters who came to the home, all of whom had trouble controlling her. Marie was “hard work,” if you will: very active, unfocused, and with clear attention difficulties. Just before kindergarten, Marie’s parents had put her in a day-care center from which, after a couple of months, she was
asked to leave. Marie’s parents were very nice people, clearly trying to do their best for their daughter. They were both working professionals who led very busy, hectic lives; it had been difficult even finding the time for us to sit down together. At that initial meeting I could see how concerned and defeated they felt in the face of what they called Marie’s already “checkered career.”

Together we began to work out a simplification regime for the family. Her parents decided to begin with the physical environment of their home, particularly simplifying Marie’s room. If the average American child has 150 toys, Marie had at least double that number. Her room was also packed with books, some on shelves, but many in towering piles. There were a few narrow passageways to and from her bed, carved between mountains of books, clothes, and toys. Periodically, the parents assured me, they would undertake an archeological dig in the room to tidy up, only to see chaos return within hours.

Whether they are in bins, baskets, trunks, closets, piles, or heaps, the child’s toys are usually our first focus. To the mountain of toys in their bedroom we add the outlying piles from around the house. The accumulated whole is usually a remarkable sight, and not one the parents have fully taken in before.

With a box of large, black, plastic trash bags at hand, we begin the work of cleaning up the area. I suggest that we put half of the toys in the bag—excellent—and then half again. There are always some toys that parents are anxious to get rid of. They dive into the pile, searching with glee for the plastic exploding disasters—the ones that whir, talk, gyrate, or detonate. Essentially, they’re looking for the ones that grandparents or bachelor uncles have given. “Shouldn’t we keep these as insurance for grandmother’s next visit?” Chances are, I assure them, grandmother has no memory of the toy itself, only the joy of giving. Chances are also good that the child has forgotten the toy too, or the toy has one or more of its pieces missing.

In this way, we make a molehill out of a mountain, leaving for the child a mix of toys that they enjoy most consistently, and for the longest periods of time. Rarely are these favorites complex, or motorized; rarely do they “do” anything. The toys that are too detailed or complicated—too “fixed”—can rob a child of an imaginative experience. Dear nighttime toys can never disappear. Even if they are totally hideous, dear nighttime toys are nonnegotiable. The remaining toys have to include a mixture of active toys: building, digging, construction toys; and more receptive toys, such as dolls and stuffed animals, toys that just receive.
There can also be creative materials, such as paints, crayons, and some modeling substances, such as beeswax or clay. The toys with staying power are usually—not always, but pretty consistently—figures of some sort, either dolls or knights or stuffed animals; building toys; and scenes or dwellings of some sort, into which the child loves to project his or her figures, and thus themselves.

We then turn our attention to books, whittling the pile down to one or two of the current favorites. This can truly shock some parents who take pride in their child’s love of reading. “Sarah reads five or six books at once!” they implore. Our purpose here is not to discourage reading, but to allow the child to really concentrate on, and revel in, whatever they are reading (or doing) at any given time. I remember Dylan, a very bright, talkative eight-year-old who once started our conversation with this excited pronouncement: “You know what? I just finished number sixteen in the Magic Tree House Series, I’m on the fourth Time Warp Trio, and I just got the new Captain Underpants.” “Well,” I said, “which of those did you particularly enjoy?” “Oh, I don’t know,” he said, clearly thinking my question was beside the point, “they’re all pretty much the same.”

So, with a few large baskets, we had culled Marie’s toys way down. The remaining toys were a mix of favorites, the simpler the better: dolls, building toys, cherished bedtime toys, some kitchen things, balls. Almost half of the toys that did not make the cut were thrown away because they were broken or had missing pieces. The rest we put in storage. The stored toys were a sort of toy “library” that the family could draw from provided they replaced one before taking another. We did the same with books, packing and labeling the majority of them for storage, and leaving five or six of favorites, lined neatly on a shelf by Marie’s bed.

We didn’t just take away toys, we carefully added some. In one of the baskets we put a stack of brightly colored fabric pieces, some rope, and clothespins. We also made sure Marie had a table her size, a large drawing pad, and a box of big crayons. We gathered, washed, and folded an assortment of dress-up clothes that we put in one empty basket.

