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Calm Parenting Podcast
Get Kids Moving More Quickly: 10 Practical Ideas To Try This Week #513
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So thank you to everyone who is so patient with us. While Case and I were on way on our father son hiking trip. It was amazing. But you know what the toughest part was? It wasn't the steep mountains. It was sleeping on different beds every few days. I could not wait to get home and collapse into our Leesa hybrid cooling mattress. Since getting our Leesa mattress, we're sleeping longer and better. There's little pains in our hips and back after long hikes disappears so we wake up refreshed. Lisa uses premium materials that deliver serious comfort and full body support and they're tailored to how you sleep without the luxury price tag. Go to Leesa.com for 30% off mattresses with their Labor Day sale plus you get an extra $50 off with promo code Calm exclusively for my listeners. That's L E-E-S a.com promo code CALM for for 30% off mattresses plus an extra $50 off. Let them know after checkout that the CALM parenting podcast sent you Lisa.com promo code CALM so I bet I have a way for even reluctant teens and tweens to spend time with you. Sit in bed or on the sofa wrapped in the heavenly softness of the new Cozy Earth Bubble Cuddle blanket. It is so ridiculously soft. Your toddlers, your teens, pets, even your spouse is going to want to cuddle with you. And you will hogs all wrapped up together. We absolutely love our bubble Cuddle blanket because it's the perfect combination of style and comfort. Oh, and your sensory kids? Forget about it. They're going to try to steal the cozier bubble cuddle blanket from your room. I'd have them do extra chores to buy their own, but then you might not be able to get them out of bed. Look, your bed shouldn't just be a place to sleep. It should be your happy place. Use the Cozy Earth bamboo sheets. We love those. And this new blanket. Love. Amazing. Go to cozyearth.com use code CALM for 40% off. Let them know that the calm guy sent you. That's cozyearth.com code calm for 40% off. So how many of you have trouble getting your kids moving out the door? How many of your kids just move slowly? They're like a tortoise by nature. Some of your kids just resist. The more you push, the more they resist. Some of your kids, it might be an anxiety issue. And then you throw in kids who have ADHD or who are neurodivergent and and man, this can be really tough. Look, we know what doesn't work. It's probably what you're doing now. And so I want to give you a range of options, a lot of them, so you can try for different age groups at different times. Experiment with these. So that is what we're going to discuss on today's episode of the Calm Parenting Podcast. So welcome. This is Kirk Martin, founder of Celebrate Calm. You can find us and our back to school sale@celebratecalm.com if we can help you in any way. Reach out to Casey C A S e y celebrate calm.com so on Sunday's episode, we talked about the fact that kids are not supposed to be immediately obedient, but we do need them to do things and get moving. So I've broken this down into five groupings and I'll give a lot of examples in each one. The five groupings are. This one is controlling yourself so that you can lead and draw your kids to you. Number two, I always want to give kids tools to succeed rather than just threatening them. Number three, Sometimes, though, we need to do more tough discipline. So I'll go through that. Number four is ownership and number five is connection. So number one, control yourself. You know this. If you come into your child's bedroom in the morning, come on, got to get up, got to go. School, school, school. Let's move, let's move. Your kids will dive back under the sheets. And I've said this a million times. They're not rejecting you. They're not rejecting your authority. They're rejecting your anxiety. Because when we're in an anxious mode that what your kids know is, I will never move quiet quickly enough for you. You're going to get frustrated with me. And so they resist. It's an immature way for them to say, hey, I need you to chill a little bit, like, lead me. So remember, even matter of fact tone, I'll give you an example. Getting kids at bedtime and your kids are kind of like little kids are all wound up. I guarantee you, especially if it's you and your spouse, if you would lie down on the floor and like start reading something or looking at something and you're laughing together and not paying attention to them, I guarantee they will come and they will lie down next to you. When we had all those kids in our camps, we would go to the pool. And so I watched how this worked. If I came in a room, guys, you know what, pick up all your Legos. Come on, we gotta go. You gotta put sunscreen, swim clothes, grab your towel, move. And they would go more slowly so one