Parenting Children and Pre-Teens to be Independent and Organized with Alison Strang

Show Notes:

Are you navigating the tricky path of parenting through the transition years? As your kids edge towards their preteens, there's an opportunity to do some intentional skill-building that will support developing independence and autonomy in an effective way.

With insight from Alison Strang, the founder of Soothing Spaces, the episode begins with a discussion on how to create spaces that truly reflect your children's personalities. We explore the unintentional guilt children may feel about not liking certain items and how to address it. Alison shares valuable advice on toy selection, the significance of decluttering, and how to involve your kids in this process. We also dive deep into the emotional process of passing down toys and how to navigate it.

We'll also share some practical approaches to toy organization, including the concept of toy rotation to enhance independent play. Our conversation extends to teaching kids about gift-giving, consumerism, and sustainability. We explore the "sunk cost" concept that comes with decluttering and wrap up with the importance of community giving and toy donation. Be ready to gain new perspectives on parenting and home organization.

Alison's contact information:

Website: https://soothingspaces.ca/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/soothingspaces/

 

Transcript:

 

Tara Gratto: Hello and welcome to Tara's Take. This is a podcast about parenting, education, and life with kids. Today I'm joined by guest expert Allison Strang. We are going to be talking about sort of pre teen, teen, transitions from childhood. Allison is the founder of Soothing Spaces, which is a sort of decluttering and home organization company, but her background is actually in education.

She's worked in the private sector, in the public sector. I'll get her to tell us a little bit more about what she does now and what she's done before and those two things go together. As you know, I love to talk to educators because we have a slightly different perspective on life. And one of the things we have is some insights into what's happening inside schools and sort of, it gives us a chance to look at children and childhood development from a slightly different perspective.

And I think that's really helpful for a lot of parents as they're sort of navigating tricky things in parenting. So welcome, Allison. Thank you for joining us.

Alison Strang: Thank you so much for having me here. So a little bit about myself. I was an elementary school teacher for almost 20 years.

I was lucky enough to teach in lots of different schools in the UK and Canada in Quebec and Ontario, both in public, as you said, and private. And what I saw happening in the education system or in schools with young families was a lot of parents doing their very best to support their kids. In the way that they organize themselves.

So not only in their day at school, but when they come home and a lot of parents would come to me and say that they knew that their kids were trying as hard as they could to keep their stuff organized. But, you know, at the end of the day, it's a learning process. And so when I opened up Soothing Spaces, which is a home organizing company, my goal is really to help families.

So help families create calm and functional spaces in their homes so that they can navigate their busy days, doing all the things that are important to them. But with this scaffolding and with this kind of teaching and education from an educator so that they could understand how to help their kids back in their spaces.

 

Tara Gratto: Awesome. Yes, I think that's one of the things that I do a lot of support of as well as sort of this idea of like, how do we take sort of concepts from education and apply them at home to help you help your child go through the process. And something I've talked a lot about on the show is this idea that like we used to be a very fear based society.

We used to use a lot of fear, threats, bribery, punishment to get things done. And as we were moving to a different way of parenting, a different approach to education, people are finding a real disconnect. So they're kind of saying, well, it used to just happen, right? When I was younger, kids just put their backpacks away.

And when I was younger, this and that would happen. And so one of the things I do a lot of talking about is, yes, because you were afraid you were afraid of something. You're afraid of punishment. You're afraid of sort of something, some major consequence happening if you didn't do X, Y, Z. Now, when we remove that, because we now know that's not the most helpful or healthy way to sort of raise Children.

When we remove that, it does create some really complex scenarios in parenting because kids don't just do these things and stuff doesn't just happen, right? Kids have to learn and it's a skill building process. So I think that's one of the things that's so valuable about being an educator in these different spaces is we're able to take that learning style and be like, Hey, here's how to break it down. Here's how to so I can see like that connection is such a sort of important piece.

Now, one of the things that sort of you said to me a couple weeks ago, so Allison reached out to me, we met in a business group together, but Allison reached out to me because she'd been seeing something really specific. And if you've been following my podcast, you know, I have a couple episodes on sort of responsibilities and chores and childhood, but Allison reached out to me about something really specific that I think is really worth delving into, especially as we head into the holiday season, where people are starting to think about change and starting to get new things and kids are asking for things that are very different potentially, right?

Maybe you have a child who's sort of asking for something and maybe one of your first reactions is, "Oh, you're too young or too old for that" so, Allison, do you want to sort of delve into why you reached out to me? Because I think what you had to say was really sort of valuable and important and sort of something to bring forward to parents as we're thinking about the time of transition.

Alison Strang: Absolutely. So a lot of families hire me and I work with mom and dad and the goal is to or whatever parents are in the house and the goal is to educate the parents, teach the parents how to keep their space in a certain way that is optimal for the whole family. But a lot of parents have started keeping their kids home.

And you know, if mom and dad feel comfortable with that, or whoever is at home, a guardian or a nanny or whoever is at home with the children, um, I'm happy to work with children as well as parents. And what I started to see is that children in their spaces are actually really ready to show their parents that they're ready to move on to a different stage, or they're ready to let go of things in their space, or they want their space, their room, their playroom, the basement, whatever space we're talking about in the home, they're ready for it to look more reflective of who they see themselves as, and what they see themselves enjoying and doing in their day, in their free time, and parents are having a really hard time with that so, I reached out to you because I really wanted to flag this issue is that parents want the best for their kids.