You might think Marie’s first reaction to this “anti-Christmas” would be shock. Not so. I have seen this again and again. She didn’t seem to notice, or care, that a good three-quarters or more of her toys and books had been removed. She was taken with the new space, with the freedom it seemed to afford. For days and days she built “houses” with the cloths and clothespins. She would build them and curl up inside,
pulling in pillows and sometimes a book or a doll. Every single day for a couple of weeks she repeated this, and it seemed to be doing something for her that she really needed. She came to trust that she could build another the next day, that these were hers to make and have. So each afternoon, after admiring the day’s creation, Marie’s mother and Marie would take them down, talking as they folded the cloths, unpinned the pins, and put the materials in their basket, ready for the next day.

This was just the first step in a simplification process that included several levels and unfolded over many months. Yet this first step, the change in Marie’s room, signaled a kind of sea change, a new awareness that expanded through the family’s house and their days; the space and time of their daily lives. This sea change was not just the result of “tidying up.” It was a conscious move, both practical and philosophical, toward a more rhythmic, predictable, child-centered home life. By that I do not mean that the home and everything done in it are oriented toward the child, but I absolutely do mean that the home and everything in it are not exclusively oriented toward adults. A certain pace or volume of “stuff” may be tolerable for adults, while it is intolerable, or problematic, for the kids.

Children are such tactile beings. They live so fully by their senses that if they see something, they will also want to touch it, smell it, possibly eat it, maybe throw it, feel what it feels like on their heads, listen to it, sort it, and probably submerge it in water. This is entirely natural. Strap on their pith helmets; they’re exploring the world. But imagine the sensory overload that can happen for a child when every surface, every drawer and closet is filled with stuff? So many choices and so much stimuli rob them of time and attention. Too much stuff deprives kids of leisure, and the ability to explore their worlds deeply.

Over the years I’ve seen remarkable, very moving transformations among the families I’ve come to know and work with. Very simple principles, gradually incorporated into a home, produce dramatic shifts in a family’s emotional climate, in their connection to one another. In this
work, I often think about a stream, dammed by a pile of rocks that has accumulated gradually … so gradually that the rocks have gone unnoticed, but the imbalance is felt. By reducing mental and physical clutter, simplification increases a family’s ability to flow together, to focus and deepen their attention, to realign their lives with their dreams.

The Changes

When I first started my simplification consultation work, the transformations I was seeing were unprecedented in my professional experience. As simplification became the heart of my work I felt out on a limb professionally. I had not arrived at these methods through my training or schooling, not through developmental psychology or school counseling, and not through what I knew about psychoanalysis. The schooling and training I had had were complicated, but the simplification approach I was developing was not tricky. It was very, very simple.

At this professional point—some ten years ago—my family and I were living in the beautiful New England college community of Northampton, Massachusetts. My private counseling practice was expanding rapidly as word about this work was getting out. To this day I have the nickname there of “Dr. Trashbag.” Given that, you might think this was a low period in my career! Not so. It was very gratifying to see firsthand how effective simplification could be in restoring a child’s sense of ease.

Others were noticing as well. If you know the area, you know there are probably more therapists per square block in Northampton than anywhere else in the country, except perhaps Manhattan. I was receiving referrals not only from the families I worked with, but also from the psychologists and psychiatrists in the area. They were finding that their own treatment methods—whether cognitive behavioral therapy, art therapy, or talk therapy—were much more effective once a simplification regime had taken hold in the home. Simplification prepared the space in a child’s daily life for changes to take place. As one psychiatrist put it, his treatment work would then “stick” in a way that it had not previously.

The work we were doing was not so much healing work as preparatory work. A simplification regime can create space in a family’s habit life and intentions, a vessel for change to occur. That change or growth can take various forms. It can be the result of therapies that are now “sticking,” or more easily absorbed and acted upon, or the natural result
of childhood growth and development, unchecked by adult levels of stress, stuff, and speed. Simplification protects the environment for childhood’s slow, essential unfolding of self. In either case, the transformations we were seeing were remarkable.

You needn’t be a therapist to realize that most kids are quirky, aren’t they? Most any parent will give you a quick nod of agreement on that score. I feel sorry for my own dear children, actually, because they say that a therapist’s offspring are the quirkiest of all! The truth is we all have our quirks, our personalities and idiosyncrasies. We tend to be more tolerant of them in adults, perhaps because we think of adults as “fully formed” and children as “under construction” and thus more malleable.