day I walked into the living room, I put a swim towel around my neck because I like non verbals with these kids. And I sat down by the front door. I didn't say a word. And guess what? One by one, each of those 15 kids looked over and they're like, huh? The leader here is sitting by the door. We're going to the pool. Oh, I want to go to the pool. And they went and got ready and they came and sat down next to me. Why? Because kids are drawn to anybody who's sitting. Because that means I have time for you and I'm not going to yell at you. So start thinking, how can you lead your kids and draw them to you rather than trying to push? Okay, number two, tools to succeed always work way better than consequences. And we know that our kids need their brain stimulated and they tend to do better with challenges and missions. So let's make it more difficult for little kids. Hey, bet you can't get dressed in your closet, but you can't get dressed underneath your bed. A lot of your sensory kids will love that. You know, my favorite one is, hey, guess what? I hid your breakfast in the backyard. Bet you can't find it. Get them foraging for their own food. And I do love this. And you may laugh at it, but think what happens now? Instead of, come on, you got to get up. Get up for school. Go to that place where you're on red on the behavior chart. Maybe you don't have a lot of friends and you're bored all the time. Instead it's like, no, you've got a mission. I'm getting the brain focused on a very specific concrete task. I'm getting them out in fresh air and they accomplish something right away, which is I found my food. They get to eat it outside with the chipmunks. They're perfectly happy and it's peaceful inside. So you and your easier kids can enjoy the peace and quiet. Let them hide something from you. Hey, if you get up, you get ready on time, you can hide something that I have to find. Kids love stumping their parents. I love obstacle courses in the morning. Hey, you can buy that with. Combine that with foraging for food. So they have to climb under, climb over, pull, push things. It's great for meeting sensory needs. Give them an adult type job. Hey, you could be the barista in our home in the morning. You got to get up and get ready first. But then you could make us coffee. And if you do it in a really special or good way, you may actually earn A tip, because our kids love adult type jobs. Now here's a tool for anxiety. And if you do struggle with this, go back and listen to the episode in early August on overcoming anxiety. But one of the best ways to do this is ask a teacher at the school to give your child a special job to do. Oh, man. Jonathan, look, I could really use your help. You are so strong. You're really good at screens, whatever it is. Could you be here in the morning in my classroom like five minutes early every day? Because I could really use your help with this. That way when your child wakes up in the morning, instead of being kind of freaked out by all the unknowns, it's like, oh, no, my teacher needs my help. That's a tool that we use. Okay, so let's go to. And by the way, I know I'm talking extra fast, but I have so many ideas and I want to get them in in a quick time and respect your time. So tough. A tougher approach. And I did this with Casey. And here's the thing, use these with wisdom. I would rather try everything else first before going the tough route. But sometimes you need to just remember, when I do tough discipline, there's no drama. It's an even matter of fact tone. I don't take it personally. I don't make it personal. Think about why your kids play video games and listen. Because there's not a mom video game and dad video game with different rules and expectations. The video game doesn't yell at your child or lecture. You know what, if you would have done it the right way, you wouldn't have lost. No, it just says, hey, here's the game, here are the rules, here's how it works. If you do it this way, you go to the next level. And if not, you have to start over. See, that's how I want your discipline to be. So the conversation I'm going to do a quicker version of this is. And most of these are going to be in the Discipline that Works program. And I give you lots of different variations of each, but let me just do this one this way. I'd say, case, here's the deal. My time is really important. And you don't have to say this, but my time is really important. And so every minute that you make me that you are late causes me to be late for my work or during my day. So every minute that you are late, you choose to forfeit 10 minutes of your free time or screen time at night. Now, his response was always like, that's not Fair. How come it's 10 minutes of mine. I lose 10 minutes for one minute late. I was like, well, I don't play fair. I play to win. And my time is very valuable. That's how I roll. So the first morning he came, got in the car, he