Kirk Martin (0:00)

So here is a killer idea to inspire curiosity and keep your kids brains active and learning in a fun way. This summer I want you to sign up for a class@ixl.com Kirk and for your child to sign up. That way 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 it makes it feel like learning is a family adventure, not something you make them do. Ixcel 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 get IXL now. Calm Parenting podcast listeners get an exclusive 20% off an IXL membership when you sign up today@ixl.com Kirk visit ixl.com Kirk to get the most effective learning program at the best price Casey and I used to fight over chores. Now we fight over Cozy Earth. He'll drop by and I'll say check out how cool these brushed bamboo shorts or T shirts are. Like literally cooling on hot summer days. And then he won't give them back. So now when I order Cozy Earth I use Code Calm and I get 40% off 2 of everything. Now the good thing is Mrs. Calm doesn't have to share what she calls the gorgeously soft fabric of her brushed bamboo skirt. So when we go out for a nice dinner, she slides off the relaxing Cozy Earth joggers for everyday tasks and pulls on the brushed dirt bamboo skirt. The perfect mix of elegance and comfort. And we end every day sleeping cooler under our Cozy Earth bamboo sheets. Upgrade your summer go to cozyearth.com and use code CALM for 40% off. Best selling Cozy Earth Temperature Regulating Sheets, apparel and more. You'll feel the difference the very first night. Sleep Cooler Lounge Lighter Stay cozy go to cozyearth.com and use code CALM for 40% off. Welcome to the Calm Parenting Podcast. This is Kirk Martin, founder of Celebrate Calm. You can find us@celebratecalm.com this is part two of how to talk to your child about his or her diagnosis. Or as I like to reframe it, I just want our families to have discussions about our relative strengths and weaknesses and how we can use our brains best. Because that's what our goal is the throughout our whole lives. And so I released that first part yesterday and the cool thing about living in today's age is you get immediate feedback. So Here are five comments I got back. One is, mom let her son listen to the ADHD and other programs. And he said, I have superpowers. And I was like, that is awesome if that's what you walk away from as a kid. I have superpowers. I love hearing that. A teenager said, oh, this explains why I like intense music and sometimes doing my homework late at night. I like the time compression idea. I can use that. See, we're giving our kids tools to know how their brains work best. We're not saying, oh, you're awesome and everything's great. We're saying, no, you have weaknesses like everybody else, but here are some tools to deal with that. Here are your strengths. So you want to play to that. One kid, when the family did the little the game of like, hey, if we were running a family business, what would your job be? He said, well, I'd run the company. And I was like, of course you're going to be the CEO. But later apparently added, I'd be in charge of coming up with new products because I like inventing things and I like ideas. I like that. A daughter, a neurotypical daughter, said, this actually helped me understand my brother better. See, that's what I want from these discussions. And then my favorite comment, I think, was from a dad who said, apparently I have weaknesses that I wasn't aware of because my kids pointed out all of my quirks. But I relaxed into it and admitted it. And we actually had a really fascinating and constructive family conversation about this. And he said he and his wife later were talking saying, it is amazing how much our kids know and observe because they even picked out things about their marriage and how one of them avoids conflict and they knew each other's triggers. This is fascinating stuff. So here's what I want, where I want to go on this episode. Let's begin. I really want you to do this exercise and I would do this exercise with. With your kids. So I want you to make a list of the skills that are necessary for success in school. And then on the other side, what are the skills necessary for success in life? Now, this is not exhaustive. This is my own personal bias, but here's what I have written down. So here's what's required for school success. Well, you kind of sit right. You do sit a lot and you listen to people talk about things you're not interested in. Well, life, success will reward so many jobs, will reward you for having a lot of energy for we mentioned those jobs before of EMTs and ER doctors and pilots and people, salespeople who are very, very active. Well, in the real world, you hyper focus a lot and you specialize and you get to choose a career that you're interested in. But in school, you're put in this artificial environment where you have to take classes about things you would never learn about if you were an adult. I always make this analogy for adults. I mean, really think about these things. You don't sit down on the weekend or at night. If you actually have time to read a book and choose a book that you're not interested in, you choose books that you're fascinated by. But in school, I want our kids to know that so much of it is very artificial and arbitrary. So in school, very much grades are determined by your ability to memorize information for a timed test. It's really helpful for your kids to know, like what I taught my son was, I was in the corporate world for 20 years. I didn't have to memorize information, and there were no timed tests. What I had to do was access information information, analyze it, and come up with recommendations and persuade my boss with my ideas. And so in the real world, companies will pay you to think strategically and think critically. Our kids are very good at that. That's why they're so good at arguing with you. They're very good at seeing patterns in things, following directions really important in school. But what's important in the real world, Taking action, having initiative, making