Okay kiddo, so you know how we can braid and tie our hair in different ways to make different styles? Well, just like that, a braided monoidal category is a way of braiding and combining different mathematical objects.
Here's a simple example: imagine we have some numbers, like 1, 2, and 3. We can combine them using addition, so 1 + 2 = 3, and we can also braid them by switching their order, like 2 + 1 = 3. In math, we call these operations monoidal and braiding.
Now let's say we also have some shapes, like circles and squares. We can also combine and braid them using mathematical operations. For example, two circles combined together can make a bigger circle, and we can braid a square and a circle to make a new shape.
So a braided monoidal category is a fancy way of saying that we can combine and braid different objects using specific operations. It helps us study and understand mathematical structures with lots of different parts.