Q&A | How do you get kids to do quiet time?

Hi there and welcome to episode 208 today. We're talking about how to initiate quiet time in your family. Hi, this is Denaye. I'm the founder of Simple Families. Simple Families is an online community for parents who are seeking a simpler more intentional life. In this show, we focus on minimalism with kids, positive parenting, family wellness, and decreasing the mental load. My perspectives are based in my firsthand experience, raising kids, but also rooted in my Ph.D. In child development. So you're going to hear conversations that are based in research, but more importantly, real life. Thanks for joining us.

Hi, thank you for tuning in. We are cruising or maybe I should say crawling into our third week of social distancing. And I don't know about you, but quiet time is highly valuable right now. So today I'm going to be answering your question about how to execute quiet time in your house, even when you don't think it's possible. I gave up hope on quiet time quite a while ago. And I have to say that we've been able to bring it back. And I have a few suggestions on how you can do the same. If you're new to the podcast in these shorter episodes, I start by sharing something simple that I'm loving. And then I move on to a question from an audience member. So, today I'll go ahead and get started with my something simple. So what I'm loving today is the Peloton digital app.

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And my favorite instructor of all time, Cody Rigsby is helping out on these dance cardio classes. Now Cody also does cycling classes and he has a fairly inappropriate sense of humor. So just know that going into these, but if you're looking for a laugh and some fun, and you don't mind a little vulgar humor than I would highly recommend a dance cardio class with Cody. So check it out. Peloton digital is the name of the app. And for 90 days can get it free. And this is not sponsored by something simple is never sponsored. It's just stuff that I'm authentically loving the sponsor for today is Every plate. Every plate is a meal kit service. And at first I was skeptical because I've tried these before and sometimes they can be complicated and expensive, but I was pleasantly surprised that every plate was a great value, came with everything I needed and the directions were really easy to follow.

Personally. I thought the meals tasted great and they really came together quickly. Right now, members of the Simple Families audience can get three weeks of every plate meals for only 299 a meal by going to everyplate.com and entering the code "three simple" that's every plate, everyplate.com. Again, get three weeks of every plate meals for only 299 per meal, by going to everyplate.com and entering the code "three simple" that's 40% off each of your first three boxes. Now, before I get into this question, I do want to remind you that the Simple Families foundations program is open for enrollment. And until Wednesday, April 1st, I'm offering 50% off. So if you want to get that early bird discount, I would love to have you join us. Get a simplefamilies.com/foundations. If you've been feeling called towards simplifying your family, but you keep getting stuck.

Simplicity makes sense to you, but it still feels aspirational. This program might be for you. It's a step-by-step implementation program. It gives you an aid is the approach to simplify your family. I have developed this program based on my doctoral research and family wellness and child development, but it's also inspired by the fields of psychology education and minimalism, but I promise that I'm keeping it simple. So today's question. I will admit. I have absolutely no idea who asked it to me. I got this question via email, and sometimes my email turns into a black hole. The best way to submit a question for the podcast is to go to simplefamilies.com/question, and you can leave it there. That helps me to keep it really organized. So even though I don't know who asked this question, I have a feeling, there are a lot of people asking this question all across the world.

It's how do you get some quiet time? Now, when I'm talking about quiet time, this isn't necessarily the same thing as independent play back in episode 139, that's simplefamilies.com/episode139. I talked about how to get your kid to play more independently. When I talk about quiet time, what I'm really talking about is a time when your child goes into another room and maybe even shuts the door and sits and plays quietly. And it almost feels like they're sleeping or taking a nap. So why bother with quiet time? Well, first of all, because as parents, sometimes we just really need a break, a physical break, a mental break, just a little bit of time by ourselves. And if you're the kind of parent that needs that you're not alone, I'd argue that every parent needs that whether or not they recognize it.

But I also think giving kids an opportunity to sit alone with themselves on their thoughts can be really powerful too. Especially raising kids in an era where we feel like we need to be constant entertainers. And we tend to do a lot of entertaining of our kids. Now, there are a lot of people who suggested that after my kids give up their nap, that I should start quiet time with them. So instead of having them take a nap in the afternoons, having them do quiet time, and I tried this briefly, when both of my kids gave up their naps and I failed miserably added, it just seemed like more trouble than it was worth to me. So we gave it up and didn't really revisit it for probably about two years. But in the past six to nine months, I would say we've started to bring it back.

My first step for getting started is to start small, even five or 10 minutes of time where your kids are in their room with the door closed playing can feel really peaceful, especially right now where the world feels really noisy. And maybe this is where I went wrong. I think when I started trying to do quiet time, I was trying to replace a nap. So I was thinking, Oh yeah, my kid was taking an hour nap. They're going to go into the room and sit for an hour quietly and play quietly for that hour instead. Yeah, that never worked for us. Never. I know it works for some people, but I think that it can be hard to execute. So I'm going to tell you to start small. If you have a kid that is constantly under foot and is really clingy, it needs to be close to you.

Spending even five minutes in their room alone is going to feel like a lot. We started with 10 minutes for my kids and two things surprised me. Well, one, they did pretty well with 10 minutes right out the door. But number two, 10 minutes of quiet feels like a lifetime. I know it seems like a short time, but I'm telling you it's still all worth the effort. So baby steps start small. You're going to need a timer, a visual timer, which I've talked about on the podcast before is awesome. You can get an actual physical, visual timer on Amazon. If you want to buy one, you can get a digital visual timer app on your phone, or you can just do a regular audio timer that works too. We have the Google home system and that's easy for us. So pick a type of timer and stick with that time or whatever it is now when starting out and establishing a new behavior like this.

