Transcript
Kirk Martin (0:00)
Hey moms and dads, don't you just.
Skylight Calendar Ad (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.
Kirk Martin (1:20)
So little Chloe wants to tie her own karate belt in the morning before practice, but she doesn't really know how to do it. And and if you try to help her, you're going to feel some venom. But if you don't help her, you'll be late or she'll get even more frustrated. So what do you do when you have a strong willed child who wants to do things their own way? That is what we are going to discuss on this episode of the Calm Parenting Podcast. So welcome. This is Kirk Martin. You can find us@celebratecalm.com if you need help, reach out to our very strong willed son Casey C A s e y celebratecalm.com Tell us about your family ages of kids. What do you struggle with? We get there together as a family, we talk about it. We will reply back to you personally and usually very quickly because that's our mission to help you. Because this is really hard stuff because you know why? Because you have this child too. You have a Chloe, right? And they're very determined. They want to do things. Your strong will child wants to do things their own way and they believe that their way is the best. And in that way your kids are actually mirroring you right? And right you're marrying them. Our kids mirror. They're parents who want to do things their way and believe that their way is the best because we have control issues and all kinds of other issues as parents. So I'm going to give you a very helpful and cool way to handle your strong willed Chloe. I'm going to give you a script to use that I love because these situations are going to happen a thousand times throughout their childhood. And so you kind of have to get this right or you're going to have constant power struggles. So a few thoughts. Number one, this is kind of blunt talk. I believe that parents create more power struggles than your kids do. I believe you create those power struggles. No blame, no guilt. Why? It's just because we have control issues. We want things done a certain way because you're the authority figure and your way goes because you know the most effective, efficient way to get it done is to do it X way because you don't have time for Chloe to figure it out on her own. And I get all of that. But there's a much better way than you just fixing it, which usually makes everything worse. We also create power struggles because we have anxiety about our child's future. And if they can't figure out basic things or they can't control themselves, how are they ever going to control themselves in the future? And who's going to marry them and who's going to hire them? I get all of that. And what if your child chooses the school of hard knocks? What if they don't listen to other adults? Learn to control your own anxiety. Your kids are going to change. You're looking at a 7 year old or a 14 year old and thinking that's how they're going to be. Like when they're 24 or 34, they grow up, they change. But that's for another podcast and that's your issue. So work through, if you have it, work through the 30 days to calm program because we go through controlling your own control issues. Man, it is so liberating in life when you can control yourself, your own emotions, your own anxiety. Get control of yourself first or you're going to escalate. 993 out of the next thousand situations like this and that's by the time your child is seven. Number two, if you have a strong willed child, you must, must, must understand the concept of ownership. Listen, I do not give kids control of my home or my classroom, but I do give them what we would call ownership of their choices within my boundaries. I just make my boundaries larger to provide more options for the strong willed child who naturally is going to resist. I don't clamp down. You're going to have family and friends who are trying to be very helpful. That is judgmental. And they're going to tell you, you better clamp down on that child. And, and you've done that before. You clamp down and it creates a lot more anxiety. We're also not saying this is not permissive parenting. Well, just do whatever you want because I don't want you to be upset. I'm not saying that I'm giving you ownership of your choices, but within my boundaries, I'm just not being so rigid. And what I'm basically saying is this, hey, here's my goal, here are my expectations. This is what I want, what I expect, here are my boundaries. How you accomplish this goal, how you meet my expectations, that is up to you. I don't care how you get it done. I relinquish control over how it gets done, not if it gets done. Does that make sense? Because your kids are always going to want to do it in a different way, in a weird way, in a creative way, in a, in a non efficient way at times. And it's so the language is. It's not like if you want to do your homework, oh no, homework's getting done. Oh no, it's not. If you get up in the morning, no, you're going to get up in the morning, you're going to do your homework. Those are given. It's going to get done. I just don't care how you do it. If you want to do your homework lying off the sofa upside down. If you want to do it in a treehouse underneath the kitchen table while listening to Kid Rock, I don't care. Right. Morning routine. You don't have to do it on my OCD timeline. As long as you are in the car or on the bus at 7:22am I don't care how you do it. In fact, if you're smart enough to wear the clothes to bed that you're going to wear to school the next day, fine. Sleep until 7:19. Roll out of bed, grab that pop Tart that you hid under your bed because I know you hoard food up there. Run to the school, run to the bus stop and bare feet, I don't care. Put your shoes on during the bus ride, I don't care. Just be on the bus by 7:22. Now the hard part is I do care how they get up in the bedroom in the morning, but that's usually my issue. We pick so many fights with our kids because we simply don't like the way they do things. And I'm encouraging you to step back from that. Give your kids some ownership. And this is a really important principle. If you listen to any of our programs, you're going to hear this again and again. When we as parents step back, it gives our kids space to step up and be responsible for themselves. When we step back from lecturing, which is really micromanaging, and nobody likes to be micromanaged, it gives your kids to step up and try things themselves. See, our goal is to raise kids who are responsible for themselves, but inadvertently we try to control everything about them and we rob them of that ability to learn how to be responsible. So you really, really want this in the long term. It's the sign of an independent kid who can figure things out on their own and who will actually leave your home before they're 27. So we want this.