A (0:00)

Okay, I'm like your kids. I'm gonna break the rules here. I know I'm supposed to tell you about the incredibly soft and cool and cozy Earth bamboo sheets that we actually take with us when we travel. Cozy Earth's bamboo sheets naturally wick away heat and moisture from your body, helping you sleep several degrees cooler. It's been a game changer for us and you get 40% off with code calm@cozyearth.com but what I really wanted to tell you about is this. Mrs. Kahl mentioned today how much Cozy Earth has made our daily lives change just so much more enjoyable. You're just not accustomed to slipping into shorts and PJs and pullovers and sheets this soft and relaxing. And I can't exactly explain how it feels, but Cozy Earth, it's kind of like soothing for your soul. It's like a luxurious reward. And it's so accessible for everybody. Especially when you use my code calm for 40% off@cozyearth.com we live in Cozy Earth, so make sure Cozy Earth knows we sent you. Make your home extra cozy this school year. That's cozyearth.com and code CALM for 40% off. Our kids do their homework much better when they're comfy and cozy. Check out wayfair.com for a huge selection of comfortable chairs, desks and lamps to create a little homework nook for your kids. And while you're browsing online, treat yourself with new bedding, throw blankets or something fun to celebr. Great Autumn we like Wayfair because they have everything we need in one place. No need to shop at multiple stores. You get furniture, cookware, appliances, bedding and decor all in one place so we can quickly find what we need, discover some new ideas and get things shipped to us fast and free. All for a really good price. Cozify your space with Wayfair's curated collection of easy, affordable fall updates. From comfy Wayfair recliners to cozy bedding and autumn decor. Find for way less@wayfair.com that's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R.com Wayfair Every style, every home school can be stressful for many of our kids. So when they come home, give your kids hands on activities they love. Kiwico has these crates that encourage kids to be creative, bold, curious and persistent through Hands On Play. These are seriously fun projects for kids of all ages that are built to last and to be played played with again and again. Younger kids learn to explore the world around them through science and art projects. Then move on to fun, hands on engineering builds that fire their imagination. Older kids will build robots and more complex projects while continually building new skills and confidence. Tinker Create and innovate with Kiwico get up to 50% off your first crate at kiwico.com promo code calm that's 50% off your first crate at K I W I C O.com promo code calm so do you have a bright, strong willed child who should be able to buzz through his or her homework or schoolwork in 45 minutes, but would seemingly rather fight you tooth and nail for twice that long to not do it? Have you ever felt frustrated for your child or for yourself? Because schools in society tend to only support neurotypical learning styles and that makes you or your child feel different and less than does homework time ever end in tears for you or your child? And you know this saying in a frustrated voice, you know what, if you would just focus, you'd be done in 45 minutes instead of it. Taking three hours is not motivating for your child. You've tried bribery, threats, pleading and consequences and nothing seems to work. So let's try using their brain's natural powers to make this a little stressful. That is what we're going to discuss on today's episode of the Calm Parenting Podcast. Welcome. This is Kirk Martin, founder of Celebrate Calm. You can find us and our Back to school sale@celebratecalm.com so look, the true importance of this podcast is that it's not just about jump starting your child's brain to complete what are largely arbitrary school assignments. Or the more important part is understanding how your child's brain works best and teaching that to your child. See, this is the brain they will have the rest of their lives. And I'd actually let your kids listen to this podcast and then ask them to use these new ideas themselves. And if you are a neurodivergent adult, I hope you learned some new tools to help you focus on on your daily life or in your daily life. And I also hope you just for some of you it's like, oh, that's why I've always done it that way. And then you won't feel like something's wrong with you because there isn't anything wrong with you or your child. We just have brains that are different. And then along the way, hopefully we will prevent a lot of fights, defiance and tears in this coming school year. So let's jump in. Number one, I'm going to give you 10 ideas here to improve focus and executive function and things that many of us struggle with. Number one, prime your kids brains after school by giving your kids something they are in control of. Because just think all day at school, everything is out of their control. Another adult is telling them what to do and how to do it, when to do it, and they're not always great at that. And there's sensory overload. And for many of your kids, by 12pm or 2pm they're just emotionally and mentally exhausted. They're