Calm Parenting Podcast - 10 Ways To Help Kids with Big Emotions Part 2 (Why Punching Pillows Doesn’t Work)

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Starting point is 00:02:27 calming kids with big emotions. I want you to expect and plan for meltdowns. Have a code word. Use that positive intensity. Give your kids space to process their disappointment. Remember no eye contact and control yourself and lead kids to calm. We use the example of coloring with a toddler and even a teen. But sometimes you need more physical tools when kids get more intense or even aggressive. So in this episode of the Calm Parenting Podcast, I'm going to give you five more tools to help kids with big emotions.

Starting point is 00:03:03 So welcome. This is Kirk Martin, founder of Celebrate Calm. You can find us in our Black Friday sale at CelebrateCalm.com. Look, raising kids with big emotions and all kinds of other challenges like anxiety, OCD traits, and more can be really hard. So I have enormous respect for you as moms and dads and even as grandparents. Raising your kids and grandkids, working through your own trauma and childhood issues like this mom because I want to give her a shout out she said I decided to get your programs because I want to help learn how to handle my 14 year old son who has

Starting point is 00:03:37 high functioning ASD and anxiety but the programs also helped me better understand my strong-willed daughter. We just had an episode where she touched the hot stove and now we're having open communication and honest conversations instead of any of my ego trauma and hurt speaking. It's a really good insight. I'm fully present and enjoying being the best parent I can be while giving myself some grace. I think that's a big part of this. So kudos to you. I think that's absolutely beautiful and wonderful even though it can be a messy process.

Starting point is 00:04:16 So proud of you moms and dads. Okay, number six to 10 ideas. Observe your kids for clues. This is one of my favorite tools to use as a parent because your kids will tell you everything they need by what they do. And so you simply begin observing them and what they do naturally.

Starting point is 00:04:35 Quick one was we had all these kids who came into our home and I noticed there are a certain number of kids, they liked fixing things. It gave them, it was something tactile and tangible. So when they would get upset I would ask them I give them a challenge hey you know I just remembered there's a broom in the basement and it's broken could you find some duct tape and fix that for me? And then they had a mission they had a challenge so instead of like you need to calm down stop being upset or talking to them endlessly I gave them something that they felt in

Starting point is 00:05:05 control of that they were actually good at doing because look I'm not really good at calming down. I don't have a lot of impulse control. I get really upset really quickly but I'm really good at building things. That's a quick one. Now I noticed also a lot of the kids that came into our home they would take the cushions off our sofa and then they would lie down on the hard part of the sofa. And at first I thought, you guys are weird. But then I started to think, okay, how can I use that insight? Because what they were looking for was some sensory pressure. And I've shared this before in other places that I would begin to do homework because they like confined spaces doing homework underneath a table in a closet. I'd have kids sleep in a sleeping bag in a

Starting point is 00:05:50 closet and it really helped. But what I came up with was a code word and a plan. So when these kids would get upset we had it pre-arranged. I would just say, hey guys, sofa. And their mission was not to calm down. Their mission was to go in my living room, throw the cushions off the sofa because I knew they weren't going to place them nicely on the floor. I'm a realist. So they would throw them on the floor. They would then lie down on the hard part of the sofa. I would come in. I would put the cushions on top of them and then I would sit on top of the cushions with appropriate pressure of course. And here's what happened. It was instantly calming. Why? Number one, it was weird and weird stuff

Starting point is 00:06:33 works for your kids. Number two, that sensory pressure is so calming for their bodies. Number three, no eye contact. I wasn't looking at them. And we had amazing conversations during those times. And we would walk through and problem solve how to handle the situation differently. And so I want you to think about what calms you. See, many of you when you're upset, you'll start cleaning and organizing. Why?

