Transcript
A (0:00)
Hey moms and dads, don't you just.
B (0:02)
Love when your child reminds you about a school project at bedtime the night before it's due? With Skylight Calendar you can avoid those last minute oops moments. It visually displays your family schedule in one place with different colors for each family member so you can eliminate those last minute surprises that upset your kids. Skylight Calendar is a WI fi connected digital display that syncs seamlessly with with all your calendars and visually showcases your family schedule on an HD touchscreen. You can manage events, chores and grocery lists on the go with the free Skylight app. This is a game changer for families like ours and your happiness is Skylight's happiness. So if in 120 days you are not 100% thrilled, you can return it for a full refund, no questions asked. This is a great Mother's Day gift and right now Skylight is offering our listeners $30 off their 15 inch calendars by going to skylightcow.com calm go to skylightcal.com calm for $30 off your 15 inch calendar. That's S-K-Y-L-H-T C A L.com calm.
A (1:20)
Do you have a child who is defiant, who doesn't listen, who swears, who lashes out at others and even at himself? Well, this is really common with strong willed kids, so you're not alone. I want to give you a different way of viewing this behavior on today's episode of the Calm Parenting Podcast. So welcome. This is Kirk Martin, founder of Celebrate Calm. You can find us at Celebrate Calm. Reach out to us. Let us know what your strong willed child or child on the spectrum is struggling with. You can email Casey C A s e y celebratecalm.com Tell us the ages of your kids. What are they struggling with? We get together as a family, talk about it, reply back to you personally because that's our family mission. So we get a lot of emails expressing a common dynamic and here's a recent one. Even if it's not exactly what your child struggles with, you can take these principles and apply them to your situation. So here's the email. It's very common. My son is swearing and being aggressive toward his siblings. He gets sent to his room and I can hear him muttering about what a bad kid he is. How can we get him to stop swearing? My son won't listen to me and his father is too rough with him and just escalates situations. And here's what's interesting to me is that we as parents Often and usually get sidetracked by the wrong issues. And I'm not judging because this is really hard to deal with when. When you're in the midst of it. But listen to the question, right? Like he gets sent to his room. I can hear him muttering what a bad kid is. He's swearing and being aggressive. Well, what pops out to me right away is I'm not really concerned about the swearing. I'm really concerned about what's going on underneath. Right? Because it's always about how we can get our child to stop. What? Swearing, Lying. That's a big one. That many of you struggle. Our child lies all the time. The lying's not the issue. The line. It's not an integrity issue. I've been through this a lot. Lying comes from a kid who feels like he can never be successful. And he knows if he is held accountable and if he gets caught, well, then he's going to lose his stuff. So in order to avoid losing stuff, what do you end up doing? You lie. The lying isn't the issue. It's an impulse control issue. It's a tools issue. So whatever the issue is that you're dealing with, this is how I want to begin to approach this one. The swearing doesn't matter. The lying doesn't matter. It's pretty much irrelevant because that's just an outward manifestation, Right? Outward behavior is an outward manifestation of something internal going on, of internal anger, confusion, turmoil, frustration. So I want us to get away from always reacting to the outward behavior. How can we stop that outward behavior? That's not what we're after. It's what can we do inside of our child? What tools can we give him to be successful? It's how we deal with outward behavior. And beyond that, it is what can we do inside of this child to help them feel confident, to have purpose, to have a reason to deal with the internal anger. Because when you're hearing these things like swearing, it really should be little alarm bells going off, not about the outward behavior. The alarm bells are saying, something's going on inside my child and I need to get to the root of it. So what I'm most concerned about is why is your child angry and frustrated? Why is he angry at siblings? And why is he taking this out on himself? What is prompting this so little? Side note, I was doing a phone consultation with some parents, and this was a little while ago, who had mentioned that recently their son had been begun lashing out at everyone around him. And sometimes I go for a walk before I talk to parents. And I just kind of think about the situations. I try to picture these things to get insight. And for whatever reason, I had this brief flash in my brain of a kid getting picked on at school. So when I began the call, I said, hey, I know you didn't mention this in your summary. You filled out, but I just want to play a hunch. Has your son been getting bullied at school? And there was complete silence on the other end. And they're like, oh, we forgot to include that. And here's why that was important. Bullying can cause a child to feel shame inside because he or she doesn't know how to deal with it. And there's shame for allowing yourself to be bullied. And so a child will turn that in on himself and then lash out at others because he's confused. He doesn't know what to do. He doesn't know how to bring it up to parents. Which is another reason that we engage, including dads have to create that safe space for kids so they can come and tell us