was three minutes late. I held up the phone, he's like, d, that's really good for me. And I said, you know what that is? That is an improvement for you. But you chose to lose 30 minutes of your screen time tonight. And his response was, father, thank you for being consistent and following through. It makes me feel safe as a child. Yeah, that's not what he said. He was upset and he thought it was stupid and dumb and why would anybody trust you as a parenting expert? This is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. He wasn't mad at me. He was mad at himself. And by the way, on the first time, you could give your child a little bit of mercy and say, all right, I'm going to give you a mulligan this time, but Tomorrow, if you're three minutes late, you lose 30 minutes. And then I just did what I said I was going to do. And that night when I came home and I was like, hey, just remember this morning, you chose. And I like that language, because he did choose that. Now that's why I'm giving tools also. I'm not just saying I'm not coming in right away. Like, you know what? If you're not on time tomorrow, you lose all your stuff. I'm giving tools. But you chose that. And so I wanted him to own that. And so he was like, oh, this is dumb. No reaction necessary, no lecture. You know what? I gave you plenty of opportunities to be on time. And if you would have been on time, we don't have to do all of that. I just said, hey, I'll see you tomorrow at 7:22am in the car. And from then on, he did a really good job with that. I have to tell this quick, funny story. So we talk about in our program a lot about that idea of, hey, you just. You make a promise to your child, hey, I promise you, if you do this, this is the outcome, and then I keep my promise. And so this guy took it a little bit too far, I think. And he told his kids, hey, Legos need to be off the floor in the next 13 minutes. I'm going to build a bonfire in the backyard and burn them. And the kids were like, he's not going to do it. Well, 13 minutes later, they saw smoke coming up from the backyard. What did they learn? Oh crap, he meant it. So I think that's a little bit too far. I don't want you burning your kids Legos. But I like the principle, which is I'm a person of my word. You can count on me when I tell you something. So you could also flip this around a little bit too and say, so let's say you have to leave at 7:22am Maybe you say hey, we've got to leave at 7:15am well now you built in a buffer time of seven minutes. So when they are inevitably late, you're not really late and it still works out okay. And you could flip it around and say, hey, if you are early then we will have time. Look, if you're early from Monday through Thursday, on Friday morning we'll go by X place, maybe we'll get a smoothie for breakfast or stop at McDonald's and get something really healthy as a reward. Up to you. Okay. Ownership. Ownership. You have to understand if you have a strong willed child, it is one of the most important concepts that you will need throughout their whole life. 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 347 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. Hungryroot 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 codecalm so I really like giving kids ownership of their choices within my boundaries. I just encourage you. You're going to have to make your boundaries bigger with this strong willed child because they're not going to do things the way that you want and they're going to find weird creative ways to do things that irritate you. So I say hey, here's my objective. Okay, that's what we're after. But I relinquish control over how you accomplish that. I don't care how you get it done, as long as we get it done. And that gives your kids some space to problem solve, to be creative. So let's say in the morning it was, hey, I have one goal for you. Every morning. I want you in the car or on that school bus at 7:22am I don't care what you look like, I don't care what you smell like, I don't care what's in your stomach. Just be on that bus 7:22am look, if you are smart enough to wear the clothes to bed that you're going to wear to school the next day, beautiful. You can roll out of bed at 7:21, grab that pop Tart that I know you hid underneath your bed, and you don't even have to have your shoes on you if you want to keep. Put your shoes on the school bus the day before and keep them there. I don't care. Just be ready by 7:22. Now here's the hard part. I do care how they get ready because you and I are good parents. So we want our kids to get up early, get some exercise and fresh air. And I want you to eat some blueberries because that's good antioxidants. And I want you to eat protein and I want your brain ready to learn. And I want you to look nice so you're ready for school. And what I really want that for is so that I'm not embarrassed sending my child to school. How many