Starting point is 00:07:00 It gives you a sense of control and external order which helps you with internal order. It gives you something to do an action step. You're being proactive like making your bed. It's partially why maybe you change your earrings or your clothes because that can shift your mood and your energy and how you feel about yourself. So when you clean your kitchen sink at night before you go to bed, what you're kind of saying inside is, the rest of my world is out of control. I can't control my kids or my spouse, but my sink is spotless. So what is that kitchen sink activity for your child? Just observe them. Do you like this dance or spin? Create things, climb trees, sing, play an instrument, fish,

Starting point is 00:07:46 organize and count things. That's a lot of our kids on the spectrum like to organize and count things because why? Order and structure. So use that to your advantage when you're helping them calm down. Number seven, I titled this this, punching pillows and breathing often don't work for our kids. And using lots of words and just talking about your emotions tends to provoke kids to anger even more. Because if your kids were more mature, they could probably say, look, I don't want to I don't need to talk about my emotions.

Starting point is 00:08:22 I need an adult here to show me what to do with my emotions. And we use movement a lot. You've heard us say motion changes emotion. Movement is a tool we use to help a child begin to self-regulate. Instead of telling them what not to do, stop yelling, stop hitting, you give your child something they can do and you make it a mission or sometimes even a challenge. The punching pillows thing, I get it if it works for your child, by all means do it. But for most of our intense kids and me, punching pillows is not satisfying. Look, you've got intense kids and and they've got this frustration, this shame,

Starting point is 00:09:04 embarrassment, disappointment. It is coursing through their veins and bodies. It's actually a physical thing for them. And so just punching a pillow can feel deeply unsatisfying. Look, how many of you have kids who immediately lash out and want to hit or throw things? See, throwing something feels really satisfying. I've done that my life. I still I know I'm the calm guy but I still get that urge so it's like I want to throw something the motion the impact the noise all express very well I'm really PO'd right now. So I understand the

Starting point is 00:09:44 importance of breath work and breathing exercises. Those can be extremely helpful, but that also implies that in this moment, your child has some level of self-awareness and self-control plus a desire to be calm. And don't miss that. Sometimes when upset, I want to get the frustration out. I don't want to be immediately calm. So we need to do something more sensory and physical. Some of your kids are more tactile and aggressive as we mentioned. So proactively, I would spend a lot of extra time, even money, meeting those needs for sensory pressure. Have built a little obstacle course. It doesn't take any money, just old stuff. In

Starting point is 00:10:28 your basement or backyard with tire swings, things they have to push or pull, climb under or over. I'd sign your kids up for things like martial arts, rock climbing, swimming, get a lot of physical sensory exercise. And by the way that will also help them during homework time and with processing of information. Now if you follow us on Instagram or TikTok you're gonna notice most of our videos are taken atop mountains. Why? Well it's beautiful but it's also sensory work because we're climbing 2,000, 3,000, 5,000 feet that takes effort and energy. There's a lot of sensory pressure with climbing up rocks. You're on uneven surfaces, on loose

Starting point is 00:11:12 footing and so that's very settling for us and even Casey is a grown man now he'll routinely say like, Dad I need to burn off some energy so I'm not a jerk and he'll go climb a mountain in the winter through snow going uphill on his skis. Why? It works off some of that angst. So I just got an email from a dad who said look I listen to your programs and this one weird idea has worked really well. We made little trays of ice cubes that we take and when I have a bad day I'll throw them against our brick wall and it feels satisfying to throw something see the ice splatter and not hurting anything and I'm not even hurting anyone or anything not

Starting point is 00:11:56 hurting our house and so my son will now say dad can we throw some ice and we go do it together and I know the neighbors must think we're weird, but I don't care because it's been a great tool for us. So I was talking to this mom once, we were texting back and forth, and she said, my daughter is like, she's starting to get aggressive and destructive. What do I do?

Starting point is 00:12:18 And I said, well, do you have a basement? She said, yeah. And I said, is there like a sofa down there? And she said, yeah, an old one. I said, oh, here's what I want you to do. You kind of walk out of the room because we don't give a lot of eye contact and a lot of that negative intensity to our kids and just say, oh, you know what? I just remembered I need to email your grandma about something. Listen, I don't know if you can do this, but I was going to cling downstairs in the basement.