decisions, taking risks, and learning from that. Leading is important in the school. Well, you have to navigate your entire school life basically with kids your own age. But for the rest of your life, you will be around people of different age, ages. And for kids who tend to do better and be better, with older people and younger kids, that's really helpful to know. And coming up in July, I'm going to do an entire podcast on social skills and how to give your kids tools in these areas. Well, in school, you're rewarded for being a generalist, and we fall into that trap. Hey, do your best at everything, try your hardest at everything. That's not how the real world works. And the most successful people in the world usually specialize. All the people who are famous that we read books about, almost all of them found an area, a niche that they just dominated, they were so good at. And most of our kids are made that way so that you focus on one area with excellence in school, you have to recall information, regurgitate what you've been told, and there's usually one answer they're looking for. But in the real world, you have to analyze information, you have to persuade people, you have to overcome objections and think. School is a very static environment. But for many of our kids, they're going to be in these dynamic, fluid environments. And part of the reason I want you to do this is so they can begin thinking about their careers. Because so often in school it's about, well, kids who go to school and then you go to college and then you get an office, job or you're. Whatever it is. And I want our kids to know as they get older, hey, here's some environments that will really play to your strengths. So the outcome of this is. And the conversation I had with Casey when he was young was, look, school is going to be more challenging for you because it basically exposes all of your weaknesses, all the things that you're not naturally good at, you have to do in school and you get graded on. But that's not how the real world works. From the time you were about 20 till the time you die, your grades, your performance, your success is based on your strengths. So while school is going to be harder, I don't want you to internalize that you're dumb or you're stupid or that you're less than, that something's wrong with you. Because all of these things will end up being advantages in the real world. And I can help you with many of these weaknesses. That's how I want to frame it. Now, I had this written down about ADHD in particular. You don't have to have this discussion with your child. I did, but you don't have to. But I want you to be aware of this. I hate the label. It's just such an inaccurate label. So adhd, attention deficit, I don't know. Yes, of course our kids have an attention deficit when they're not interested in something. But that's the way the brain is supposed to work. Look, our ancestors weren't sitting around learning about all kinds of stuff they couldn't use. It was like, I need to survive today. I have to hunt something down and we have to eat and we have to have shelter and we have to stay warm and they learn to hyper focus. And. And so in the real world, you have to pay attention to the right things. It's unnatural to just be focused on all kinds of things you're not interested in. I don't do that in my real life. I focus on the right things. I prioritize. And then we delegate the other things that we're not good at doing. We can Hire and pay others to do that. That label of hyperactivity, if we were in a different environment or if I ran a school, my school would be very dynamic. We'd be moving all the time. And so I wouldn't be labeling kids hyperactive. I'd be like, oh man, you work really well in this environment. And that's where I would label the other kids with an energy deficit disorder. So when you measure against an arbitrary standard, this is what the diagnosis comes in. And look, the thing of it being a disorder, we could argue about that. It can these diagnoses the way the brain is wired. It presents very real challenges for a lot of people. I prefer to say it is a difference, not a disorder. But that part isn't important for this. So I always like to ask, like, well, nowadays I'm like, what's your label? Like risk aversion disorder. Because you play it safe in life and that means you don't take risks. Well, the people who really make it big in life, they're risk takers. Okay, so my child questions things and might be defiant sometimes, doesn't always follow the rules, but maybe yours has compliance disorder because they're people pleasers. That can lead to a lot of devastating things in life. Like a lot of people, including many of you, were raised, you weren't allowed to speak up. And you learned that if I want my mom or dad's acceptance and love, I just have to do everything that they tell me to do. And you internalize that. That's a good thing. And you became a people pleaser and you ended up marrying a controlling spouse. And that has hurt you. And so I'm just trying to draw out the bigger picture here of what we're looking for and thinking about. Okay, now that we've gone through that, I let's drill down into great detail to how to help our kids with their specific weaknesses. So I stopped by my brother's house yesterday and before I could get in the door, my nephew called me and said, uncle Kirk, come see what I built by myself. It was a Kiwico plane launcher. Way cool. He was so excited and proud of himself showing me how he built a launch lever to send planes soaring, then put together a spring powered Runway for high speed takeoff. I love these Kiwico projects. Your kids will love these engineering, science and art projects because they are fun, hands on and build your child's confidence. My nephew may not always pay attention well in class, but he can explain the physics of flight. Now this summer, your kids get six different projects to work on as part of KiwiCo's Summer Adventure Series. Build the best summer ever and your child's