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Calm Parenting Podcast
Battling Toddlers, Teens, & In-Between? 3 Quick Ways to Change Your Family Life ASAP
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So this is our second summer in our new home and what we've missed most is having friends over for dinner. It's such a pain to go to those big box stores and carry home huge items. So we finally went to Wayfair.com back in May and we picked out deck furniture, a grill, fire pit and yard games. Boom. Easy, fast free shipping. Last night was kind of magical and it was simple. We had friends over, I grilled out, we had the fire pit going, kids playing cornhole, just good conversation and laughs. And we like Wayfair because it's one stop shopping for everything we need inside and outside our home with a great selection and great prices. So now after a long day or on weekends, we have an outdoor gathering space and I do love grilling outside shop, outdoor furniture, grills, long games and way more for way less. Head to Wayfair.com right now to to explore a huge outdoor selection that's W a Y f a I r.com wayfair every style, every home so here's how two parents chose to inspire their child's curiosity this summer. The parents signed up to learn calculus and spanish@ixl.com Kirk to support their kids taking a class over the summer. I love this. You are learning right alongside your child. They can see you wrestling with ideas, being curious and at times asking them for help. It's awesome modeling for your kids and makes it feel like learning is a family adventure, not just something you make them do. IXL is an award winning learning platform with an easy to navigate layout that uses interactive practice and step by step video tutorials that make it perfect for relaxed summer learning. So what class are you going to take this summer? Make an impact on your child's learning. Get IXL now. Calm Parenting podcast listeners get an exclusive 20% off an IXL membership when you sign up today at ixl.com Kirk Visit ixl.com Kirk to get the most effective learning program at the best price. So have you ever found yourself in a power struggle with like a five year old where you're both like locking horns and she's digging in and you're digging in and then you realize I'm fighting with a small child. How did I get into this spot? What if you have an older child like 10 years old and you're just frustrated because you're like why do you have to do things the hard way? Why can't you just do things in a regular normal way and we wouldn't have to go through all these consequences and tears and Difficult things. Or maybe you have a teenager and, and you've really struggled to connect with this child and it's always been a challenge. And now you're getting to that spot where it's like, I only have a few more years with this child and I don't want them starting to get into weed and vaping and pursuing all kinds of other things. What do you do in those situations? I want to give you some ideas from everyday parents like you that I believe you'll be able to apply to your own situations with kids of all age groups, because I think it's going to be very helpful. So 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, and you can find us@celebratecalm.com Part of the reason I'm doing this is because we've gotten so many testimonials this week from people who took advantage of the Christmas in July sale and they downloaded all 17 programs. They started working through them and they're like, hey, you know, I listened to the podcast, but man, this takes it to a next level because I'm putting everything together and I've got all these different options to approach situations. So I wanted to share with you what other parents like you are doing. So let's start with. We'll go in order of age. So this was a five year old daughter. The dad's like, we're caught in a power struggle at bedtime and many of you struggle with that. And she's like, I'm not tired, I'm not going to bed. And then you find yourself, you know what, if you don't go to bed, you're going to miss out on your play date tomorrow. You're going to miss out, right? Because that's what we do. We go right to consequences, taking away things. And then our daughter's getting more upset and at some point she realizes, oh, I've already lost everything, so I may as well just go for it right now. And then you start to realize, and this is what the parents said. It started to hit me. I was caught in this loop and I was expecting the five year old to calm down, to stand down. Right? That would be my language as the son of a former career military dad. Right. Stand down, young lady. The parents were like, we're expecting her to change, but we've been listening to your programs and it's getting internalized. I control myself first, not my daughter. They said, I'm learning to slow my world down so that I can see situations more clearly. And one of the parents said, I never really understood your thing, like with calm. And this is what I want you to know as parents is it's not an end in itself. It's not like my goal is to be calm. The reason I want to be calm is because it helps me not escalate situations. It helps me slow down my world inside so I don't say things that hurt other people and hurt relationships that I end up regretting, whether that's with a spouse or your kids or friends and neighbors. It helps me slow my world down so I can see what's really going on, so that I can