I like to use something. I call naturally occurring rewards. These are rewards that your kids are going to get anyways, things that they normally do, things that you normally give them. They're things that they look forward to. An example of this is vitamins at bedtime. My kids love taking their vitamins because they taste good. They're gummy vitamins. And first they have to get their pajamas on and they have to go potty. Then they can have the vitamins. So I take the behaviors that they don't love, like going potty and getting their pajamas on, and I make them do them first, and then they get their vitamins. First to get ready for bed, and then you get your vitamins. I call it a naturally occurring reward because it's something that they're going to get anyways. But by patterning the requests like this, it helps to build up a little bit of momentum.

I do this with quiet time too. Quiet time comes before screen time and my kids really look forward to screen time. So first we do quiet time and then we do screen time. This usually leaves my kids running for their bedrooms for quiet time. And once they're in there, they're attitudes are generally pretty positive. Whatever they've taken in there to entertain themselves or to play with or to build they'll participate in until the timer goes off. When you put something less preferred before something preferred you building natural motivation. So you're going to give them screen time anyways, but now screen time has become sort of a reward. So in our house first, you do quiet time. And then you get your screen time since we've made this our habit. My kids actually remind me about quiet time. If I forget. So schedule it, pattern it in with something more preferable in your day.

If your kids are really resistant to it, maybe it's screen time. Maybe it's family read aloud time. What I read is that your kids look forward to now, why is quiet time so hard for some kids? If you have a kid who does quiet time beautifully, maybe you're doing everything right as a parent, or maybe you have a kid who just does better on their own. So I've got one kid who's an introvert and plays really creatively and she is really good at quiet time. It was actually really easy to get her started with quiet time because she can take a pillow and make up a story about it and talk to herself for an hour. Now I have another kid. Who's an extrovert and gets bored pretty easily. He's a novelty seeker. He has a harder time with quiet time. The idea of being alone in his room without other people, without anything obvious to do, it's harder for him.

But interestingly, I will say that after we made quiet time, a habit, the tables turned and my extrovert who struggled with quiet time is actually the one who really values it now. Mostly because he really values falling a schedule and predictability, and it's become a predictable part of his routine. So he does it amazingly now. And my daughter, who is my introvert, creative free spirit loves play quietly on her own, but she does not like to do it on my agenda on my timeline. So, while she will get lost in play by herself, in her room for an hour, doesn't always like to agree to do it when I'm asking her to do it, that free spirit bit comes in. So personality plays so much into this. You could look at the age old nature versus nurture debate, but I'd say of all the factors, your parenting style is probably minimally affecting how your kids are doing quiet time.

I think self-blame and motherhood is such a huge thing that when our kids are not doing quiet time, they're not playing independently. A lot of times we can blame ourselves and there's something to be said about that. You know, if you are your kid's constant playmate, they might seek you out more. But I think above all, there is a huge personality piece to this and some kids have an easier time with it. But regardless of your kid's personality, all kids thrive on predictability and routine. They might resist it, but they still need it. So schedule the quiet time in, make it part of your routine, make it come before something that they love and start small. Okay. Now I don't have any rules about silence during quiet time. My kids go into their rooms and sometimes they sing songs and they're making noise and to me, that's okay.

It's a big ask for them to go to their rooms and shut the door and be in there by themselves period. So if they're going to be in there with the door shut, I'm okay with them making a little bit of noise. It still feels very peaceful in my house regardless. So I do invite them to take toys into their room. I do help them come up with ideas of things to do well while they're in there. If they're feeling resistant or if they're struggling, if you have a kid who's artsy, you might give them a couple of craft supplies and suggest some sort of non messy craft while they're in there. All right, guys, it's quiet time. Let's do it. That's usually the tone that I'm leading with and if my voice sounds a little inauthentic, when I say that, that's because I'm recording a podcast right now, but I assure you my voice is that excited every day, when my kids do quiet time, authentically that excited.

Now, if your tone is more like this, get in your room. It's quiet time. Then it's more like the timeout tone. And there can be kind of a fuzzy line between timeout and quiet time. So if your kids are feeling like it's punitive, they're going to be more resistant. It's going to feel a little more shameful. So keeping your attitude positive is going to help impact their attitude as well. So something I'd like you to keep in mind in this is the extinction burst. So, the extinction burst is basically anytime you're trying to change a behavior, it might get worse before it gets better. I noticed this with my son at first, he really, really resisted quiet time. It took probably two or three days of making it a habit until we got to the point where it was just part of the routine, but it was pretty brutal at first.

So if you see the extinction burst where it gets a little bit harder before it gets better, don't give up, stick with it, try to tolerate the whining. I know that as parents, we can be really averse to whining, but for most of you, that's probably what the extinction burst is going to look like. A lot of whining. I try to notice when my behavior is impacted by my fear of whining, sometimes the fear of whining can inhibit us from doing things that we really want to do with our family or with our kids. And it takes some mental self-talk where I talk myself through it. I can handle some whining. Whining is temporary. The only rule I have with quiet time is if your kids are in quiet time, you have to be sitting down. I know that as parents, we have such a hard time sitting down, but sit down preferably device-free and just take a couple deep breaths because you might not get that much of it. So soak up what you have. Thanks so much for tuning in. If you want to check out the foundations program, there is 50% off until Wednesday. Go to simplefamilies.com/foundations to get that early bird discount. It ends Wednesday, April 1st. Thanks for tuning in and have a good one.