of us do this? 1. This is an anxiety thing. Your child's going to come downstairs in shorts and a hoodie sweatshirt even when it's 22 degrees out, and you're going to be like, well, honey, you're going to catch a cold if you wear shorts to school. Well, you don't catch a cold from cold weather. It's from germs. Right? It is our own anxiety. Like, what are the other parents and teachers going to think if I send you to school like this? Relax. Your sensory kids may always do that for the rest of their lives. I'm pretty much like that. Casey is like that. But there's also that anxiety of like, but I want them to eat healthy. But how many of you have found lecturing them about nutrition and the food pyramid, which is wrong anyway, right? Completely opposite of what it should be. It doesn't matter. They're never like, mom, Dad, I didn't realize what I was putting into my Body was so unhealthy. But now you explained it to me, all of a sudden, I want to make better choices. No, model it for yourself. And I guarantee you, if your kids don't eat a good breakfast and in third period every day, their stomach is a little bit upset or hurts because they're hungry now, first they're going to barter or steal someone else's food, which is fist bump. Good job being resourceful. Right? But eventually they're going to come downstairs and be like, I need to eat a healthier breakfast. And you can say, hey, I give you lots of options. Are you going to make something yourself? But I step back and look, if your kids get ready and they're on the school bus on time, you know what your appropriate response is at the end of the day? Fist bump. Hey, nice job making the bus. The hard part is I don't like the way they do it. I don't like how you get ready, because I have a way in my mind of the way you're supposed to get ready. Remember, I did that on Sunday, kind of with giving kids ownership or talking about, I never liked how Casey got ready in the morning. So give your kids some ownership. If you have our programs, go through the Strong Willed child program. It's one of the first ones I want you to listen to, because I go through a lot of examples on ownership. Okay, Number five. And you know, I'm always going to close with connection. Let me give you three examples here. So let's say I've got to take my daughter to a doctor's appointment. I come in the afternoon and I yell up to a room like, hey, Grace, Grace, come on. Come downstairs. I don't hear a thing. Hey, Grace. Grace, come on, honey, we need to leave. And you can hear the tone in your voice change. Grace, Grace. If I have to tell you one more time, which guarantees you you're gonna have to tell her like eight more times. So am I saying this is right? No, but it usually is how it works. So you walk upstairs or wherever to her bedroom, and you go in her room and you sit on the side of her bed and you say, you know what, honey? I'm t. I don't really want to go, but we have to. And there's something about that, of connecting, of, like, even saying, like, I know, I don't want to do it either. Rather than a long lecture about how she needs to be responsible and how much money this appointment costs you if you don't go and da, da, da. No, I Identify. And I may. I don't have to, but I could say, look after the appointment, why don't we stop by X and get a smoothie together? Is that bribery? I don't know. Maybe I'm okay with it. Sometimes in some circumstances there's nothing wrong. But the real thing is you are connecting with your child. So this is a really cool example. And I like giving these from real life moms and dads. So this mom said, hey, I've been working through your programs and one of the most important benefits I've seen so far is I'm anticipating, I'm getting ahead of things and I'm understanding what my daughter is going to do even before she does it instead of reacting all the time. And so I've heard you talk about connecting in the morning. So my daughter is obsessed with outer banks. So we do actually, we leave at 7:20 in the morning. And I used your example and I said, honey, if you're ready by 7:11am, I like interesting time periods, especially for our neurodivergent kids, because it sticks in the brain a little bit. It just, it stands out and they can remember it. Hey, if you're ready by 7:11, we will have nine minutes, because I'm going to be all ready every morning at 7:11. And if you are, that gives us nine minutes. And I will watch clips from your favorite show. We'll talk about it. And the mom said, a couple things happen. One, their daughter now is getting ready by like 7:02 and she's like, mom, I'm ready, are you? Because she likes that connection time. And the mom said, you know, for the first like five days, I kind of got tired of watching the clips. And I'm like, okay, it's working, but do I have to do this every morning? And then she said one day her daughter came downstairs and said, mom, can you