Simplicity Parenting (7 page)

In our study of children with serious symptoms of ADHD we found that when we simplified their lives they returned to a reachable and teachable state. They emerged from “amygdala hijack,” a term Daniel Goleman coined in his book
Emotional Intelligence
. The amygdala is a very ancient part of our brain that determines whether we respond to a threat with either a “fight” or a “flight” to safety. This was a very handy function when dinosaurs roamed the earth. The amygdala also has a memory function, but one just attuned to trauma. So, in addition to fight/flight, the amygdala determines “Am I going to eat you, or are you going to eat me?” And more specifically, “Have you taken a bite out of me in the past?” In response to a perceived threat the amygdala then “hijacks,” or bypasses, the thinking and feeling centers of the brain with a reaction that may be inappropriate to the real situation.

When a child emerges from amygdala hijack, and their behavior is no longer governed by a short-circuited response to stress or perceived danger, it changes. We saw positive changes—both an increase in attentive and a decrease in hypermotoric (too much movement) behavior—in
our study. These improvements, and the move from clinically dysfunctional ratings to functional ratings, can also be achieved through drugs like Ritalin or Adderall. But the one thing that was achieved by our methods that is not measurably achieved through drugs is this: The children in our study also experienced a 36.8 percent increase in academic and cognitive ability. Such indicators are flat with the psychotropic drugs; with Ritalin use you do not see any noticeable trough or peak in academic performance.

Good news on the homework front? Yes, but the message here extends well beyond the practical or everyday; it is wonderfully hopeful news on a basic human level. The results suggest that by paying attention to our children’s environments, we can improve their ability to pay attention themselves. The “methods” used in our study were not enacted in a laboratory setting. They did not include any drugs or medications. These were lifestyle changes made by parents, teachers, and the children themselves: methods available to anyone. The “protocol” was simplification: a building up of their vitality, or etheric forces, and a quieting down of their stimulation. This study indicates that simplification can be helpful to children on a number of fronts.

I am not denying the efficacy of, or categorically decrying the use of, prescription drugs for behavioral issues. Quite clearly some children have been helped enormously by Ritalin and other drugs. I believe that these drugs have their place in a “toolbox” of methods and interventions to help children maintain a reachable and teachable state. However, I do believe they’ve been grossly overused and over-prescribed. A mother approached me recently at a teacher workshop that I was leading. She asked to speak with me at the end of the meeting, and I could tell her concerns were more personal than professional. As we sat in two small school desks facing each other, in a now empty room, she began to cry.

Just a few days previously her son Thomas had started a regimen of Ritalin, on the recommendation of a psychologist. Thomas had had problems in school for some time and was on the verge of being expelled for his unruly, disruptive behavior. Without knowing her son, I couldn’t address her situation very deeply or personally. But I have certainly seen many like it. And I could see that she was acting carefully and conscientiously, out of love, not frustration.

I told her that I think of these drugs largely as scaffolding. When a building needs work you erect scaffolding to reach the chimney or roof,
to add masonry or flashing, whatever might be necessary. When the work is over, you take the scaffolding away. A lot of this medication for kids has become scaffolding, rusted in place. I think of it not as structural, not a solid addition or even buttressing. I see these drugs, most of the time, as temporary measures. Your child is about to be kicked out of school? You can modify their behavior, “pull them back” into an acceptable framework with these medicines. You can buy some time with drugs. But I don’t believe they are a long-range substitute for the “work” of simplifying a child’s daily life and environment. Or the “work” of understanding how a particular child learns, and making adjustments accordingly. And I think this “work” is best done, if possible, before rather than after pharmaceutical intervention.