anything without us reacting, without talking too much, without lecturing. And I think this dynamic will resonate with many of you as well, because you were bullied, so to speak, by a controlling authoritarian or religious parent, and or you now are married to someone who's controlling. It makes you feel helpless. And it's that insidious thing inside of us that causes you to even turn that on yourself. And now you're beating yourself up for allowing that to happen and for perpetuating it. And I want us to be free from these patterns. This year of 2024 is going to be some deep work. I don't know why. It just is because I'm always. Because I'm doing some deep work on myself. And that's part of why I love this, is that I'm changing along with you. And I really work at this so that hopefully I can go through the really hard work myself first and then kind of lead you along in that. And I hope I always do it without any blame, without any guilt or judgment, but always very direct, right? Like, hey, you got to grow up. Quit doing that. It's hurting you. It's hurting your family. Stop it. Because that's how I talk to myself, right? Like, this isn't good for me. So I'll be kind to myself while I go through this and forgiving of myself. But I'm also ruthless in saying no. I want to root this out of me. I want to reduce my attachment to this so that I can be free of it. Because when I'm free of all these other things, man, I'm so much better for all of those people around me that I love. So I want to get to the root of it. And forgive my language, but sometimes you have to get indignant and use some intensity here to say, you know what? No effing way. This is not happening anymore. This changes now. Again, not meant to be offensive there, but there's something about that indignant tone that says, you know what? No effing way. I'm tired of this happening. And you could even actually use the real F word if you want. I don't think anybody's going to be upset at you. I'm certainly not. It just is some intensity. So up to you how you handle that. I don't have a problem with it. So if you're. One of. One of my favorite things is getting emails from really sweet parents, especially those of you with kind of a Christian or religious background, when you've kind of finally had enough and you start dropping some F bombs, and I'm like, you know what? I think she's on the path to recovery. So it takes resolute focus and courage. Now, that was a long side note, but hopefully it helped a few of you. So back to our main point. I don't care about the swearing. I care about the aggression toward his siblings and toward himself. Because, look, the aggression toward the siblings is really only happening because there's aggression toward himself inside. When I don't feel good about myself, when I feel helpless, when I feel frustrated. Actually going to take that out on other people and in separate podcasts, I've gone through how to handle that with siblings. But I want to stay focused here on this. You can tell when I get that email, you can tell there's a lot of anger. There's frustration. And I want to use a different word that I haven't used a lot in our podcast before. Confusion. There's confusion churning in the heart and mind of a kid, and my experience tells me that issues like this usually stem from unhealthy relationships. My gut tells me this is a boy who's been treated roughly by his father, and that is the man who's supposed to be, right? A boy's dad, his mentor, a hero of sorts. Right? A lot of us look up. We want our dad to be that he hero. And yet the dad is opposite of that. The father yells at him. He's constantly correcting his son. It's negative. It's critical. He doesn't come Alongside and teach. So here we have a young child who is confused, angry, and frustrated by this, but he can't take it out on his father because his father's too big and. And scary. See, it's one of the things we do as men that we don't realize. We become gruff, we get dismissive, we withdraw, we make ourselves unavailable, because when we're available, that means we're a little bit vulnerable. We're not always comfortable with that. And again, I've done this on recent podcasts, but please redefine your definition of an authority figure, because some of you grew up with the authority figure was a controlling my way or the highway kind of father or mother, and that was my experience with my dad. Or maybe you grew up in a Christian or religious circle where God was like a angry factory foreman who just walked around PO'd at everybody, correcting everybody, and if they didn't do it right, he was going to send them to eternal hell. Well, that's not a really approachable kind of authority figure. So we really need to redefine what that is. And I've mentioned this on previous podcasts. Look, a good authority figure sets firm boundaries. He's very clear with things. But he's also easily approachable. And we have to avoid these two extremes of a good authority figure. There's nothing that should lead anyone to believe that a good authority figure would ever be abusive or controlling. There's no need for that. I'm a dad. I don't need to be abusive or controlling. I also don't need to get walked on either, because we go those two extremes right in between, there is a good authority figure who models things, who knows how to control himself. My son can come to me at any time with any problem now and we can have a discussion about it. And I can also at times say, case, hey, give this some thought because I think you're missing the mark here. You're off a little bit and you're thinking, think about this. And I can provide wisdom and perspective that he actually receives from me. And when he comes to me, I don't get defensive and I don't shut him down.