Parents are hiring me to be in their space to help their families. So it is always coming from a place of wanting to support and help their families and their children. But what they're not realizing is sometimes saying certain things when your child is ready to let go of things is actually inhibiting your child from becoming more independent and more autonomous in their space.

And really the goal, as you said, is to give kids the tools, teach kids the tools to be the way that we hope them to be in their daily life. Keeping care of their belongings, showing respect for their things, knowing where their things are, when they need them, enjoying their personal spaces. So we want them to learn all of that.

But if we inhibit that by saying, "oh, well Grandma gave you that stuffy when you were three. Are you sure you're ready to let go of it?" You know, kids want to make their parents happy. So when they hear that kind of talk, um, the kid might be ready to get rid of the stuffy. They're okay with getting rid of the stuffy. They're ready for, you know, this is just an example of a thing. Um, and mom and dad are the ones who are actually saying, well, let's keep, let's keep hold of that for a little longer. And that's a bit problematic.

Tara Gratto: Right. Well, that's guilt, right? That's some guilt around like, are you not valuing that thing that somebody gave you?

It could be somebody or it could be you, right? The parent, right? Are you not valuing that thing? But I think what you're trying to say or what I'm hearing is the bigger message is it's not about valuing the thing. It's about realizing that maybe our child has shifted to a different space. And it's not that they don't appreciate the person, but it doesn't reflect where they now are in their sort of outlook in sort of their developmental sort of capacity and space and those kinds of things.

Alison Strang: , I think a lot of parents feel like they've lost a few years. You know, we've just come out of a situation in, in our lives where we were all at home a lot together, or we were restricted with what we could do or where we could go or who we could have in our space. And so I think a lot of parents have lost some time and are holding on to those feelings of childhood or memories that they have with their kids, and are also having a hard time letting go because, you know, time is going too quickly. And when you feel like you've lost a whole chunk of time, that exasperates it, too,

Tara Gratto: right? And I mean, there's quite a bit of research right now, actually talking about, um, social media and its impact on mental health, right?

So there's kind of no denying that social media. Now, one of the things that people are saying is it's like, kind of the thing that's causing teen anxiety and teen depression. And there are some researchers that are like, sort of raising their hand and saying, Hey, hey, There's another thing here that's been happening and that thing that's been happening is we're not giving children enough independence and autonomy, which is actually increasing their independent, sorry, it's increasing their anxiety, and it's increasing, increasing their mental health, sort of, you know, state of overwhelm, unwell, because truly, they're not allowed to make a whole lot of choices. They're not allowed to make a lot of decisions. And they're kind of guarded everywhere they go, right? They're kind of in a bubble where they're not allowed to do a whole lot. And then when we want them to do those things, it's actually quite anxiety inducing because they have no experience doing it. Like they've been protected all this time, dropped off and they never learned how to use the bus or they didn't walk very far. They didn't sort of do the things because of time.

Another piece, I was talking to a parent about this. Time is a real factor here. There are things that I have done for my children that had nothing to do with me, not wanting them to be independent and everything to do with, we have half an hour, I don't have time for you to walk there and walk back. But then when I sat back and I was like, Oh, I actually created some problematic things for myself by not allocating enough time because now they need to do things that they really, I now have to spend even more time teaching them how to do because I didn't do it when they were younger.

Alison Strang: Absolutely. And being in charge of your bedroom.

Let's use the bedroom as a space. We're talking about being in charge of your own bedroom as a child, as a preteen or a teen, and being able to make those decisions that you feel you had some control over in your space that you Sleep in that maybe you do homework in and you play in, um, you know, gives you these little baby steps towards what we're talking about, where we want children and teens and preteens to be independent or have the skills, um, to be able to go out and do the things that they need to do.

And it's an easy step for parents to take. How are you feeling about your space right now? You know, do these toys or does this. Um, space reflect who you feel you are right now, what your interests are, how you enjoy to relax in your space in your free time, um, because, you know, they're at school in a space with lots of people all day long and really children's bedrooms or a den or a basement or whatever the space is that they've carved out for themselves where they can go in their off time in their free time.

It does need to feel like a space that is kind of like a cocoon or a safe space that reflects you know them, and if they're holding on to things from their childhood that they have no interest in, it doesn't give them any kind of autonomy because it's not reflective of who they are in that time.

It also sort

Tara Gratto: of, I'm gonna guess, contributes to like, cluttering. Right, which we also know there's a connection to mental health, like it's, it would be like an unintentional reinforcement of clutter where it's like, I don't want you to grow up. So I want, I want you to keep hold of these things while we add new things. And all of a sudden we have too many things in a room. I can imagine that would be a part of it too.

Alison Strang: And what I'm also seeing a lot of is parents have held onto their childhood toys and bestowed those childhood toys onto their children. And their children may not have the same interest that they had when they were kids.

And so I have actually seen over the last year, a lot of homes where there's been stuffies or dolls or super, um, superhero figurines, those types of things in children's spaces. And when I'm working with the kids and I'm asking them, you know, we'll make you some bins to hold some of your things that are important to you and do we need a bin, for example, that has dolls and the child will look at me and say, well, I don't play with those kinds of things. That was my mom. Right. You know? So there's many

Tara Gratto: layers of what you're talking

Alison Strang: about. Yeah. So, you know, finding that dynamic where as a parent, we say to our kids, our kids, you know, this is your space and that's hard as a parent, right?

Because it's your house and you want a house a certain way, right? Um, but you know, really giving ownership of that space to your child and allowing it to be that space that reflects them. It's okay if they don't want to hold on to your superheroes. It's okay if they don't want to hold on to your dolls.