done by the way. That's why many of your kids, when they come home from school, that's why they saved the big meltdown for you. They hold it together for the teacher and then they unload on you. So here's some ideas. Could you give them a more adult type mission that makes them feel grown up and in control of something after school? Does your child like organizing or arranging things? It could be a rote task like organizing paper clips by color if they're really young. Something that doesn't require any emotional or mental effort. You know, I love treasure hunts, especially outside with younger kids. That fresh air, exercise. Looking for something special is a great transition for some of your kids. Give them some downtime and space alone, let them listen to music or just sit in silence on the way home. Please. If your kids don't like school, don't ask them how the day was at school because their answer is going to be, oh, that place where I'm read on the behavior chart. I think my teachers don't like me and I have trouble connecting with kids my own age and I find it really boring. Yeah, it was awesome today. It just, it puts all this pressure on them. So instead I may ask them a question about current events or something they're interested in. I used to ask Casey at times I'd be like, hey, something happened to me today at the grocery store, at the post office. What would you do if you were in my situation? So now they get to give their opinion on something and it doesn't make them feel so interrogated because that's often after school. Hey, how did you do on that test? Hey, did you make any friends today? Were you on your best behavior? And it all feels like our anxiety is dumping on them. So don't do that if you can. Could one parent or even a grandparent leave an envelope every day with a special mission inside, completing some special project or secret mission for the other parent? Because sometimes getting that envelope of oh, I need to go outside and I need to do this, I need to move that bag of mulch or I need to spread that dirt all over, because a lot of our kids like very tactile sensory things. Could your child go to a neighbor's house? Ideally kind of an older retired couple or elderly lady or someone you know to help them for even 15 minutes, or even walk a neighbor's dog or feed a cat? See, that's very grounding. And it's better than hopping on screens or just saying, okay, get your backpack out. Let's do your homework right now. Even though you've just been sitting for seven straight hours. Number two, I would encourage you to try this. Do homework outside. Pack up some homework, snacks, get moving. Walk through the woods, build a fort. Skip stones across the street. Fresh air changes moods. Exercise stimulates the brain. Doing harder physical work and breaking a sweat releases endorphins, which are awesome for learning. Your kids are not going to want to go outside all the time, so you have to lead them there. Make it fun. Make up games. Let your little landscapers do some yard work. Sometimes kids would help me shovel mulch and plant things, and then they'd sit in the dirt and. And do their homework sometimes. We lived in this little planned community and they had these, like, drainage ditches in our neighborhood. But I told the kids it was a sewer and we had to, like, climb down in them under the ground where it was kind of dark. They love that. You know why? Because it was weird. It was different. We weren't supposed to be there. And so we go down there with flashlights and do schoolwork. It was different. Stimulated the brain I used to love. I take kids, we'd ride bikes to a, like a construction zone where they're building houses or buildings, and we would watch the diggers and we would ride our bikes there. Look, get outside and do different things. You can do schoolwork in so many different places. If you have that flexibility, throw a blanket on the lawn and just do it there. That's just a lot better than standing over them at the kitchen counter, putting all that pressure on them. If you're in Minnesota, it's really cool. Then take some schoolwork out inside the igloo that you built. Okay? Number three, manage their energy, not their time. This is a really crucial insight for our kids and for us as adults who have these kind of brains. Traditional time management tends to be linear. It doesn't work for people like us. People with our brains tend to work in spurts. We hyper focus. We work on momentum. I have days where Nothing's really clicking that well, so I focus on more mundane projects that don't require as much thinking or emotional energy. But then I'll hit a mode in which my brain is super focused and sometimes I'll write three or four podcasts in a couple days. When I'm putting together a new program, I'll often condense a week's worth of work and thinking into three days. Help your kids understand and recognize this pattern inside. It is a superpower in life. Learn how and when your most challenging child focuses best. It may actually be early in the morning before other people are up. It could be after exercise. We used to do a lot of homework at the ice rink after Casey had practice. If your child is crushing it in math one day, well, just keep going with that. If you can do three