actually help my child, not just discipline them and send them to their room. And then the dad in this situation said, I remember because everywhere in your programs you talk about giving kids a mission. And I realized I was getting sucked into this fight by a five year old. So I just blurted out, oh, you know what, after you go to bed, I need to take a shower. Could you go and pick out a towel for me and what I should wear to bed? And he said his daughter's eyes lit up and she ran into his closet and she's looking, she's like, I'm going to pick out the best towel for you. And they went and they sat down and he was able to say, oh, you did a good job. And they had a little conversation. Why did you pick those clothes? Well, daddy, these are the really soft, soft clothes and I like soft clothes to sleep in. And I think you'll sleep better that way. And so they start having this discussion. He's able to thank her and say, hey, that was a really good job and this is really cool. A little kid said, why doesn't everybody know to give kids a mission when they're upset? I think I'm going to suggest this to my teacher to help other kids in my class. Is that not an amazing thing? And that's one of the things I really want to stress is all of this thing about parenting. It's not just like, well, we need to get kids to behave. No, I want to teach kids, and us, all of us, how do our brains work? How do we work best? How do we navigate life and relationships and conflict in healthy ways? How do we handle the inevitable frustration and disappointment in life? And here we have. Just think what just happened here in this situation. This normally would have gone down the route of mom, dad, five year old fighting and yelling. There would have been tears. You wouldn't have gotten this child to bed for like an extra two hours. That's the way it works. And then you feel guilty about it. She's tired in the morning and nothing really got solved. But in this case, by controlling yourself, giving the child a mission and reframing this now we just taught her a life skill about giving missions, about having a mission. We use this everyday. Casey and I have used this on our trip. We give ourselves missions when we're anxious. It is really helpful. So mom and dad, who wrote in about that, thank you for that awesome job. You're going to have probably 85, 100 more situations. Not this year, but, or maybe but over the next few years you're going to have dozens of situations like this through all the ages. When your kids dig in and you dig in and now you're finding a template. And, and I will tell you, as you go through the programs, if you get the Christmas in July sale thing special, as you go through them, you begin to internalize. It gets much easier to now say, oh yeah, I control myself. Oh, I give a mission. Okay, 10 year old son. And I think many of you are going to be able to relate to this because this is really common as well. Mom had said, I realized that my reactions and my attitude toward my son and look, it's not always your words. Our kids pick up on those slight things, the shaking of the head, the disappointment that they constantly kind of feel from us. And she said my reactions were hurting him and kind of creating a stigma. And she said I had these thoughts and I know a lot of you struggle with this because I did. You know what? If you only didn't push the limits, if you wouldn't resist doing simple things for us, if you wouldn't insist on doing it your own way, on touching the hot stove, if you wouldn't insist on always climbing every tree. Right. We get into that if then. And what it basically comes is if you just weren't yourself, if you were just someone else who were easier for me, because that's what a lot of it is. And you know, I don't do blame or guilt or, or judgment in this. We just have to realize that's our own issue. And the mom had said, I'm going through the 30 days to calm program and if you get our programs, that's the one I want you to go through first. It is the exact process I went through to go from being reactive, angry, intense dad to being the calm guy. And I put it together in one program. So you don't have to spend $3,000 on therapy and you can just get this done at home working on your own through the workbook and the steps. And she said, I realized that is my own par anxiety looking out into the future because I know he's going to touch the hot stove some. It is my own control issues. I want things done a certain way and if my son would just do things the way I wanted him to do it, then it would be so much easier. But what the mom realized is I can fix this. See, if success in our home is dependent on changing the behavior and the very nature of a 10 year old or 5 year old or 15 year old, well, that's never going to happen. But if success in our home is dependent on me learning to control my own anxiety and control issues, well, now I've got a real shot at transforming our home. And so the mom said, I realized that my child just triggered my reactions and I'm actually in some ways hurting my self. I'm judging myself again. This is really interesting. And so I'll ask you this question. How many times do you see yourself in this pattern where you are disciplining or getting on your child and you can trace it back to your childhood because maybe that's how you were treated. It's a really fascinating process. So here's what this mom ended up doing. So this is really cool. I go to