It's not that they don't care about your childhood memories, as you were saying, it's not that they don't care about, you know, the memories of the things, but it's not reflective of who they are and allowing them to have that other space, um, you know, will create intrinsic desires to have a space that feels calm, organized. Functional, you know, in a way that when you go into that space, you're not spinning. You're not pinballing around because there's so many visual distractions that you can't focus on whatever it is. You want to be focusing on.

Tara Gratto: Right. And I think one of the things I talk a lot about in my work is unintentional, right?

Unintentional reinforcement, unintentional relationships, unintentional behavior. I can, I can imagine how this goes. Kids would, like you created an unintentional situation where they feel guilty about these toys that they have no interest in, but they probably don't feel like they can tell you. I suspect that's where your role has come in.

Because I can't imagine very many children being willing to tell their parents that I don't really like your superhero toys or I don't really like your dolls. I can see. So it's kind of, do you have a suggestion there for how to sort of make it more of a space? So obviously this is something you do. You work one on one with families to sort of open that door. But what about families who may be listening, who are Nowhere near sort of where you offer your services. What would be a recommendation for you and sort of how do you approach this conversation with children to open the door to being? Open minded that it's not, you're not going to have, I mean, your feelings aren't going to be hurt. I mean, maybe they are and that's okay, but what does that look like?

Alison Strang: Well, actually open ended questions is the key. So going into it where you create a situation where you're having a really nice conversation that feels like the child can say whatever they need to say. And by the way you question, or by the way you invite them to respond to your conversation, um, will give them those cues.

So open ended questions mean that there is no yes or no, there is no, um, right or wrong. So how do you feel about this space right now? You know, Tara, how do you feel about your space? Does it feel like a space you enjoy?

Tell me about what you like about this space.

Yeah.

Is there anything about this space that makes you feel like it doesn't feel like you? So all of these ways of questioning that allow children to give back an answer where you have not indicated to them that you were looking for a right or wrong, or that there is a right or wrong. And then really, you know, your parent, your part as a parent is to really listen,

right

if they're saying, so for example, the superhero example that I gave you, how do you feel about this space? And you list me the bedding and you like the artwork and you love your closet because your clothes are in there and you like the clothes you have. And you don't mention the superhero,

right

and you don't mention the bin of toys that you haven't played with for six months, for example, as a parent, then it's my role to think, okay so they've listed all the things they love about this space and how it makes them feel good. And the thing, these things were never listed. And you don't need to point that out to your child. You can go back and reflect on it and think, okay, how are we going to make this space feel more, um, you know, independent for this child? It feel like it's their space and not, um, you know, the long history of all the stages that they went through.

Tara Gratto: Right. And if you have a child that sort of like has a hard time focusing, because a lot of children have a hard time focusing, and if the room is overwhelming. I would also suggest doing things like what are your top three, what are three, what are your three favorite toys, what are your three least favorite.

Yeah. Absolutely. And, and,

Alison Strang: List making really, and you can have a big list. And then cut down the list. So it can be a multi step process where you sit as a family and you think about pros and cons of the room or top, top three things you like, top three things you don't want to have in your space anymore.

But some children might have a hard time cutting that down. And that's where as a parent, you can go back and say, well, like, we don't have to make these decisions today. Let's think about this and then revisit the list. And kids are pretty good at cutting things back when they've had time to reflect.

Tara Gratto: Now, one of the things that I often share and I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this. So I'm very forward with children. I believe children, empowering them in hard conversations is essential. So I would be tempted. So if I'm a parent who's listening to this, I might for the first time ever be thinking, Oh my goodness, my kids have toys that I pushed on them by by just thinking.

So where does this come from? Let me just do it two steps back. This comes from the idea and I've talked to another friend of mine who's a decluttering expert a lot about this. The idea that previous to these generations, we passed things on because that was sustainable. That was things were built to last things were meant to last and her and I have lots of conversations about this because I struggle, um, I'm moving and I'm getting rid of some things that I'm deeply upset about because I'm like, they're still like they were made in Canada, they're solid wood, like they're amazing.

And nobody's buying them. And I know why they're not because they're not all my fashion, quote, air quote, fashion, my couch sold. I'm like, how did this sell before this? Right? Like, yeah. Because what I see as quality and like enduring and even when I was sort of buying things for my children previously, I was like, okay, buy things that will last by things that can be passed down by things. And that's not the world we live in. So part of it is also striking a balance in our head between that's not how the world works. Your superheroes and today's superheroes are not the same today's Barbies and yesterday's Barbies are not the same. It doesn't mean there's not value in those two things, but you do have to think.

Fashion is not the same. Toys are not the same. Things are not the same. That sustainable life cycle way of doing things isn't the mentality of the generation. So it doesn't mean we can't pass them down. It means we're gonna have to pass them down to specific places, right? This idea. But so one of the things that sort of I want to put out there is if you're a parent who's the first time thinking, Oh, my goodness, there's toys in my kid's bedroom, and I have unintentionally made them feel bad. They can't tell me. So my sort of gut reaction is to actually own that. So And be like, oh my goodness, I just realized something. I just realized that I have toys that I gave you that you might not like. And, and I'm okay with you telling me that you don't like them. Mm hmm. So that's kind of like where my gut goes, which would be very different than the advice you're suggesting.

