Calm Parenting Podcast - 3 Behaviors We Misinterpret As Defiance or Selfishness

Episode Date: May 9, 2022

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Calm Parenting Podcast listeners get an exclusive 20% off an IXL membership when you sign up today at ixl.com slash kirk. Visit ixl.com slash kirk to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price. So I'm super excited about this podcast because I have already recorded it about seven times. And every time I record it, I get a different insight. And then I go and I take my rough outline and I try to form it into a concise newsletter. And in the process of writing, I also discover some different insights. So then I go back and I record it again. So I hope by this the eighth time I'm recording this that it's really really

helpful for you. And this is what it's going to be about. You know I usually start with a question like do you have a child who's disrespectful, who's selfish? And I didn't want to do that this time. I want to break it up a little bit. But what it's really about is how we often misinterpret our child's behavior and motives. And that has huge ramifications. So I want to give you some insight. I think this is going to be extremely helpful. Otherwise, why do a podcast or listen to it? So welcome to this edition of the Calm Parenting Podcast. This is Kirk Martin, founder of Celebrate Calm. You can find us at CelebrateCalm.com. Two things. One, if you need help, reach out to us.

We're a family like yours. We had a strong-willed child just like yours, and you can reach out to him. His name's Casey, C-A-S-E-Y, at celebratecalm.com. Tell us about your family, what you're struggling with. We get together as a family. We discuss it. We reply back personally to you very, very quickly because we want to see changes in your family. Second thing, I'm trying to think of a better way to do this. Here's what I really want to say. If this podcast and the other podcasts resonate with you, go to CelebrateCalm.com and get the Get Everything Package. Why? Because it has everything we've created and includes the No BS Instruction Manual. To me, this is what you should have gotten at the hospital or if you did home birth there when you had the strong-willed child and

I love it and I want you to to be able to have the there's a lot of wisdom and insight in there that will change these it changes the situations it changes the meltdowns but it changes the relationship even more. And that's what we want. So here's where I want to go with this. By the way, if you need help with that, if you need help financially, reach out to Casey. Tell him and we'll help you out. We'll make stuff work within your budget.

So here's where I want to go with this. You may think that your child is being defiant or disrespectful or even selfish sometimes, but most of the time I think we misinterpret our child's behavior and that has serious consequences, right? Because when you assume the worst about your child's intentions or your spouse's intentions or your political opponent's intentions, you create a defensive response and you end up, we miss what is really going on. We miss opportunities. So this leads to a child not feeling understood.

And that usually in a person creates anger and resentment. It can cause them to shut down, right? And it ultimately creates the very defiance that you dreaded in the first place. And that wasn't evened in the first place. And that wasn't even there in the first place. But now because we assume something wrong, it creates. So I want to go through three examples. The first one we have talked about before. So I'm not going to belabor that. It's this. It's a common thing a lot of times with dads. Like, look me in the eyes when I'm talking to you. And it is a fact in my world that when a man becomes a father, he gets this dad handbook. And one of the first things it says is, you will

misinterpret everything your child does as disrespect, right? Because I always did that. And so men almost always are like, well, he's not looking me in the eyes. That means he's disrespecting me. Now, look, there's a very good reason that men are sensitive to the disrespect. And it's not because we just want to be respected. It's because we want to pass down our wisdom, right? I have a lot of wisdom in my life. I've done a lot of things wrong. I've been hurt by things. And I see my child going through the same things and I want to save them that pain. And so I want my child to respect me, not so I can feel like the king, but so that I can pass down my wisdom so my child doesn't have to go through the same things. That is a very noble motivation that we have, but we often get tripped up on it, right?

So we misinterpret it as disrespect. But I want to say clearly, as I always have, it's not disrespect. Some of your sensory kids think and process better when looking down or looking away. And that's why even in a classroom, I don't want teachers to require, look at me when I'm asking you that question. Oftentimes kids will doodle and they think better while they're doodling. When'm doing this podcast when i'm doing phone consultations sometimes i will close my eyes because that's how i process and recall thoughts and stories better the real reason your kids don't look you in the eyes then is because of shame and fear because we usually only give eye contact or demand eye contact when we're upset at them when they're in

trouble and many of your kids have already internalized I'm a bad kid I'm always in trouble so it's scary to them it's embarrassing and it's just too much so I'm going to encourage you, stop making this wrong assumption about your child's motives. That will create a lot of anger inside this child. What we can begin doing is giving positive intensity and look them in the eyes when they're doing something well, right? I make this joke at the live events like no mom or dad comes home from work and says, look at me, look at me, I'm proud of you.