hungryroot.com calm and I click our food preferences. Carb Conscious, less sugar, high protein, Anti inflammatory and immediately I get 10 plus options. So I choose the Tzatziki Chicken bowl with quinoa. With 47 grams of protein. It takes five minutes to prepare. It's delicious. No wasted ingredients, no stress battling traffic and grocery store lines. That means more time to enjoy your family and life. Hungry Root is like having your own personal shopper and nutritionist wrapped into one. They recommend healthy groceries and meals tailored to your family's nutrition preferences and tastes. Hungryroot has healthy groceries like smoothies, kids snacks, ready to eat meals and salad kits. We love Hungerroot. So 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% off your first box. Hungryroot.com calm code calm so before AG1 had even become a podcast sponsor, Mrs. Kalm and I came up with our own tagline, no compromise. We don't compromise on health benefits. Their upgraded AG1 Next Gen formula has been clinically shown to increase healthy gut bacteria by 10 times and we don't compromise on taste. We love starting every morning with our AG1. Now is the perfect time for you to start a new, healthy habit. It only takes 30 seconds. It costs less than $3 per day. Mrs. Calm loves the satisfying feeling of accomplishing a healthy goal first thing every morning. AG1 is good for our gut health. It keeps us regular. It improves mental clarity. Start giving your body the nutrients it deserves. Go to drinkag1.com calm to to subscribe for less than $3 per day. If you use my link, you'll get $76 of free extras, including a Shaker bottle, five AG1 travel packs, and more with your first purchase. Go to drinkag1.Com calm she said, I began working through that section on childhood trauma and breaking those those patterns because for many of us you've heard me talk about my patterns from childhood and being able to release myself from those to say, hey, when I was a little boy, it served me well to hide because that kept me safe. I hid. I didn't speak up for myself and that kept me from getting hit by my dad. But later on in life that began to sabotage my relationships because then I didn't know how to speak up for for myself. I didn't know how to handle conflict. So it's not about making excuses. It's about just realizing we have these patterns in us from childhood and it doesn't have to be some. I don't want to minimize it or make too much of it. It's a normal thing. I normalize all of these things. We all had those. I've talked about the those of you who had a chaotic home or you probably learned how to create order in your home and you became extra responsible. Or you learned that the best way for you to get your parents love and affection was to do really well at everything and just listen. So you became the good boy or girl and you were very, very conscientious. Well, a lot of nurses grow up from those backgrounds and see it served you well because you learned, hey, I have this fundamental internal need to be accepted and loved when by my parents. And I figured out a way to do that that was really smart of you and so you can talk to yourself in that way and say, hey, when I was a kid I was brilliant. That was smart of me. That was a good thing to do. That served me well. But now what I find is I'm overly conscientious. I can never relax I'm always pleasing everyone and I don't do anything for myself. So you see that pattern in yourself. Social workers, people in the giving kind of field often do that and becomes very unhealthy. So you can recognize the pattern and then begin to break it. And the big breakthrough for this mom was saying I realized that in some ways by punishing my son, I was punishing myself. I was keeping that pattern going that I learned as a kid, which is whenever I stepped out and did something differently, I got punished or I got shut down. And she said, now I am re parenting myself and my child. So in the course of seeing my child differently and learning to like who he is, I'm learning to like who I am and reparent myself. I'm parenting my son I the way I wanted and needed to be parented. That is a beautiful and freeing thing. So moms and dads who are working on that so hard, like well done, that is going to change. You are going to change generations of your family. Okay, third one is 15 year old. So you've got a teenager and you've struggled with this child because I don't know the right way to say this, I hope you trust me enough of my intentions. But most of the stuff that even a lot of therapists suggest for strong willed kids backfires. It doesn't work. And in schools we treat these kids as if they are behavior problems and so they begin to internalize. I'm a bad kid. I'm the black sheep of the family. I'm the one who's always in trouble. And we get so focused on, you got to do well in school, school and behavior, school and behavior, school and behavior. That's what your childhood is. And the strong willed child's going to be like 0 for 2 on those. And they begin to internalize. Well, I don't really have a vision for my life. Everybody seems to be kind of against me. So I'm going to develop this hard shell around me. And so it makes it hard to connect with these kids. And if you get that way and there's no blame or guilt by the teenage years, you're going to get anger and defiance coming out. And so the mom had written and said my husband had always dug in because he was like the former you