Which is like, have this open ended conversation and if they don't mention it, it's okay to get rid of that. What's your sort of take on... The flip approach. I mean, this, this is there are no wrong approaches here. So I'm throwing this idea out there because there's no right or wrong way . And sometimes we need one approach and it might work for one of your kids. And then the approach I'm suggesting might work for another kid. But I am curious to hear as somebody who does this. What do you think about the, like, just own it? I, I did something I think I should have done differently.

Alison Strang: So I, I personally, in my personal life as a mom of three boys, that is the approach that I take. So I completely understand where you're coming from because that's the approach that I take with my own children. I love Playmobil. I had Playmobil as a child. My children, when my first was, uh, he's almost 12. So when he was little, we had a lot of Playmobil, the second and third children. Zero interest in playmobil. We still have the playmobil. Um, I noticed, hey boys, I noticed no one's playing with the playmobil. Uh, we put it into a big Rubbermaid tote, packed it all away, and I said to them, you know, if nobody's going to be playing with the playmobil, I'm going to hold on to it in the basement in this tote for a little while, and if no one mentions it, or no one's interested in playing with it, doesn't come up in conversation, mommy's gonna probably pass it along to someone who's going to be able to use it.

So, I hear what you're saying with that approach. But you probably practice that approach with your kids and your family from day one, or, you know, you've been practicing that approach with them, as have I. So what I found with families, and the reason why I say doing open ended, a little bit less, um, point blank about, you know, where you're going with this, is because a lot of families haven't been practicing that and telling them that maybe you're going to get rid of a toy that they're not sure what you think of it, or maybe they don't know what they think of it themselves, might be a little bit too much too soon, if you've never had those kind of conversations with your children. Um, but you know, a middle, a middle ground is, um, when they don't, you know, these open ended questions, they don't mention these certain toys, thinking to yourself, okay, maybe they're not into that anymore.

And doing what I suggested with the Playmobil, I told my kids what I was doing with it. But you could do that, um, you know, directly or indirectly, um, where you pop away the toy. Um, and put them into a bin.

Actually, I did a reel about this a little while back, um, where I demonstrated cleaning all the toys, packing them all away, putting them into a clean tote, labeling that tote, putting it up onto a shelf. It's all the, uh, Schleck. I have all these Schleck, um, animals, plastic animals that I just adore.

Tara Gratto: I use them in my preschool extensively. Yeah.

Alison Strang: So they're perfect for a certain age. Well, my kids are almost 12, nine and seven and a half. So they've come. I put them all away. I didn't even mention it to them and no one has mentioned it. I'll have to go back and look at when I posted that, but this is, I want to say it's almost six months ago. No one's mentioned it. So as a parent, if you're not ready to have a, "Hey, I noticed no one's playing with this, or I noticed you didn't mention this. Are you okay with us getting rid of it? We can pass it along to you, this cousin, or we can take it to this family that, you know, we noticed is just moved to Canada and maybe need some toys because they couldn't bring their toys with them."

If you don't feel like you can be that explicit with your children about it, um, discreetly tucking it away and waiting to see if anyone mentions it. Can be a strategy. The key, the key, the caveat to that, you have to remember where you put it. And don't let it sit there for too long. So what we don't want is bins of stuff that you put away air quotes for a rainy day or to see if anyone noticed and then you forget about it.

And then I don't, I don't want moms and dads and parents and guardians and, and you know, whoever's working with these kids to be so overwhelmed that there's 10 bins that have all these toys and now what? So that's not really the goal. You have to remember. So I have

Tara Gratto: a Tara Stewart, um, uh, suggestion here because she talks a lot about this too.

She's fantastic.

Yeah, hers is set a reminder in your phone. Absolutely. Where is it and how long and get rid of it she's so her and I've had many conversations about toy storage and not toy storage and it's so interesting to talk to different people because as you just pointed out, we're all different. And yes, I'm a very forward parent. So I've had lots of very forward on my own tricky stuff with my kids. So they're pretty used to me being like, yeah, I screwed up here. And here's how, here's why. And so you make such a valid point that there's like no hard line sort of way to do it. Same thing. So she's more pro don't, if it's, we don't even store it, we just get rid of it.

So that's sort of her sort of, um, space. But one of the things I have done with families who have small spaces or who have choice overwhelm.

So I have a podcast on this, especially with young children, although it's, it's really everybody, but. Parents will say to me, my child can't play independently. They can't.

And one of the first things I look at is how much stuff is in your play space, because you probably have too much. And so part of the reasons things aren't being used, if you, this is like a bit off topic, but for younger children, the rotation idea can be super effective. Set yourself a note, get the kids involved in, okay, this month, let them pick it.

It's when the adults pick it that I find it a bit problematic, but like. store everything in totes, have three out at a time, and then go on a very, you know, strategic schedule and switch them out. Okay, now we're going to bring the schleck animals, and we're going to put away the space stuff, whatever the case may be.

It kind of depends on what your toy situation is, but if you have more than sort of, three ish options out, your children probably aren't playing simply because as soon as we have too much to play with, we don't play. We can't. We don't have to be creative. We don't have to think outside the box. We don't have to make do.

We just dump. And that's when we have the, like, the toy rooms that are like, That's because there's just too much. So that's sort of, that was like a segue to like, if you want a good way to use a toy rotation, that's an amazing sort of strategy.

Alison Strang: Absolutely. And I see that a lot in bedrooms too. I hear a lot of parents saying, we don't want toys in the living room. We don't want toys on the main floor because we want that to be a neutral space that everyone can be in. And a lot of parents are saying, you know, at the end of the day, um, they don't want to see the plastic toys in their living room or whatever it is, you know? And so they're putting the toys in the kids room.

