- I believe that so many elements of our culture
and the things that kids suffer from today
like depression and anxiety would be strongly alleviated
if we all took note of this one thing.
Stick with me until the end
'cause I have a free gift to share with you
that will help you get on track with minimalism.
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The Parenting Junkie.
Hi, I'm Avital, I'm a mindful parenting coach,
and I'm the mother of four,
and I'm so proud to be helping parents across the globe
reclaim presence, peace and play for their families
and I hope I can do the same for you.
Today I'm gonna be outlining why minimalism
is so important for children.
So if you're not convinced yet,
you're not yet on the minimalism bandwagon,
this episode is for you.
Or if there's someone else who is
kind of interested in minimalism
and they wanna understand what it's all about,
send them this episode, tag them, share it with them,
they're going to get great information
on why minimalism is so important.
So slam on the Like button, and let's get started.
Number one, they're more calm and peaceful.
When kids live in a relatively soothing,
minimalistic environment they themselves are calmer.
Consider the effect your environment has on you.
If you are in a hustle, bustle kind of place
like an airport or supermarket,
how does that affect your internal state
versus if you're in a very soothing place
like a spa or the beach?
What we see around us,
our visual cues from our surroundings,
inform our nervous system of how heightened
our attention should be, how alert we need to be,
and whether we need to be on guard,
or whether we can actually rest and digest.
And that's why design is incredible important,
but I don't mean design just in terms
of the aesthetics of things and your taste and preferences,
I mean design in terms of what's actually informing us
of how we should behave with regards to our surroundings.
When you go somewhere like an airport
there's design all around, the signs, the uniforms,
the color system, the materials used,
the proportions of the architecture, for example,
all informs you how you should behave
and how you should feel.
The design of our home does the same thing
and when you have less stuff,
when there's a more of a soothing atmosphere
then we feel calmer and more peaceful.
Consider what you feel when you face
a massive pile of clutter.
If you see a very cluttered room
with lots and lots of stuff in it
then it probably causes you some levels of stress.
You probably feel defensive and you don't know
where to place your attention.
Which leads me to point number two
which is that they're better focused,
they have longer spans of attention, we all do,
when we're in a more minimalistic environment.
It's really simple common sense,
but the less distraction we have
the more we're able to focus at the task at hand.
And so if you have a more minimalistic environment
you can expect children to be able
to sink into deeper play,
to listen to stories for longer,
to do their work, whatever it is, with a greater attention
because they're not literally being distracted
the whole time, even by just the knickknacks
and household objects around.
When there's things that you could fidget with,
things that you could trip over,
things that your eye is drawn to all over the room
then it's very hard to focus on what matters.
Whereas when everything is clean,
where it's a clean slate and a white wall,
and it's just that one thing that you wanna be focused on
that grabs your attention.
So if you think about the difference between
a wall or a room with a ton of different things going on,
lots of different furniture, lots of different shelves,
lots of different heights, knickknack, clutter, et cetera,
and compare that to a smooth, white wall
with just one poster or one cluster of objects to focus on
you can see the difference between how our focus works.
That's why minimalism is important for children
so that they can focus on what's important, the children.
Number three is there's less conflict
when we are minimalistic.
When there's less things to fight over
then there's less fighting, especially between siblings.
The fewer toys you have, the fewer items they have,
the less fighting and conflict there is.
The fewer clothes they have in their closet,
the less fighting over what to wear.
The fewer things out in your home,
the less there's conflict over tiding up
and cleaning up as well.
So it just makes everything run a lot smoother
when there's less distractions
and less things to manage and deal with.
Number four is that there's less focus no materialism.
I think most of us here want to raise children
who aren't super-duper materialistic
but that's very hard in industrialized nations.
There are a lot of things, a lot of items, toys,
new things all the time, fads changing,
and coming out, et cetera, and children get used to it.
I know at least my children get used to the expectation
that there's always new stuff coming in.
When there's some focus on minimalism
then we at least have a conversation around
do we really want more stuff,
do we really benefit from it, and who does?
Does the planet benefit from it?
Does the marketers selling those items benefit form it?
Do we need these things and do they bring us joy?
Number five is I think minimalism supports more gratitude.
I think when we're more intentional, and deliberate,
and careful about what we have and how much we have
then we are more grateful and take better care
of the things that we do have.
When we are actually aware and we're thoughtful
about whether or not we wanna spend money on more things,
whether or not we wanna get more things,
and that doesn't mean that we can't.
I'm certainly not a hardcore minimalist
we have stuff in our house, as you can see,
but that doesn't mean that we aren't intentional
about the things that do come in
and about whether or not we keep them.
Because we are aware that everything
that comes into our house has energy
and takes energy from us to keep it organized.
If something comes into our home
that we're not thrilled about,
we might enjoy it for a little while until we get bored
and then pass it on to someone who could enjoy it better.
That, I think, leads to a greater sense of gratitude
because we care, we think about what's coming in
and about what we have.