days worth of math work that day. It's kind of unnatural and difficult to switch back and forth between five different subjects in a day. I tend to work best on weekends when everyone else is often more chill, because I pick up on that energy. It's why teens often like staying up late at night to do work. The world slows down, it's quieter, the parents aren't talking to me late at night. Casey and I use this insight all the time. Look, I'm actually writing this and recording it on a Saturday after a morning hike. I know my brain feels focused now and I'll do mundane non thinking work later. So put some time into teaching your kids how to manage their energy, not their time. And I encourage you. If you have our programs, go through the ADHD University program. We go through this in much more detail. It's extremely helpful and I'd actually encourage you send us an email. We can. If you have our programs, we can send this one to your child's teacher and I'd love for your kids to listen to it as well. Number four, use time compression to your advantage. This is important as kids get older because sometimes parents say to teenagers, no, you can't get a job because you need to focus on homework. But older kids, honestly, they've got from like 3pm to 11pm or midnight or 1am for many of your kids to get homework done. And so it's actually too much time in a sense. But if they're involved in a sport, drama club, or have a job that compresses their time. And I noticed the power of this when Casey was traveling with me for live events. We'd roll into a new town at say 5:47. We go right to Panera we now had 43 minutes to eat and get our work done before leaving for the live event. And what I discovered was that that definitive time limit, compressing the time that Casey had to get writing assignments done, helped them focus better. It was a defined time limit, so he knew it wasn't going to last forever, and it forced his brain to hyper focus. It also worked because we were eating, listening to music, there was activity going on in there which was stimulating for his brain, and the rhythm from eating and music actually creates rhythm in the brain. All of that was very stimulating. And I use this for myself all the time. I give myself a defined time limit to work on a podcast as I am at this moment. So use that at home. You can even jumpstart your child's brain and get a success by saying, okay, in the next 17 minutes, let's knock out this assignment. Play some music, get some movement, and look, I'm a realist. Some of your kids are so resistant, you could do the following, hey, don't tell anyone, but we're going to do this worksheet together, and we're knocking it out in 17 minutes. You do the odd problems, I do the even ones, and you do it together. And it's like, well, isn't that cheating? No. When you are doing the even math problems, you're showing your work and teaching, plus you're just getting it done. And that's called being smart. Okay, number five, we just alluded to this. Using rhythm, music, chewing snacks, tapping pencils. Your kids have very busy brains, and they don't always feel that organized inside. It's kind of like thoughts and feelings and ideas are tumbling around like socks in a dryer. But now you introduce rhythm through music and chewing and tapping pencils, and that creates rhythm in the brain. It can help your kids focus better. So I would experiment with allowing your kids to listen to music. And for many of your kids, it's not classical music. It's really intense music, which I'm actually doing right now as I write this, because it can help with writing projects and other subjects. Let your kids eat their snack or while doing schoolwork instead of it being, hey, why don't you have a snack and then we'll do your schoolwork? Chewing things blink brings blood flow to the brain. It's relaxing, it helps with anxiety, and it creates rhythm. And if you can experiment with all these things, your child can stand at the kitchen counter rocking back and forth, because that's rhythm. Chewing on a snack, listening to music while doing schoolwork, just try it in classrooms. Sometimes we used to put a sponge on a child's desk and they could tap the sponge. That way they're getting the rhythm of the tapping without making the noise. So now we can combine this with movement for some other really creative options with kids back in school now, Hungry Roots Quick Recipes are a savior on those busy weeknights, we just had the kids savory beef, crispy broccoli and fragrant jasmine rice with our nephew. It is utterly delicious. It only took 15 minutes to prepare. Hungryroot takes the stress out of mealtime by filling your cart with personalized picks and planning your week of meals that fit your whole family's tastes and nutrition goals. Whether you're gluten free, dairy free, high protein, focused on gut, health or anything else, it's like having a personal shopper and chef all in one so you can spend less time planning and more time enjoying your kids. Go to hungryroot.com calm and use code CALM to get 40% off your first box. Plus get a free item in every box for life. That's hungryroot.com calm code CALM to get 40 percent off your first box and a free item for life. Hungryroot.com calm codecalm what's your dinner personality?