And exactly what you're saying is what's happening. The kids go to their rooms. They are so overwhelmed. They don't know what to play with. They don't know how to play with it. Everything gets dumped. And then parents come up to the, you know, to the bedroom or look in the bedroom and they're really upset.

Yeah. My kids don't keep their toys organized. What am I going to do? Um, but really paring down, like you say, what is actually in that space that they're using to play? If you want your children to have their toys in their bedroom, or you want them Play and practice play independently in their bedrooms, you have to create an organized space that allows them to be so calm and so focused on whatever it is that they're playing with, because there are 500 choices, right, or things that don't reflect them, you know,

Yeah, that's

Tara Gratto: so I was about to say and tagging back to like where we started with this conversation is what's available to them what they actually want to use, right?

What's our idea of what they want to use? And what's their idea? So I'm going to throw the hard question out to you because I've heard this a million times. Yeah, but my kids change their mind constantly. I can't actually trust what they say. Sure, you're telling me that I should listen to them. But I know tomorrow they're going to tell me they wanted the XYZ doll back, or they're going to have a freak out because I got rid of the grandma Care Bear.

Alison Strang: Yeah, right. But it's all about practicing though. And this is the thing that I tell families that I work with when we are organizing in their space is that there is like you say, no one right answer. There is no one right way. I don't believe in organizing spaces or making decisions about organizing your home.

Um, you know, it's not a one size fits all type it's a, every family is you know, unique and different, but it's all about practicing those skills. So whatever skills you think might work for your family, or maybe try a few and see what works and practicing, making decision making. So bringing back to this whole idea that we are, we want to create children that are autonomous and independent and practicing those skills is you take something that is very low risk.

So a toy that you're a hundred percent certain they don't care about. We're going to get rid of this toy. Do that. Wait a few weeks. Wait a month. Great, you know, great suggestion in the calendar. I suggest to a lot of my clients every month, uh, in their calendar, a reminder to organize whatever space. So reminding yourself about toys as well is fantastic.

And then take another, you know, bin of toys or another thing that's in the room with your child and it might be a little bit of a harder choice. So practicing this skill, so exercising those decision making muscles for children, it doesn't just happen. They have to be given lots of opportunities to practice.

And the same for the room. So don't go into the child's room, and a clean sweep of absolutely everything that you think is. Um, you know, not their age group anymore because it's not really how it works, right? You know, there is no specific age,

Tara Gratto: just those kids grow out

Alison Strang: of, um, you know, a clean sweep. I do go into spaces and I, but I work with the parents, I work with the children. I have an entire, uh, initial consultation, you know, that takes 90, 90 to 120 minutes. To learn the family before I make suggestions of getting rid of anything,

right.

So, you know, doing a clean fleet is going to have the effect you're talking about. The kid's going to come back, going to cry. Look, we got rid of the toys. It didn't work. Now they're super upset and they wish they had the toy back again.

Yeah.

But when they're given the opportunities to practice little by little, I've noticed that you don't, and we could talk about it for clothes as well. You know, the autonomy and the independence of the clothes that they have in their room.

I noticed you never wear hoodies. Your older brother. A true story. Your older brother has lots of hoodies and wore all these hoodies and you were handed down these hoodies and you never ever wear them. Um, you know, do they not, do they feel scratchy? Do they not feel comfy? Well, don't get rid of every single one.

Maybe let the child pick four hoodies that they don't deem as something that they would wear and see how that goes before getting rid of all the hoodies. Um, my oldest child loves dress shirts and flannel shirts and he likes to be buttoned up and be a certain way and my middle guy loves hoodies, right? So my third child has all of these dress shirts. And all of these hoodies. And you know what? He doesn't want to wear either of them. He wants track suits.

Tara Gratto: Well, that's the thing, right? It's all about, it's all about, I think part of it is a bit of resentment, right? I don't want the hand me down. Um, which is tricky. I mean, that's something where like That's like a value you kind of have to like work through with your children too of being like, you know what, we can't have everything new. We do have to be sustainable. We have to think of the planet, but also I want to honor you as a person. So like, how are we striking the balance?

Alison Strang: For sure.

And so, you know, parents can practice with clothes because sometimes clothes are less, um, You know, less risky, I want to say, than toys. So if you are listening to this podcast, and you're a parent, and you're thinking, I've never even given a thought to what's in my child's room, and giving them any say on what is or isn't in their room, and I do want to involve them, well maybe don't pick toys first.

Maybe take clothes first, maybe go through the cupboard. And like you say, I mean, my, my third son that I gave you the example, he has all the clothes from everybody because I'm wanting him to be open to wearing anything. But at the same time, he wears the same track suit every week and I have to wash it every week because he wants to wear it every week.

So, you know, but in giving them that choice, And it's less risky. Um, one pair of jeans or a pair of a hoodie that you donate or you pass along to another family versus the superhero bin of toys. And then, yeah, later they wish that they had it. But if they have those opportunities to practice regularly, it's like anything that we do sports, art, music, anything, you know, from practicing subtraction at school, the more you practice it, the better you get.

And the more opportunities you're exposed to it, the more opportunities to practice it, the more confident you become in doing that, which is what we want ultimately for our children.

Tara Gratto: And I think for me, so from the emotional perspective, I think there's a bigger fear of the reaction than of the actual thing.