confidence with kiwico. Get $15 off on your summer adventure series at kiwico.com calm that's $15 off your summer adventure at k I w I c o dot com calm how many of you have kids who struggle with impulse control? We do. So we taught Casey practical ways to delay gratification by saving money because it's very tangible. I encour to build this new habit with your kids this summer with the Acorns early app and debit card. I'm so glad. Today's episode is sponsored by Acorns Early. It's a smart money app and debit card for kids that helps them learn the value of money. I like teaching with money because your kids can see how their choices directly add up in concrete ways. It's one of the best habits we taught Casey. Acorns early makes building this new habit easy, easy and fun. So head to acornserly.com calm or download the Acorns early app to help your kids grow their money skills today. That's acornserly.com calm acorns early card is issued by Community Federal Savings bank member FDIC pursuant to license by MasterCard International. TNCs apply monthly subscription fees starting from $5 per month unless canceled. So I'll just share how I had this conversation with Casey. We wanted him to know how his brain worked best, so I would just ask questions. Hey, have you ever noticed that this is harder for you? When do you notice that? What tasks are easier for you? And we had a family discussion amongst ourselves of like, like I said before, strengths and weaknesses. What helps you most? Because what I wanted was for Casey to understand this is my brain. This is how it works best. This is what I struggle with. Without any stigma, without any negativity. Just an honest assessment. And then we would start working through in detail how to overcome different weaknesses. So I think I'll probably just focus on three of them here to give you an idea. So we would talk about case what's really hard? Dad, Focus, man. I just. It's so hard in class to focus on things I'm not interested in. I get distracted. And so listen to your kids talk about that and then you can validate and say, okay, that makes perfect sense to me. Like sitting in a class and someone's talking about something you don't care about. That should be hard to do. Homework time. Homework's really hard. Well, that one was pretty obvious because we had lots of fights over that one. So we started working through things, and I can't. This is hard to do because I wish I could give you all the context and spend hours doing this on things that would come up, like him talking about playing guitar, because I'd be like, well, why do you think when you're playing guitar, you can focus so well? How can you remember all those chords and notes when you're doing that? Well, dad, when I'm doing that, I'm in a flow and I'm motivated because I really want to learn that song. And it's physical, it's tactile. I'm playing, I'm hearing, I'm listening. I can actually feel the vibration through my body. I'm like, oh, that's interesting. So how can we take that and apply that to homework time? And so there were times where he actually would play guitar while I was reviewing things, vocabulary words, while we were learning, there were times where he would just sit and play, pick the guitar while he was reading. And I know that sounds weird because that's not how your brain works, but it worked really well for him. And I would encourage him at times. I was like, okay, so why don't you memorize something while you're playing particular chords or a particular song? Because there's research that says that if you do, there's an associative aspect of this. If you are studying a particular subject in the basement or the attic or the. The back of the minivan, you will recall that I do that all the time. I can tell you exactly where. I was hiking on a trail when I thought of something, and so start having these discussions. And when we take it out of the stigma or the heaviness or we really need to work on this, and you're just talking to them like this. Oh, it's really cool. So what can we do to stimulate your brain? And we would often talk about him like, this is why you're so good at pushing buttons and arguing. Or you could ask your kids, hey, ever notice that you pick on your brother or sister when you're bored? That's because you're trying to stimulate your brain so movement works. Letting your kids hang off the sofa, come in and say, hey, bet you can't do your math homework upside down, because they're upside down. Or they're spinning, because that means meets a vestibular need in them listening to music, chewing, eating a snack while doing homework. So standing at the kitchen counter, rocking back and forth. Listening to intense music while they're eating a snack can be extremely helpful. Reviewing vocabulary words while you're swinging, kicking a ball back and forth, playing catch, spinning. The spinning thing is cool. Guarantee if you review vocabulary words while your kids spin, they will remember them fidgeting. So in class we would, we came up with these sensory strips, double sided tape on one side of different texturing strips. Because research says when you play with textured objects, it helps you concentrate better. So we put these strips underneath the child's desk. We used to have these in thousands of schools back in the day so the child can fidget while they're listening. Doodling is really helpful. And with some younger kids, we would put a sponge on their desk so they could actually tap their pencil on the sponge. The rhythmic motion of tapping is really, really helpful. Chewing on your hoodie tassel, which many of your kids do. They don't know why they're doing it when, but it relieves anxiety and it also stimulates their brains. Time compression I talked about in the last episode. It is a huge, huge thing. That's why I encourage you. Listen to the programs go through the ADHD university when we go through ideas like this all the time. So, okay, hyperactivity, okay. So you know, Casey, to this day, he is 32. He has so much energy and sometimes