Just made a good choice. We don't do that. But I want you to begin doing, giving some attention. Hey, proud of you. It shows me you're growing up. Hey, well done. And then a fist bump. Short, sweet. But give the eye contact, give the intensity

to when your kids are making good choices. See, when your kids trust you and when they know that you're on their side, right? I know you love your kids, right? We all love our kids. But discipline devolves sometimes into this thing of like me against you, right? You did something. It irritates me. I'm frustrated by it.

So it's me against you trying to get you what I'm going to get through to you. So you, that doesn't feel good and that doesn't work. So when they know I'm coming along, you're coming alongside and say, Hey, you keep doing this thing that's hurting you. I want to give you some tools and show you a different way to do it because that's what discipline is. Teaching, showing, right? Then they'll look you in the eyes and I promise that will feel really, really good. Now, here's one of those things that I just alluded to before that hit me when I was writing this out. And this is a huge insight that is very, very, it's a foundational part of the Celebrate Calm kind of philosophy. As humans, our natural reflex is to assign responsibility to someone else, right?

And that's hence that admonition, right, of, hey, instead of trying to pick the speck out of your neighbor's eye, first deal with that huge big branch and log in your own eye, right? Work on yourself because here's the trap we fall into. If my son, if my daughter, if my spouse would just start doing X, then everything would be better. Well, that's a huge trap. That is a huge lie we tell ourselves. And so one of the beautiful parts that I like in this first example

is what did we just discover? See, what we want is we want our child to look us in the eyes and respect us. And so our natural response is, well, he's just being disrespectful. He needs to change that. Look me in the eyes. And it has nothing to do with that, right? But what it has, but how we can actually change the situation is not by putting all of our focus and effort and energy into trying to change someone else's behavior. Instead, I have one thing that I can control

my life and that's myself. And so when I focus my energy on this, I'm going to be trustworthy. I'm going to be someone who, my child messes up that I create a safe environment so they know that they can come to me and so instead of always feeling like the bad kid I am going to to begin changing myself so that they feel an openness to come to me right that's that's a huge insight that if you can put that into play in your life, in your marriage, with your kids and stop blaming everything. Well, my kids are so strong. Well, I know they are. They're really difficult. That's why you're listening to this podcast. But what changes things is when I begin to say, you know what? I have a part to play in this. And when I start

putting my energy into changing myself, and that's what this was all built on. I know we give a lot of strategies for changing different things, but the core of it, the 30 Days to Calm program, is me learning how to control and change myself. And that changes everything. Okay, second example. This is a common one. My five-year-old daughter won't compliment her older sister or watch her gymnastics events. Why does she have to be so selfish? And another related one is, oh, my child seems like he's an owned little world. He always seems so self-absorbed. Now, two different answers, but kind of on the same vein.

I don't think that your daughter is being selfish. I think she's very normal for that age, right? Parents get freaked out like, oh, my child's not sharing in preschool. Good, they're not supposed to share until about age seven for many of your kids. That is what is developmentally appropriate. But what happens?

We freak out because now we get a note like, well, your child's not sharing with the other kids. And now we start to assume and look into the future of like, oh, am I raising a sociopath? Why can't they share? And then I begin lecturing and lecturing about you need to share and you do that. And what we're doing is, watch, we're imposing an arbitrary judgment on a little kid. She's supposed to be self-absorbed at age five, right? Now, not at age 25 or 35 or 45, but at age five, of course, she's five. Her whole job in life. And listen, I know this will bug some of you, but it's not to learn how to follow directions. Not at age five. Do I want her to follow directions?

Sure. Absolutely. I want her to learn to listen and do things. I don't want her running out in the street and dying. Okay. But her primary job is to explore things that she's curious about. That's her job description. I remember once doing a phone consultation with a couple and the dad's like, I know, but she's got to learn. I was like, I know. She will learn it. Dad, here's what I want you to do. I want you to write a job description for a five-year-old.