So one of the things I talk a lot about is like, we protect our children from disappointment a lot, and frustration and annoyance. And quite often, it's our fear of their reaction to disappointment or their reaction to second guessing. But you know what? Second guessing, disappointment, frustration... So, so again, I'm a different team here.

I'm like, get rid of the thing. And if they get upset about it, that's okay. Work through the feelings of it. Don't be afraid to get rid of things because you're worried about how your child is going to think about it in two weeks.

Alison Strang: And do you know as adults, people feel the exact same way? What you're saying is so true, not just for children, but for adults too.

So when I'm working with families, and you're talking about the parents, Um, sometimes there's extended family that lives with the family as well. And so there's many, many layers of possible disappointment, many layers of, um, uncomfortable feelings. And a lot of the parents are saying, well, I didn't want to get rid of that because when grandma so and so comes twice a year and doesn't see the little toy mini wicker chair in the bedroom with the, you know, the stuffy, she's gonna be really upset.

And so there's disappointment on many layers, um, but. That's okay, because you can practice using some words to explain your decision and why you did what you did. But again, like I said before, a lot of families haven't practiced those things, right? So starting small. Yeah, yeah. With little things and working your way up to, um, you know, this is a example of a family I worked with this summer.

Child was 14 going into grade nine. She wanted her room to reflect. More of a teenage grade nine appropriate bedroom, tiny little white wicker chair, cutest thing, cutest thing for, you know, somebody who's still into stuffies and dolls and would like something like that. But the grandma had gifted it to them and both the parent and the child were worried to get rid of this chair because of what grandma might say.

And you know, it was a big conversation. We took a photo. We actually communicated with grandma before making any decisions. And you know what? She was okay with it. She was okay with it. Yeah,

Tara Gratto: well, we project live anymore. Yeah, we project a lot of things on other people. But the interesting thing for me here is, so I'm all about the layers, right?

So I'm all about the layers. And when I, when I step back from this layer, I'm like, Oh, what are we reinforcing people pleasing? What are we reinforcing lack of boundaries when we live in fear of how everyone else is going to react to our decisions. That's when we start to build out a lot of anxiety, a lot of stress, a lot of, right?

So I think part of sort of the awareness around these kinds of conversations is it's not going to be easy. There is nothing that's going to make it easy. There are different ways to approach it. There are different ways to do it. Sometimes hiring somebody to do it all for you is the best solution. And yes, it's hard and you have to sort of work through that.

And sometimes you need to process a bunch of different things, but ultimately when we let our head get in the way, you probably won't get rid of anything. If you, if you second guess everything, right? And at the root of it is, what is this feeling that I need to, to sort of tackle, to grasp, to, to get sort of in a space with?

We need to have, you know, tokens for we need to have trinkets for every trip, right? The memory is not enough. You must have a knickknack. You must have, right? We are a culture that values stuff instead of experiences and memories. And I keep seeing all these postings as the holidays approach, right? All these postings that are like, we want to change the narrative, but we can't.

Yeah. So one of the things that I want to encourage you to think is It's not that you can't, it's you can't avoid hard feelings, that's a fact. You can't. You can't avoid the hard feelings. There will be some parents.

Alison Strang: Yeah, as parents, you want your children to be gifted things from family members.

Presumably you enjoy the holiday season and receiving, you know, receiving gifts and seeing the joy on your children's faces. But what I have started encouraging families to do, and I have this conversation with every family that I work with, is that, like you're saying, you can change the narrative and you can request to family members, you know, we're really looking to, um, You know, have memories, create experiences, and if there are family members who do really, they really wanna do the gift giving and they really wanna, you know, that's their way of bestowing love and showing love onto your children, you can say, well, is there an opportunity that they could go to that ceramic painting place and you guys could create, you're leaving with something, you're still leaving with something, but it's a memory and something that you created that you could then, you know, have.

Right.

Or you can do an experience where there's nothing that you leave with, you know, not like the ceramic painting or like, well, you can always

Tara Gratto: leave with pictures, whatever. We have our phones everywhere. I saw, I saw a post literally before I came live with you about Christmas and not being able to handle.

Family, right? Because when Children are young, we need family to see the reaction to opening the present. And I've had this conversation in my preschool a lot of times about like, you can still wrap the experience.

Absolutely.

Of course, in the moment, we're going to lose some of the excitement that we're expecting from a culture that's used to like gift giving as like this like enormous thing.

But when we're retraining children and we're retraining adults. And caring adults of those children to rethink. We then create a twofold situation where we're opening the present and we're excited about opening a gift card, right?

Right.

We can still have the unwrapping of the gift card. And then how do we reinforce the experience in the moment?

Tara Gratto: That's how you set the precedent moving forward. So maybe you're not going to have the reaction in the moment that you're sort of envisioning. And you're so worried about disappointing people for It's how you carry that forward, right? It's how you embrace the change. Um,

Alison Strang: and I think when kids are given opportunities to look forward to something.

So you're talking about like a gift card, for example, to a movie or to a museum or to an art exhibit. Or to a concert, you know, a local concert, not I'm not talking Taylor Swift, although somebody wants to give me a gift card to something like something local, you know, something small, it doesn't have to be grand gestures.

Yeah, when you teach children that the gift giving can also be These experiences that are wrapped up, um, when they can practice looking forward to something that is almost just as exciting, you know, right. So that toy that was given that was not played with, it was exciting on, on the day that they unwrapped it.