Starting point is 00:12:42 Do you think you could move the sofa from one side of the room to the other? Because that really helped me out. And then a mom walked out of the room, gave no eye contact, not a lot of attention to her daughter right then. She said she heard her daughter had moved the sofa from one end of the room to the other and she was standing there beaming and asked, is this what you wanted? And see, there's something in here that we don't realize. When your kids are really upset and feel out of control,

Starting point is 00:13:20 they're beating themselves up. That's why I don't like the eye contact because they're like, I'm stupid. Why can't I control myself? Nobody else in our home gets this upset? It's just me and instead now her daughter was beaming because she had just done something She was good at doing because when we ask our kids like why did you do that? They're like, I don't know I don't know why I do these things, but I know it's bad and it's wrong and I'm the bad kid in the family.

Starting point is 00:13:48 But now by giving her daughter something very physical and sensory to do that she would be good at doing, we just created a success. And now, see that's partly from observing your kids and knowing that they're doing that. I have a lot of kids who like doing outdoor work, shoveling mulch. And look, if you have kids who are being really aggressive,

Starting point is 00:14:10 I encourage you, go through the Discipline That Works program. I just completely updated that thing. It's a four and a half hours alone. For those of you who already have our programs, it's already downloaded onto your app last month, so give that a listen. Or if you get the Black Friday sale, listen to that one.

Starting point is 00:14:26 It's fantastic. It's about an hour long on dealing with kids who are hitting you, hitting siblings. But I can't cover that in a podcast because there's a lot that goes into that underneath the surface. Okay, let's get on to number eight. I like this one a lot. So even though we're traveling this coming week, I always start every single day with my AG1 because I feel more energized, mentally sharp, and regular.

Starting point is 00:14:53 And right now AG1 is running a special Black Friday offer for all of November. AG1 is a daily health drink packed with nutrients to help alleviate bloating, support sustained energy, and whole body health. So this holiday season, try AG1 for yourself or even gift it to someone special. It's the perfect time to focus on supporting your body with an easy and surprisingly delicious daily health drink. And that's why I'm excited to be partnering with AG1. Every week of November, AG1 will be running a special Black Friday offer

Starting point is 00:15:28 for a free gift with your first subscription, in addition to the welcome kit with vitamin D3 and K2. So make sure to check out drinkag1.com slash com to see what gift you can get this week. That's drinkag1.com Calm to start your holiday season off on a healthier note while supplies last Red one we're coming at you is the movie event of the holiday season Santa Claus has been kidnapped. You're gonna help us find you can't trust this guy. He's on the list

Starting point is 00:16:04 So naughty Lister naughty Lister Dwayne Johnson. We got snowman! Chris Evans. It might just go back to the car. Let's save Christmas. I'm not gonna say that. Say it. All right. Let's save Christmas. There it is. Only in theaters November 15th. The I want you to simply affirm your kids when they make progress. I'm gonna keep this one short. Just notice when your kids make progress calming down. Even saying, hey that was a nice job earlier. You got really frustrated and you started down that angry path but then you caught yourself and you calm down. And it just shows me you're growing up. And then whenever I praise strong willed kids, I

Starting point is 00:16:47 always move on to something else. I don't draw a lot of attention to it. I walk out of the room. It's planting a lot of seeds, but I'll just repeat this. Affirm your kids when they do a good job. I don't praise, I don't wait for perfection. It's never coming with human beings. I praise for progress so they know, okay, that was good. I did a better job. Some of your kids, realistically, if they normally have 45-minute meltdowns and they stop after 30 minutes because they decide to give you a code word or do something physical, that's progress. And I'm noticing that. Okay, number nine, I love this one. It is a very

Starting point is 00:17:26 very powerful tool. I want you to begin using the phrase, hey when you're ready. Now I want to give you a couple examples because here look you can't use it this way. Hey son when you're ready get your shoes on we need to go to an appointment. You're never going to that appointment. I don't use it then. I use it in an emotional situation when your kids are kind of melting down. I'll give you a couple examples because look if you come into a room and say you need to calm down right now young man, it'll just escalate and the child will resist you. If you demand that a strong willed child apologize right now, they will scream no and you'll end up with a big fight.