What is their job description? Is to get up early and work out and be at the office early and work extra hard for your boss? No, that's not her job yet, right? That's your anxiety projecting in something into the future that's not even true. She's not being selfish. She's being curious about the things that interest her. See, you love your older daughter, but that doesn't mean that your five-year-old should, right? It's not like you volunteer all the time to go watch other people's kids participate in boring sports that you don't care about, right? So relax with that. What's really going on is,

probably is, you have a strong-willed child. Overall, strong-willed kids have very busy brains. They're very deep into their own brains, all these ideas going on. And when your child wakes up in the morning, your child has an agenda. Because most of your kids, a lot of them, picture things in their brains. They picture something, right? Something with Legos that I want to build, something I want to color or create. And so they have this agenda when they wake up, and they want to accomplish what they visualized.

So your daughter, and this mom had described, I said, think what she's doing. She's got a picture in her brain of what she wants to accomplish. And then she goes about doing it. And that takes focus, persistence, pig-headed determination, and follow-through. See, she's exhibiting all the qualities you want her to have in life. She's doing it now. But you're worried because she's not interested in cheering on her sister at gymnastics. When in reality, she's doing what she's supposed to do and she's exhibiting all those qualities that I guarantee you, one day you're going to say she doesn't have these qualities when it comes to homework and sitting in class and doing boring chores right but it's there now does that make I hope that

makes sense because other look I've got two ways if I look at this she's just a selfish little child well what's your solution for that right now I'm gonna start badgering her and lecturing her. It's like we do with kids of, you know, you just need to be a little bit more grateful. That's a horrible thing to say. Do you want someone saying that to you? You know, a little bit of gratitude right now would be really nice. Like, no, it just sounds icky.

Stop. Instead, why not enter into her world, right? Why not enter enter in and say you know what I love about you honey and this is great question when you woke up this morning what was the first thing that popped into your head what is it that you wanted to accomplish you know what I love about you you get a picture of something in your brain and then you just go about doing it and I love that you do it see See, it's two different, it's the same. Watch, this is what's important. It's the same child. The child is doing the same thing that they have done, but how I viewed them changed. And in one story, one narrative

that I tell, because watch, we tell narratives to our friends, right? You're going to talk to your friends. They're going to be like, well, my daughter's just so selfish. And then the other parent might be like, well, my daughter's just so great. And you're like, okay, I'm not your friend anymore, right? Make sure your best friend has a child who's worse than yours. Kidding, but it does help. So watch, the narrative we begin to tell other people and ourselves is I have a

selfish daughter and now I begin interpreting, misinterpreting everything that she does as self-centered and what do we complain about at school? Your child begins to get a little bit of a reputation and now everything that they do is misinterpreted as bad behavior. Or the narrative I have is, this is perfectly normal for my 5-year-old or 8-year-old or 15-year-old child to do, whatever age they're at, they're doing age-appropriate things, and instead of fighting it and trying to fix them and change them

because it makes me uncomfortable, I enter into it and I get to say, I love how curious you are. I love that you're focusing on that. That will change how your child feels inside. It changes how you see that. It changes everything. So here's another example, third example, and I like this one as well. Just checking my time. It's a little bit longer than I usually go, but this is really good. I'm enjoying this. If I'm enjoying enjoying it hopefully you are because it's such good insight it's going to change things so here's another one common one with phone consultations we get an email like my son the basics was my teenage son won't go to sleep at night he stays up late just to irritate

us and I was like that's whenever i hear that my first instinct is not sure that's exactly what's going on so i ask a lot of questions right i get curious about well what else is going on tell me about your son a little bit so what i replied back to the dad was my gut tells me your child has probably always stayed up a little bit later because that's his natural that's his natural rhythm right because he's got a busy brain he's probably got some anxiety and he thinks about things and thinks about things right and also many of our kids stay up because they don't want to miss out on what's going on well if the parents are up I must be missing out on the fun stuff I don't want to go

to bed right many of your kids have that. So your child delays. Plus, this is really good insight. The world feels more peaceful later at night. That's why many of your kids won't do their homework until you go to bed. And then at 10 o'clock or 11 o'clock, it's like the world slows down. Right? Parents aren't lecturing. The world isn't buzzing with all its nervous energy. Look, there's a lot of nervous energy in this world, right? That's why I don't like going out in traffic at four, between 3.30 and 5.30 or six at night. I don't like doing errands then. Why?

Because everybody's waiting for work, picking up the kids, and it's frantic. And it's just, there's a different pace to it. I don't like it. It's unsettling, right? If you've ever noticed, this is why do you think creative people, a lot of writers, a lot of artists do their best work really late at night. Now, some of it is maybe they're a little bit weird too, but that's when they actually can feel things because they're very sensitive and they get in touch with themselves because there's not all this extra chaos and commotion going on.