And then, you know, two weeks later, it's Left on, you know, by the wayside, um, because that excitement is gone. Well, you know, when you're gifting experiences or you're gifting memories or you're gifting whatever it is, time, you know, the gift of time with loved ones, especially a coffee date, a tea date, whatever it is, you know, a walk, you know, come for a sleepover at grandma's house and we're going to make cookies or whatever, you know, whatever you want to make it.

Um, they look forward to it, put it on the calendar, they can see the countdown that is coming, then it is actively, you know, building up excitement for them. And then they get to have that and like you said, take a picture. You can make a memory wall. You can have it in a, um, you know, a photo album, although I am one of those people who forgets to print photos.

So we don't, I don't know. We don't have a lot of photos at our house, but you can make a video, you know, like you think everyone has these cell phones on them all the time. You can, um, freeze that memory in time to then revisit later without that busy.

Tara Gratto: I think, I think one of the things like to loop back to our original conversation and how these pieces all tie in, we have to change our minds as adults.

More than children. The children will just go with it. Yes, they might push back. I'm not going to like sugarcoat it and be like, yeah, every kid's going to be super excited that they don't have. But when we have these conversations, it's when we throw a hard line sometimes, right? So to your point with me, I was like, well, this is how I would have presented it to my kids.

And your response was, well, yeah, because you have conversations like that all the time, right?

Exactly.

And if you don't have conversations like that all the time, you go into what I call dino brain, right? From my. From my book, The Adventures of Team Brain, this idea that like, you could do the same thing with adults, right?

If you immediately say, no, we don't want gifts. Because we're trying to do this and that's all you say, yeah, they're going to be like, no, I'm doing it anyways. They're like, almost like, you know, indignant about it. They're like, you

Alison Strang: can't tell me

Tara Gratto: that. Exactly. But it's more about how are you bite sizing out these conversations.

We're doing some changes. We actually want to stretch out the experiences. We know it's a hard time in the world right now. People are struggling with finances. So we want it to look like this over a period of time, right? How are you sort of creating that? And then the next piece is really listening to children.

Right. Really listening to children and seeing them as opportunities for change and not getting stuck in our mindset of like, well, you're my little person. You're my little girl, my little boy, my little, you know, you need to keep that thing. Because I'm not ready for you to grow up yet.

Alison Strang: Yeah, and creating those conversations, um, you know, daily or weekly or whenever you can carve it out into your time to broach that with your children.

So to broach the subject of really listening to them and allowing them to tell you how they feel about the things that they have in their space. Um, you know, it doesn't even need to be The action that you're going to take going away from listening to this podcast doesn't mean that this weekend you need to declutter your child's entire room.

Your action could be having a conversation. Don't get rid of anything. Have a conversation. Sit in your child's room with them and look at the space and just be in the space. Right. Wow, I noticed you have a lot of stuff in here. How, how, how do you feel? You know, there's so much stuff in here. Is there anything that you, you wish you didn't have in here?

You know, you could just practice the conversation for a certain amount of weeks before you even take any physical action.

Tara Gratto: No, I think that's solid advice, right, because if this is new to you, if this is a new way of thinking, a new way of acting, it's going to take you practice, and you're not going to say it right the first time, or the second time, or the fifth time.

I think we have this idea in behavior that people will like figure it out, or they don't. This is why teachers practice things repetitively. This is why math takes you 12 years. Yeah. Consistency to learn. And even longer if you continue post secondary, right? Like there's, there's this idea that for some reason we think children should grasp things very quickly and that we should grasp things very quickly that are not part of our nature or not the way we do things or not the way we think about things, but you have to give yourself the ability and capacity to learn too.

So having conversations, I think the biggest. My guess is, my guess is the biggest takeaway for many of you listening right now might be, oh my goodness, I'm projecting my likes on my child. I'm projecting what they should play with. And there could be a lot of reasons. There could be your memories. Uh, something we haven't talked about is you may have invested a lot of money in X, Y, Z, Lego, for example, good to

sunk costs.

Like

Alison Strang: some, some costs is a huge, um, A deterrent for people getting rid of their things. Absolutely. Um, I have a questionnaire that my clients fill out and I give them a whole bunch of different choices that they have to choose from of, um, what, what's stopping you, what's stopping you from decluttering, what's stopping you from getting rid of this stuff or sorting it or organizing it.

And I see the majority of people respond. Other things are included, but sunk costs is huge.

Tara Gratto: You're hoping, you're hoping that they will get whatever imaginary value. That's right. From the value you invested. I know one of mine. I joke with one of my friends. So I just massively decluttered my house in preparation.

We're downsizing big time because I'm realizing the mental load and all that. That's a whole other conversation. But one of the things that I because I have a huge eco sustainable heart massive. But I don't feel like as a person, it's easy to have an impact on the world. But my kids have often heard, right?

We are, we do a lot of sustainable type choices, some not so successful others, but I kept a lot of things because I didn't want to throw them out. Yes. So my house was the not throw out, but they're not usable by me. They're not usable by anybody. So I literally had all these things that I just was too afraid to throw out because they at one point meant something.

I am definitely your category of like, I had things from my childhood that had been ingrained in me not to get rid of, but they were all in totes, tons of totes. So you weren't getting

Alison Strang: any enjoyment from them or use or anything like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And once

Tara Gratto: I started, it was amazing. The first

Alison Strang: day.

It's hard also. Yeah, I know it's daunting, isn't it? It's daunting. It's actually the mental, um, you know, anticipation of it actually happening. The physical doing is less hard. It's the actual getting started.