he will text and say, dad, do you want to go hike? Because if I don't get, get some of this energy out, I'm going to be so annoying to my wife. And I'm like, I know what that's like as well. And so getting your kids sensory pressure. That's why I love the treasury hunt in the morning. Waking kids up and saying, hey, but can't find your food. I hid it outside. And they have to crawl through things, climb up things, pull, push things in the morning. Intense exercise is really helpful. Many of your kids, I used to do live events for years and I'd always ask how many of your kids would love to shovel mulch. And so many hands went up because it's very sensory and it feels good on their bodies in the classroom. They are. By the way, when we get back to back to school time in early August or late July, I'll do an episode or two on how to help teachers in the classroom. But see, I want our kids. If I notice one of these kids, ADHD kid in my classroom, oh, first thing in the morning is, hey, I need some help. Could you move. These books are heavy. Could you move them from this side of the room to that side of the room and the next day I just make them move it back. And your kids won't care because they like to help other people. I'd have them lifting heavy objects. And again, you can talk to your kids with context about, hey, here are some good jobs that would play to your strengths and here are some ones probably not going to be that great. Short term memory, son, Casey and I talked about this all the time. Is going to be difficult for you. I struggle with short term memory, but in all my years in the corporate world, I didn't really need to have good short term memory. I got paid because I was a really good strategic, critical thinker. But the truth is, in life you are going to have to remember things. And Casey saw me throughout his entire childhood. There would be like when we traveled a lot for work events, there would be little notes by the hotel room door. Why? Because I didn't want to forget something and I didn't want to waste my mental energy trying to remember, remember, remember. Because remember the opportunity cost thing we talked about in the last episode. All that time I'm trying to remember, remember. Well then I can't use my brain power to come up with creating creative ideas and so post it notes. If any of you have like, you could use Alexa to do that. I send emails to myself all the time. Casey and my wife unfortunately get emails all the time or texts that'll have like an idea and I'll send an idea and then I'll put disregard it was just for me. So I can send a text and then sometimes I'll snap a picture while I'm actually hiking. And so I remember that way. So it's good for them to know different ways to handle this. It is also honestly why many of your kids eat the same food and wear the same clothes because it just creates order and consistency. Now I don't even have to think about what I'm going to eat because I eat the same thing every day. I wear the same clothes. Why I have all my Cozy Earth. My wife laughed because she's like, I know when you're about to record a podcast because you put a certain Cozy Earth pullover on and I'm like, because there's an association with the podcast now. I do that because it gets me in that mode where I'm doing the podcast and so freaking comfortable. So part of that is I mechanize parts of my life so that I don't have to think about them. So I want you to teach your kids how Their brains work. Teach them. How do you do this in the areas of your particular weaknesses in your life? What are the workarounds you use? And I think if we frame it this way, there's no negativity, there's no fear. It's just an honest assessment. And we're setting our kids up for the future to know. Okay, I'm always going to struggle with this. I'll tell you how I used it. In my final corporate job. It was with AOL America Online, the most brilliant, smartest people I have ever worked with and the least effective people I've ever worked with because they didn't have any clear goals. It was shifting every day. But when I interviewed with that company, I said I was very clear. Here's what I'm really good at doing. If you. And what I'm not. If you put me in a cubicle in Excel spreadsheets all day long, just doing paperwork and filing things and not really thinking, I will not be good for you. But if you give me some ownership of my job, if you give me a mission and say, kirk, I don't care how you get it done, but grow our business in this way, oh, I will be awesome. So they hired me and guess what? They did. They didn't give me any ownership. And so I started this business while working at aol. I used to do phone consultations from conference rooms while AOL was paying me. Was that wrong? Yeah. Do I have any regrets? No. I told them exactly what I was good at doing and they put me in the wrong situation. And so that was actually what led to a lot of this. We started inviting kids into our camp while I was working a full time job and it eventually morphed into what we do now. And I got a severance package from AOL and it was awesome. So thank you, AOL and your whatever. So thank you for listening to the podcast. I hope you found this helpful. I feel a little insecure about it because it wasn't all buttoned up the way I like it usually to. To. To usually be. I hope this connected, but I think if you have these conversations with your kids, it'll be extremely helpful for them because they do have a good future and they do have great skills. And like that kid said, they have superpowers. All right, if we can help you in any way, please let us know. It's what we exist for. I would encourage you over the summer, listen to the programs, go through them. There's so much detail in there that I can't cover in a podcast so that when the new school year comes. Oh, you're prepared. And. And we don't have to have that miserable nine months that many of us go through. Hey. Love you all. Appreciate you working on yourselves and your families. Talk to you soon.