Starting point is 00:18:07 So Casey would be upset and I'd begin using this phrase, Hey, I'm gonna go outside and I'd be holding a football because I like non-verbals when kids are upset. Not a lot of words. Hey, when you're ready, come out, we'll play catch and I'll help you with whatever you're struggling with. Or I would come in and say, hey, I'm gonna go dump the Legos out on the floor when you're ready, come out we'll play catch and I'll help you with whatever you're struggling with. Or I would come in and say, hey I'm gonna go dump the Legos out on the floor when you're ready, come on in and we'll finish that up that spaceship we began earlier. I love the phrase and I'll tell you why in a minute. I had a dad whose child liked to draw and he would come into the room with a couple sketch pads, again a visual, and say,

Starting point is 00:18:46 hey I'm going to be in the basement drawing when you're ready, bring some snacks down and we'll draw together. See, I wasn't trying to calm the child down. The child didn't become a project, someone who had to be calmed. I was inviting him, but here's the beauty of those words. When you demand something of a strong willed child, they will almost always automatically resist. When you say, hey, when you're ready, it gives your kids something they feel in control of in that very moment. It's huge because these kids value their independence and agency agency and ownership and this is

Starting point is 00:19:26 especially important when they're upset because when you're upset everything feels like it's out of control and so when you say hey when you're ready it's almost like it releases them to do what's right but in their timing and I like all these examples because we're inviting the child to be with us instead of sending them to their room, but we're giving them some agency. This we try that when you're ready thing. It is very, very powerful. You'd even use it with your spouse because you're not then you're not demanding. Number 10, stop the shame cycle that makes kids feel helpless.

Starting point is 00:20:05 And I believe the absolute most powerful tool to help kids with big emotions is to model how to do this yourself. I almost destroyed my relationship with Casey when he was young. He was so emotional, so reactive, and it just irritated me. And I think it bothered me so much because it required something of me emotionally. Skills I didn't yet have even as a grown man. Patience, understanding, empathy, communication. And look he was a very difficult kid. He's a neurodivergent kid. I'm a neurodivergent adult so we're both like impulsive and

Starting point is 00:20:43 emotional all these things and so we would just trigger each other a lot and he would react to some disappointment or change in plans or even something seemingly trivial like we've talked about. Then he would look up to me, his dad, and I realized later he was looking up at me to his dad, you know, the one who was supposed to be the adult, looking up at me with pleading eyes as if to say, can you please help me here? I don't know why this makes me cry or scream

Starting point is 00:21:20 or shut down or become defiant. And I don't like when you're angry at me, but you never really help me and I need help. See, he was looking to me for help, but I was too busy kind of shaking my head in disappointment or looking visibly irritated because the truth is that in ways, I was looking down at him hoping

Starting point is 00:21:46 he'd just stop it, quit, cut it out, figure this out, and stop making these situations so uncomfortable. See, I kind of needed him to stop and behave so that I could behave. And so here's this little kid and could be a teenager or even now, right? He's a 31 year old, still figuring out how life works, looking to his mom or dad for help, feeling helpless. And we just respond with a sigh, a groan, a shaking head, a disapproving look. And that crushes our kids. It absolutely destroys something inside of them. And I realized along the

Starting point is 00:22:31 way that he was internalizing my disappointment in him. He was feeling like more of a failure, and it made him feel embarrassed and humiliated. And think about this, at the very moment he felt helpless to calm down or deal with frustration or disappointment, I showed my disappointment in him. That was brutal and I remember I could see it on his face. And this is when situations escalate even more because here's what Casey has now been able to verbalize about those times during some of our when we do some longer hikes now we're

Starting point is 00:23:09 kind of reconstructing some of the childhood stuff that was going on and I think you'll find this kind of helpful and sobering he said dad I already felt helpless and out of control I didn't know what to do. I was looking to you to show me how to handle this because you were my dad and in some ways my hero. And I saw how successful you had been in business, at sports, at stuff I wasn't good at. And I looked up to you and I thought you'd be able to help me but you just looked at me with what felt to be like disdain like you didn't even like me like this is even hard to read right now right just give me a sec like you didn't

Starting point is 00:23:59 like me like I wasn't even your son. And I felt that like in my bones, that it was too much to bear. And I already felt like a failure, but now my dad is mad at me, and I'm gonna get even more trouble, and feel like even more of a failure. And listen to this insight from Casey, that's when I would explode,

Starting point is 00:24:23 because I thought if I'm going down, you are too. I'm not going to be the only one out of control in this home. It's bad enough to be the bad kid with two parents looking at you, but at least now I wouldn't be alone in my shame. Now that's some deep insight into what's happening inside your kids. And I remember once seeing that shame register on his face and thinking, I can't do to my son what my dad did to me and to my brothers. And that's really what inspired us to do what we do today.