help me? I've got a little drama going on with my friends at school. And she was like that. That is what I am looking for because you made that space for her in that time and connected. Now you're getting to the deeper things rather than it being just like a rush job for the whole thing. Okay, love that. Now here's one of my favorite things I love. Look, the millennial couples and the young couples out there who are working so hard at this. I know it's hard out there and you can't like, I did an Instagram post on this because it's very true and I'll do it right here real really quickly. In case you didn't hear it, the amount of pressure that is on you. When we were a young couple, I was 30 years old. I was making $60,000 a year, which is a really good salary. But our first home cost $120,000, two times our salary. There's no way young couples now can find a decent home or any home for two times. Many of you are paying four times, five times, six times your salary. Plus you have student loan debt that we didn't have. You also have child care expenses, because back then, my wife could stay home with our son. And so it is hard. But I do want to affirm you and let you know you guys are working your butts off. So don't listen to those older generations who are like millennials. Don't work hard. No, you're working really hard. And you know what else you're doing? You're prioritizing the right things, which is your friendships, your friends, family, that the millennial dads are really engaged with their kids. And you're taking advantage of experiences. And you know what else you're doing? You're breaking generational cycles. And that's cool. And that relates to this example, because a lot of these couples, you're kind of competitive with this in kind of a fun way. So this mom an email and said, I was at my wit's end because I kept yelling, like, for the umpteenth time, for our son to get ready in the morning, and he didn't. And I watched my husband get up, and he went upstairs. He sat on our son's bed and said, hey, thanks for clearing the table last night. And then he whispered and said, I hid your stormtrooper. Bet you can't find it while I'm getting breakfast ready. And a few minutes later, I'm listening to them laugh in the kitchen, and they're talking about Star Wars. And that was so different from how it used to go, because my husband was kind of raised by parents, parents like you, and was more intense, like, come on, you better get downstairs or else. And I watched him and heard him connecting with our son and having such a good time. And later I was like, where did that come from? And he looked at me and he said, honey, everybody knows connection and a treasure hunt always work. And I was like, what? And he goes, well, you bought those programs from that calm guy. And I listened to them last night after you went to bed. And it was such. It. Such a cool thing to see couples really working at this and using all these different tools. So let's wrap this up this way. I'd encourage you, number one, work on controlling yourself. Work on that, even matter of fact tone, even sitting, sometimes lying down. In fact, I just had a dad today on Instagram, was texting with him, a little messaging with him and he's got four kids. And he said we had some big fighting going on. And he said he took a chance, walked into the room and laid down on the floor. And I was expecting him to say, and they all jumped on my back and I had to go to the hospital. But what he said is we had a train of everyone giving back massages. And I was like, how cool is that? So tools to succeed. That's a big one. Stimulate the brain, forage for food, obstacle course, adult type job. You can do the tough discipline. Just do it in an even matter of fact tone with no drama. Keep your promises. Moms and dads, give ownership. Give your kids a little leeway. Hey, how do you want to do this? I'm okay with whatever you want to do as long as we accomplish the objective together. And then connection always changes behavior more than anything else. So I'll probably do another one on get kids moving because I have another eight or ten ideas, but I'll maybe do that later this fall. So moms and dads, thank you for working so hard at this. If we can help you in any way, reach out to caseyelebratecolumn.com if you need help financially getting our programs. Let us know if you need to know what order we usually send and say, I want you to do 30 days to calm ADHD university so you're ready for the new school year. The Strong Willed Child program. If you have older kids, no BS program will help you with all of that stuff. And as you go through the programs, you can email us and we can make it a little bit more specific if we need to. We love you all. We respect you all. Okay, let me know how this goes with getting kids. I'm curious what works with your kids. Just email us, let us know. All right, love you all. Bye. Bye.