If this is making sense for you
give me a love in the comments below
and I would love to hear why minimalism is important to you
or if you've got on the minimalism bandwagon.
It's a spectrum, remember,
we aren't either minimalistic or maximalist,
we are somewhere in the middle and we are always journeying
and toing and froing depending on our household,
our budget, our children, and all of that.
So don't worry about being hardcore or being perfect,
no such thing, but give me a love in the comments below
if you're into this.
Number six is spending more time outside.
I think that when you have less things in the home,
less things that you want to be busy with all the time,
it encourages you to get out and about
and to spend more time outdoors and in nature.
It has been very well documented how important
nature time is for all of us humans,
and especially children.
And so I think having less focus on
accumulating stuff in the home
and doing more things in the home
helps to encourage us to get out of the home
and really interact with the big world.
Number seven is that minimalism encourages creativity.
When you don't have a specific toy
for each and every thing you might be imagining,
then you imagine into your open ended simple things
that you have around the home.
Rather than having the exact right
ice cream set in your toys,
you take a block and you pretend it's an ice cream.
So minimalism encourages us to be resourceful
and to think outside of the box
and to put much more imagination
and creativity into the things that we do.
It encourages us to use one thing for many things
rather than to cater to every single need
that we might have.
And it does that for us adults as well.
When we're more minimalistic in our wardrobe
we are more creative in the combinations that we use.
When we're more minimalistic in our pantry we're, again,
more creative in our cooking and in our recipes.
Rather than having the exact item and exact product
to fit every single box, we learn to be resourceful
and use the one for many.
Number eight is a home that focuses on minimalism, I think,
teaches children to steward their money more mindfully
because when you're minimalistic
you're really being careful about what you purchase,
in other words, what you spend money on
and that leads directly into a conversation
about where we wanna put our resources
and where we want to spend our money,
and the conversation that using money
is like voting as well.
It's voting for those companies or those processes
that we want to support in the world
and that we want to champion and patron.
When you're minimalistic you're more intentional
about the items that you buy and that leads
to a conversation about being more intentional
about how you spend your money.
And if you want more on that I recommend
watching my video about allowance.
Number nine is I think that minimalism
helps us to focus on eco friendliness,
on being better to the planet.
When we're being conscientious about what we buy
and trying to be conscientious
about where we buy it from as much as possible,
I know I have a long way to go on that yet,
but having a focus on minimalism allows us to really think
well where did these things come from?
What material are they made out of?
Who made them and how were they treated along the way?
And how did this affect our planet,
and how long will we use this for,
how much will we use it?
What will happen to it when we're done with it?
All of that helps us to open up the conversation
about caring for our planet
and being more careful about our consumption.
And number 10 is that minimalism and a minimalist focus
helps us to put more of a focus
on experiences and on the quality
rather than on the quantity or on the things.
You can watch my video all about
giving experiences as gifts after this one,
but I wanted to say that I think that we can all agree
that experiences pay dividens,
and this is backed up by research.
When you have more experiences, going to a museum,
meeting friends, traveling,
just even going to your local forest and hiking,
these things pay dividens.
The memories that we create, the lessons that we learn,
their value actually goes up over time.
We value them more over time.
Whereas when we buy items, generally speaking,
we get a hit of dopamine, we get excited
when we got the acquisition, when we purchase this item
and to begin with it's exciting
and then very quickly that subsides
and we're no longer interested
and it becomes that clutter around the home,
we're ready to give it to someone else.
And so the happiness graph drops
when we get more things, more stuff.
But the happiness graph grows when we have experiences,
when we invest in experiences
and I think minimalism helps to remind us,
don't buy so much stuff, rather invest in your experiences.
So if you are ready to start becoming
more minimalistic to start decluttering
I have a guide for you that will help,
it's a free PDF download.
Go ahead to my website, TheParentingJunkie.com/design
and get your free Childhood Design Guide
which will help you to start to create
a minimalistic environment that isn't hardcore,
we're not going for extreme or fundamentalist.
You're still gonna have things,
you can still have toys if you want,
and I'll recommend which ones you should have,
I certainly have many.
But they'll be more intentional, more deliberate,
and you will free up so much space and so much energy
for the things that matter in your life.
Now if you wanna band together
with parents from across the globe
who are also trying to be more minimalistic
then go on over to Facebook
and join Love Parenting with Avital,
it's my free Facebook group with the best parents
from around the world talking about things just like this.
And if you have anyone who you know who might be
interested in why minimalism helps children,
perhaps a school teacher or a fellow parent,
then please share this video with them.
I think it could help.
Plus you may have heard that I've recently
launched my podcast, The Parenting Junkie Show.
You are warmly invited to head on over and subscribe to that
and hear a lot more about minimalism
and many other parenting topics there.
Slam that subscribe button right now
because next week here's what's coming.
In this video you're gonna learn how to be more productive
as a WAHM, a work at home mom,
or dad.