Starting point is 00:25:00 And that set me on the hardest challenge of my life to learn how to stop reacting, to control my own emotions and to model how to handle disappointment and frustration in life. And so I encourage you model this for your kids every day. I think lectures are a large waste of time. It's a sign of parental anxiety. I don't think you heard me the first 350 times I told you this so maybe you'll listen this time. Look, our kids watch everything we do and then they emulate us. Where did we learn to react like this from our own parents? So begin to choose to model how to react calmly to your own anxiety. And if you want to have a calm, respectful child, I will then act in a calm, respectful way whenever I get upset at another driver,

Starting point is 00:25:48 another parent, a teacher, a salesperson, a hotel clerk. Practice this so you begin to retrain each of your reactions because all learning is repetition and we already have enough practice screaming and stomping through the house and lecturing. The truth is, moms and dads, you and I, we are our kids' greatest lecturer. And your kids will do what they see you doing.

Starting point is 00:26:13 And that's when I began by sitting down, asking questions instead of lecturing, learning how to reset myself. It's when I began coming home frustrated, but instead of slamming the front door, barking at KSAT say, man I had a really rough day at work, traffic was backed up, I'm frustrated. Would you do 10 push-ups with me? And what I was modeling with this to my son, my dad gets upset and he gets frustrated, but instead of yelling, he does his push-ups. And so we began finding ways to bond over physical

Starting point is 00:26:45 activities. Look, it's 39. We still bond over physical activities now. And that's when our relationship began to heal. When I stopped reacting and shaming and began teaching and showing them how to handle life, that's what we're after anyway, right? It's not about getting our kids to behave. It's about giving them life skills to handle the inevitable disappointment, challenges, changes, and frustration in life. Because if we don't learn how to calm down, watch how insidious these episodes usually unfold. At the exact moment when our kids are crying out for help, we push them away from us in anger instead of using this as a teachable moment, and we model the exact behavior we want to discourage. We deal with our own anxiety by yelling

Starting point is 00:27:31 at them. So we're gonna reverse course on this, okay? Does this take time? Yeah, but so does freaking out and creating more drama. This is what parenting is all about. Turning the nastiest moments into teaching opportunities. I think the reason that Case and I are so close to this day is because we fought each other so hard and we both wrestled with this together throughout his childhood. He was actually watching me finally change as an adult right in front of him and so that's why we have to slow our life down. Otherwise we mask all of our issues and we just threaten kids to get them to obey outwardly and I

Starting point is 00:28:13 don't want to do that. I want to deal with their ick and the stuff going on within them so they know they can trust me with their toughest issues as teenagers. Because if you can teach your child how to control his or her emotions when disappointed and frustrated, your child will be ahead of 99% of adults. It's more important than anything they will ever learn in school. So we have our marching orders moms and dads. We've got a game plan here. Begin working on this. Go through it. Pick one of these strategies. Begin working on that way. Get it. Progress. Look, praise yourself for progress. When you do a good job, say, you know what? That was a good job because usually I react and I blow things up into a 15-minute drama, but instead,

Starting point is 00:29:00 I started down that path, but I caught myself. You're retraining yourself. If we can help you take advantage of that Black Friday sale because that's what our programs do. We go through this step by step with all the situations. If you need help financially reach out to Casey, he'll help you. Want these, want you to have these tools. So thank you for listening to the podcast. Thank you for sharing the podcast and thank you for doing the hard work. I respect you so much

Starting point is 00:29:25 for this. So if we can help you let us know. Okay. Love you all. Bye-bye.

Calm Parenting Podcast - 10 Ways To Help Kids with Big Emotions Part 2 (Why Punching Pillows Doesn’t Work)

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