So that's probably what's going on. So practical things you can do, right? Like letting them read about anything that's interesting to them, magazine, anything. Listen to audio books or a podcast. Maybe you run a fan, some white noise. Give them some sensory pressure. All those things can be helpful. But here's what

I would do instead. Assume he's not just being a jerk on purpose because that takes you down a different path. Look, if I think my child is just staying up late to irritate us, what is my tone all night long? Jacob, Jake, listen, it's time to go to bed. Look, you're already 15 minutes late. You know what? If you're not going to get in bed look you're already 15 minutes late you know what we did if you're not gonna get in bed then we're fine we're just gonna take away screens tomorrow and the whole night from about 8 o'clock on is just your own anxiety about is it gonna go to bed tonight what do I have to do to get this kid and it just becomes this whole negative thing so what if instead you

create a late-night tradition with them where you two connect for a few minutes, right? Maybe you enjoy a special snack together, right? You build something or you just talk about something he's interested in. It's a great one to do. And you give him an opportunity to let him dump any anxious thoughts out. Think about this. Many times the day is busy, busy, busy. After school, after school, we got extracurriculars. We got the day is busy, busy, busy. After school,

after school, we got extracurriculars. We got to do homework. We got to eat. We got to get a shower. We got all this stuff. Now go to bed. And we never really slow down. But what if you created it? I don't know what it is for you. Be creative. Maybe it's sitting in the basement. Maybe it's sitting outside in a hammock. Maybe it's outside on the swings with your child at 10 o'clock at night. I don't know. But do something. Maybe it's sitting in beanbag chairs. Maybe it's meeting up in the attic right in some comfy place where you've got a snack and you just sit there. And maybe you don't even talk, but you have a snack and you're just there together and you're connecting with this child. And so see what you're doing. You trade the normal tradition, which is end of the day conflict, lecturing, reminding, pushing. And instead of ending the day like that every day, you end with a new tradition that's peaceful, that's quiet, that's calming, that's connecting.

And see if that creates a more natural transition to sleep. So the dad replied with some good insight I wanted to share. And he said, okay, I get it now. He's not staying up because he wants to be disobedient. Think how loaded that word is. And I'm talking to you, Christian parents, because you're usually the ones who use that word a lot, right? That's how I can tell it's usually a religious family. It's like my child's being disobedient, right? And it's a loaded word, right, that comes with all kinds of like challenging authority. So he's not being disobedient or because he loves to give others a hard time I'm not saying that your kids don't like that they do like that partly because you keep reacting that's your issue too so and

dad goes on he's just got an active mind and he's curious and it feels good and calm to him to stay up a little bit later it sounds like this may be a problem or an issue we just have to manage rather than fix or correct. See that bingo you just nailed it. You're seeing your child in a different way. So let me wrap it up this way. Think where we've come. My son isn't just being disrespectful. In fact, he's got some shame inside and feels like a bad kid. And now I have an opportunity to create successes and help him feel better about himself. My daughter isn't actually being selfish. She's curious. She's determined to accomplish what she's pictured in her brain. So how can I enter into that and foster that curiosity instead of my anxiety causing me to assume the worst?

My teenager isn't just being disobedient on purpose. He's got a busy brain. He's got a lot of stuff going on in his life. He's got some anxiety. So instead of fighting him every night, I can find a way to bond with him. Not only will that change your child's behavior, it will change your relationship. And long term, that changes all behavior, right? That's what we're after. That's why I want you to listen to all the stuff that we've produced in the No BS program in that Get Everything package so you can step by step begin doing these small things that have a huge impact on your child. Because if you want, and I'll end on this one, here's a great question to ask a child. Does it ever feel like I've misjudged your motives?

Right? That's huge insight. I want to apologize for that. I've been misjudging your motives all along. And if I were you, I'd feel angry about that. That would make me feel angry. And so I want to see you in a different way. And that's why I want you to start.

If you get the package, start with the Enjoy Your Strong Willed Child program. And you download it right on the app and start listening to that. Let your child listen to that because he'll be like, this guy's describing me. That's me, mom, dad. That's what it feels like. That will change things. So I love this podcast. I know it's a little bit longer than normal ones, but still only like 23 minutes long. So if you found it helpful, please share it with other people, parents. And if you need help, reach out to Casey, C-A-S-E-Y, at CelebrateCalm.com. We want to help you. Love you all.

Talk to you soon. Bye-bye.