and like your dad of like, well, this kid just needs to change and shape up. And so she got, they got the Christmas in July sale thing. And this is what I always tell moms with husbands like this, just have them listen to the dad's program. Just that one. At first you listen to all 16, 17 of them just husband. You only have to listen to one. And she heard this conversation. She heard her husband finally going to their teenager and saying, I've been a jerk to you sometimes, haven't I? I think I've always assumed the worst about your intentions and I want to apologize to you. And she was like, my husband just said those words to our child. Now, I know it doesn't change everything immediately. It's not like Kumbaya and they're holding hands now, which would be weird anyway, but they're not doing that. But she said what the dad was doing was because a lot of dads will hear me and can kind of relate to that is, well, just treat your kids sometimes like you're treating colleagues at work. You just talk to them honestly, hey, I've been a jerk. I've assumed the worst. And that's not working here. And I want to apologize for that. So. And the dad also said, I had a note here and forgive me for fumbling on this, but I wanted to get this right. The dad told their son, I've tried to get you to be like me when in reality what we really want is for you to be who you're supposed to be. And I was like, well, not. She wrote that. I was like, now that is going to change the relationship. And so there's mutual respect coming. They're starting to rebuild this relationship. And one of the cool things that just happened is their teenager asked the dad to go to a concert with him. That's a big deal to take your dad along to a concert or your mom when you're a teenager. And she said that would have never happened before. They're starting to bond a little bit. And I would encourage you if you have teenagers, the first thing I would listen to for you probably would be the no BS program because it's 25 action steps in which it's like, we call it the no BS instruction manual for strong willed kids. Because everybody always says, oh, you didn't never get an instruction manual when you have these kids. And we're like, well, we'll put that together for you. It's 25 action steps and one of them is releasing your kids. And let me do this really quickly. Hey, son, daughter, I release you to be the person you're supposed to be, not the one I wanted you to be. I release you to be who you're supposed to be, not who your siblings are, not who other kids are. I release you to do things in a different way, to not be a mini me. That releasing part is a very powerful step. There's a step in there about learning to bond with your kids over things that irritate you. One of my favorite steps in that program is asking your kids to teach you something. Because think about how we do childhood. It's like when they're little, naturally we're showing them teaching. Here's how you brush your teeth, here's how you tie your shoes, here's how you do math. And we do that for years and years. And when your kids get a little bit older, I like to ask them, hey, could you help me with this? Could you show me this with technology, how that works? I did that with Casey a lot. And what happens is kids feel a sense of mastery, there's confidence, they feel like they have something to give. Now just know that when you do this with your strong willed kids, they're probably going to choose things that irritate you and that we can see that in all three of these situations from these parents. The daughter, the five year old is irritating. Why? Because she won't go to bed on time and you're exhausted and you're not asking too much of her, you're asking the normal thing which is your five. You need to be in bed at a good time. And the 10 year old is irritating because you know what I'm saying, they're not really irritating, they kind of are, but it's really our own control issues. And the 10 year old does do everything a different way rather than just doing the normal way the way all the other kids do. And the teenager is going to do the same thing. But when you can control yourself and realize I'm so rigid at times, I need things to be done a certain way. And you realize, man, the beautiful part about having strong willed kids is they will liberate you to enjoy your life for the next 50 years. This isn't just about parenting. This is about you changing as a human being. I'm so ridiculously thankful for our strong willed son because I am now a different human being than I was a few years ago. And I can enjoy all aspects of life, I can enjoy all relationships much better because I'm not so rigid and I have to have it my way and I'm not. So. And the anxiety and all those things that you can work through, this is part of family transformation. So moms and dads, thank you for working so hard at this. I do encourage you go through the programs and when you buy. Get the programs and you download them onto the app. You can share them with your spouse with your as we go back to school. Share them. Especially the ADHD University. There's a Brain Boosters program for teachers. We'll see. Send those to your child's teachers. If you have questions about that, ask Casey. It's Casey. C A S E Y@celebratecalm.com. if you never need help financially, just ask. We want you to have tools to change your family. So thanks for working so hard at this. Love you all. Talk to you soon. Bye Bye.