Transcript
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So I'll start with a confession that many of you have heard me say before. I did not like our son when he was young. He was so challenging. Everything was hard. Putting your shoes on, eating, going to bed, doing schoolwork. He was really emotional with these really intense meltdowns and all it did was provoke my own immaturity. It was not his issue, it was my issue and it forced me to grow up. And so but I spent the first like seven years of his life just trying to fix and change him until I finally discovered that I was the one that needed to change. But in that process, I nearly destroyed our relationship and I nearly destroyed our son. So how can you recover from this when you and your strong willed child are opposites? Or worse yet, you're just alike. Or maybe you have a spouse who just is not connecting with your strong willed child and you can see this divide starting to happen. Or it's well along its way. How do you repair that? That is what we're going to discuss on this episode of the Calm Parenting Podcast. So welcome. This is Kirk Martin, founder of Celebrate Calm. You can find us in our big spring sale celebrate calm.com so many. Look, we've been through this that most of the outbursts from your strong willed child are going to sound an awful lot like defiance and disrespect and sometimes they are. But as we've seen, sometimes the root of it is anxiety. Anxiety, Right. The anxious child is nervous about unknowns, doesn't want to go to that new place, so they lash out. You're stupid. I hate you. Taekwondo is stupid. And that had nothing to do with being defiant. It was just an anxious kid. And so we can use that insight to build a closer, more trusting relationship with a child and give your child tools to overcome their anxiety. But sometimes the defiance is caused by a broken relationship. And so I'm going to reference some bad language in this episode just one or two times. I won't actually say the word, so it's not going to be that bad. But I just wanted you to know as a heads up, if you have a child who has been hurt or feels like an outcast in your home or misunderstood, think about sharing this episode with them because it may open up some conversations. Totally up to you. So this is a true story. It's one that's honestly been repeated since the very beginning of time. It's the story of a father with two sons. And one is the prodigal or strong willed son and the other one is the more compliant golden child. And this happened right in middle America, right in Minnesota. Now it doesn't sound a lot like Minnesota nice in the moment, but this is reality and it happens in a lot of our homes. So let's set the stage. Mom, dad and two sons are having dinner. By the way, this could be a mom and daughter, a mom and son, a dad and daughter, but this is just the way it rolled, right? So we've got this family sitting down and we've got the typical strong willed child like many of us have, who's never really lived up to parents expectations, always does things the hard way, argues, makes everything difficult, has his own opinions, doesn't like school and he just kind of struggles. And then you've got the more compliant good child who does everything that's expected of him. And the relationship between dad and the strong willed child is strained. And the relationship between husband and wife is also strained because mom's been the mediator managing the emotions of her son and her husband for years, managing, kind of taking the temperature of the home and running interference. And that will cause a lot of problems in your home. It will cause resentment, will cause adrenal fatigue and it's not sustainable. So there's always this underlying tension in the family. And then you can throw in all the self doubt between the parents like oh, are we letting this strong willed child get away with things. Why can't he be just like his brother? What would our parents have done in this situation? What are we doing wrong? Look, people are going to judge you. All those things come into the mix. So dad asks his strong willed child to do something for him after dinner. And his request is not met with the requisite enthusiasm that dad wants and expects that he gets from his other child. So the dad says, I don't know why you have to make everything so difficult, son. Your brother never gives me any problems. To which the strong willed child replies, F you dad. And storms off from the kitchen table and goes and slams his bedroom door. Now he did use the actual F word there. And dad of course begins yelling and threatening and taking away all privileges and. And mom and the compliant son are once again caught in the middle of this drama. So a few thoughts. I know these kids are tough, I do get it. But you absolutely must work through your own issues and learn how to accept your strong willed child on a deep level. And I mean to truly accept them, not just tolerate them, not just put up with them. You're going to have to learn how to understand them and really accept them as they are. And I'm not talking about putting up with abusive behavior, letting them do whatever they want, staying on screens all night. I'm not talking about that. I mean on a very personal level, this has to happen, otherwise it will result. What will happen is the death of self confidence, the death of self acceptance, the death of vision and motivation, and ultimately the death of the relationship. And you know what else is going to happen in homes like this? This teenage boy will shut down and grow angry because he knows and kind of has internalized. I'm the bad kid, the black sheep, the one who's always been difficult, who's never lived up to your expectations, even though he's probably a very bright, insightful and even good hearted kid to others. That's part of the struggle for us right as parents is you see these things in your kids. You're like, this is a kid who will stop on the street and give all of his possessions to homeless people or who's really good with animals or maybe little kids who when other adults talk to you like, oh man, he is such a great kid, he's so responsible, so respectful and yet you don't see that in your home. And so some kids will turn this anger inward and self sabotage their lives. Sometimes they'll do it to get back at the parents. See, you've always thought I was a Loser. Never the good one. Well, now you're going to get exactly what you thought and wanted, and I'm going to live down to your lowest expectations. What are you going to do about it? Take away my screens? Fine. I'll just sit in my room and do nothing for the next six months. And you can't force me to do anything. Sure, send me to military school. I'll try to escape and get kicked out, and I'll be right back here. So, look, this dynamic, it'll also kill your marriage. There's no way around this. I know these kids are challenging, pigheaded, don't always listen. They push the limits. They're mouthy. Got it. You're justified in feeling frustrated and angry at them. But we're the grown adults, and this is the most important job of your lifetime. If you don't find a way to repair this relationship, to accept this child as he or she is, they will seek your elusive acceptance well into their 50s and 60s, and it can be devastating. So back to our scene. Was this defiance and disrespect shown to the dad? Yes, of course. Do we just excuse it because the child is upset and hurt? No, but we do have to understand context. This reaction by this child is driven by pain. There's a pleading nature to the tone. Listen how he said it. F you, dad. See, what I hear is you've never accepted or liked me, dad. You've always liked my brother more. I can never live up to your expectations, so just F you. Right. That's a pleading tone. That's the voice of a broken relationship. And you have to distinguish between these things. And so in this instance, it is not the defiance and disrespectful that needs to be addressed primarily. Rather, it is the underlying pain. It is the underlying broken relationship that needs to be addressed. See, once you take care of that, everything else kind of falls in place. And we've dealt in other podcasts with just pure, outright defiance. I think there's one from May 2024 on outright refusal. Listen to that one. It's fantastic. I've been through other ones. We have an entire program called Stop Defiance and Disrespect. But that's not what is happening here. One of the reasons I'm so proud of you as moms and dads, is you're working so hard at this. And the dad who told me this story reacted. At first, he was wrong. And what I used to do back in the day was double down on this. Well, I've already messed up I may as well just vent all of my resentment and frustration at this kid and I'll turn this into a 16 hour fight. And I want to caution you with that because when I was immature before I changed, I had a lot of resentment toward our son. And when he would even do one small thing wrong, oh, I would be like, oh, I'm going to take advantage. You know what? You leave your stuff all over the place, you don't study for school, you talk back to your mom and all of this will come out. And there was this. It was kind of sabotaging my relationship with him. And I just want you to be aware of that and work on your own resentment underneath. Again, we're not talking about excusing behavior, but we do want to understand the root of this. So the cool thing is this dad handled it differently after he first messed up.