Remarkable research is being done in a field of neurology that looks at the flexibility, or malleability, of the human brain: neuroplasticity. It has long been known that young children have enormously resilient brains. Infants can sustain massive brain injuries, losing an entire cerebral hemisphere, and still experience nearly normal development into adulthood. It was thought that this “plasticity” disappears as children reach adulthood, and their neural pathways become “fixed,” but it now seems that even as we age we retain some neuroplasticity. Neurologists studying meditation and prayer are discovering new things about the structure and function of the brain and how it can be changed. In her book
Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain
, journalist Sharon Begley has written about this research, and how the thousand-years-old practices of Tibetan Buddhism are informing the cutting-edge science of neuroplasticity today.
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Begley describes how neurologists have been astounded by the measurable, replicable effects of meditation practice on the mind and brain. Their brain scan evidence showed that the neural activity of highly trained monks was “off the charts” (in relation to standard measures, and in relation to the neural activity of more novice monks), even when they were not meditating. The areas of the brain where such emotional complexities as maternal love and empathy are believed to be centered (caudate and right insula), and feelings of joy and happiness (left prefrontal cortex), were actually anatomically enlarged, structurally altered by virtue of the monks’ lives and their meditation practices.

These results send a strong message of hope, with wide implications. It suggests that the brain has its own capacities for reorganization and repair, which could be harnessed to benefit stroke victims as well as
a wide range of people with learning disabilities, senility, or depression. By recognizing neuroplasticity as a real and powerful force, we can wrest ourselves back from genetic and chemical predeterminism, from the notion that we are nothing more than a fixed pattern of genes and neural chemistry. One of the world’s best-known neurologists, Oliver Sacks, the author of
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
, among other terrific books, said in one of his lectures, “With neurology, if you go far enough with it, and you keep going, you end up getting weird. If you go a little further, you end up in the spirit.”

If the brain is not the originator, the absolute control tower of our personalities, feelings, and behavior, could the brain be part of a much larger system that includes the mind, body, and spirit? The brain plasticity research, and even our own pilot study into ADD, suggest that our minds not only affect the other parts of the system but also are affected by them. For centuries Tibetan monks have followed a spiritual practice centered on meditation, which in turn has affected their immune systems and the very structure of their brains. In our study, we built up the children’s physical and etheric vitality while quieting down the stimulation they were taking in. For a good percentage of these kids, this afforded them the ease to be more responsive and less reactive in their behavior and their schoolwork. Kids are not monks who can meditate for hours a day, but they do the equivalent when they are involved in play, in deep, uninterrupted play.

Some people may take issue with the term
spirit
. (You’ll notice I let Oliver Sacks say it first.) Yet there is another way to look at this, one I think most parents will respond to wholeheartedly. As parents we know, without question, that who our children are is more than the sum of their genes or behavioral tendencies. Yes, she has her maternal grandmother’s rich auburn hair, and those blue eyes are definitely her dad’s. Her facial features are quite clearly her mother, in miniature, but her sharp, analytical tendencies are exactly like her father’s. And so the genetic cards are dealt. Yet most any parent can relate to the mysterious, singular nature of each child, the thing we refer to when we say that, from birth, from the moment we first met our son or daughter, “they were who they were.”

Aristotle used the term
telos
to describe this, a thing or person’s essence, their intrinsic intent. Part of an acorn’s telos, or destiny, is to become an oak. An acorn carries its telos within, from the beginning. Beyond our genetic gifts to them, beyond what they absorb from us and
their environment, children seem to arrive with something of their very own, a telos, or intrinsic nature. That essential nature, apparent from the beginning, also points to their future, as an acorn suggests an oak. Our children come to us with a deep destiny—here again, some may say spirit—that needs to be heard. It must be honored.

As a society, and sometimes as parents, look at how myopic we are becoming. If we focus exclusively on the chemical makeup of a child’s brain, we miss the larger contexts of who they are, and what influences them (their lives, families, their environments). If we focus exclusively on their tendencies, we miss the child; we can miss their destiny, or telos. By seeing only tendencies, syndromes, and labels, we risk not seeing our children’s intrinsic intent, their deep biographical gesture in the world.

What we “see,” what we bring our attention and presence to, is at the heart of who we are. And for our children, it is at the heart of who they are becoming. Why simplify? Because by simplifying our children’s lives we can remove some of the stresses of too-much and too-fast that obstruct their focus and interfere with an emotional baseline of calm and security. A little grace is needed, after all, for them to develop into the people they’re meant to be, especially in a world that is constantly 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.