Tara Gratto: And my kids didn't care. My kids did not care. Um, I don't, to be honest, I think in a lot of spaces, kids don't even notice.

They can't see what's there. They're not as attached to most of the things that are there, because they quite literally can't use them. There's too much.

Alison Strang: And so something I wanted to touch on that you mentioned about having an eco heart and making sure that you were able to kind of have a more, um, circular, um, kind of journey for the things that you had in your space and not knowing where those things could go was stopping you from, you know, being able to let them go.

I think a lot of families feel the same way. When I question parents when we're working with Specifically in children's rooms, exactly the same thing. So, you know, I, you know, unfortunately, you know, for my, I mean, fortunately for my clients, but unfortunately for if you're listening somewhere else, um, you know, knowing where to put those things or where to donate those things or get rid of those things is really hard for people to find.

Right.

So for my clients, I take care of that for them. That's one of my big whys of why do I do home organizing? Why do I educate families is the donation and giving back to the community. So giving back to immigrants and refugees and um, Donations to, you know, local charities. Um, you know, there's a lady in my community who, um, gives, sends shoebox to, uh, Africa and South America.

Mostly it changes every year, but it's toys. Um, and she gets gifted those toys from people in the community and she cleans them and makes them beautiful again. And then they get gifted, you know, but if you're not in listeners who are not in the Ottawa area and her thinking, well, this is all nice. to say that you'd like it to go somewhere, but where on earth do I give it to, um, that becomes a challenge because some people don't want to just go to that, um, donation location that I won't mention.

And you know, it's not really going to where you think it's going and not going back into where you think it's going back. And that's got so many people. And so, a hundred percent. That's unfortunate. Um, but there are community based groups that recycle things. There are community based groups, um, particularly the Buy Nothing, um, kind of movement on Facebook.

Um, I think every community has one. So if you don't know where to start. So this is my suggestion is if you really don't know where to start, you don't know how to get in contact with immigrant, um, community groups or refuge, you know, community groups that are supporting refugees coming into your town or your city or wherever you're listening, um, starting on Facebook and doing the buy nothing, um, of your community, that's a stepping stone.

And once you start to feel comfortable with that, then you can look further, further afield. Right. But yeah, you scaffold your children. Oh, you're done going back to this super superheroes bin of toys, you're done using them. Everybody has agreed. Yes, we can leave our house. Okay, right. It was expensive.

Parents had memories from their childhood, a lot of money sunk into it. Everybody's agreed. Now we've gone through all these steps that we've processed as a family, we're ready to let it go, giving it to somebody in your community, who and you know, is like literally geographically within a certain amount of streets.

From you and somebody is going to take joy and enjoy that and you can picture this person in your community that's going to love it. Um, that's a great stepping stone. That's a good place to

Tara Gratto: start. Yeah. No, I love that advice. I know, like, for me, I was able to also, like, source out a couple nursery schools that were just getting off the ground, um, and there's a company here in Canada called, I think it's called Tiny Toy Company, and they basically take upcycled, like, all the little pieces, and they make loot bags, they repurpose a bunch of stuff, they build educational... Like literacy boxes for schools, I'll throw that in the show notes, but there are, as you said, lots of things, but I think, I think you make such an important point there. That is how will it be used? If you know that it's going to be used, you're going to feel less guilty about it going out. Right. Instead of like, I'm going to give it to this corporation that's going to make money off my stuff that I should make that money.

Right? That's right. I get it. And a lot

Alison Strang: of people don't want to sell. You know, there was a time where people were selling everything on Kijiji or Facebook Marketplace or what have you. It's a lot of work. There's a lot of scams. People feel uncomfortable. A time commitment decision, you know, it's a lot for most people.

They're not interested in doing that. Yeah. Even if

Tara Gratto: you are, it prevents you. Right? Like there's a lot of things it was like, I should sell. And my friend was like, get rid of it. Cause if you tell yourself, you're going to sell all these little things, you're just going to have this bigger mental load. And it's just going to sit there creating more anxiety and clutter.

So, and it's more,

Alison Strang: you talked at one point in, in the podcast about decision fatigue and choices. And so if you're doing all of this and you're still like this momentum of making all these decisions, you've just worked super hard to, um, go through all these steps with your family to then get rid of these things.

And then on top of that, at the end, like it's not even the end. And then there's all these other steps. Um, just being able to, yeah, give back to your community and find places, but a lot of daycares and, um, like you said, nursery schools, preschools, community parks. I've encouraged a lot of families. There's, you know, some family, um, you know, parks where there's a bin or a tote with big Tonka trucks or spades and shovels.

If your kids are out of that stage and you have all this beach toys or whatever in your garage and you haven't gotten rid of it, Um, maybe not so much now because I don't know about where you are, but winter's coming. Yeah, we have snow that just is falling, so maybe not now is not the good time, but in the spring, taking those toys to your local community park where people will make use of them is another, you know, opportunity.

Tara Gratto: Amazing. All right, Allison, where can people find

Alison Strang: you? Okay, so my website is https://soothingspaces.ca/ and I am on Instagram and Facebook as well. And you can find me with the tag Soothing Spaces on Instagram is where I happen to be most of the time. Amazing. Thanks for having me.

Tara Gratto: Thank you for, thank you for coming.

 

Study References: 

Decline in Independent Activity as a Cause of Decline in Children’s Mental Well-being: Summary of the Evidence

Jean M Twenge's work on Childhood Anxiety and Smart Phones