Calm Parenting Podcast - 5 Quick Holiday/Family Survival Strategies

Episode Date: December 20, 2019

5 Quick Holiday/Family Survival StrategiesUnstructured time, holiday pressure, and time with lots of family around can create mayhem. You don’t want to spend your Christmas break yelling at your kids, apologizing for their behavior, or feeling like you have to make everyone happy. Kirk shares 5 quick strategies to set your family up for success. Take advantage of our Christmas Sale at https://www.celebratecalm.com/christmas/ Here’s a cool challenge. Download any of the 12 programs in the Christmas sale directly onto your kids’ phones and your phones. After each person listens to a different program for 30 minutes during the drive to Grandma’s house, then share one thing you learned. It can be eye-opening! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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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. Hey everybody, welcome to the Calm Parenting Podcast. This is Kirk Martin, founder of Celebrate Calm. You can find us at CelebrateCalm.com. I wasn't going to do a podcast before Christmas, but I just got this really, really cool email from a family. So here's the setting. They're on the way to grandma's house for the holidays. There's four of them, mom, dad, two pretty strong-willed kids about ages 10 and 12.

And so mom had an idea, and I'm not guaranteeing this is going to work, but they got all of our programs. And so you download them right to your iPhone, Android, tablet, computer, whatever you want. So they downloaded different programs to each of their phones. So as they're driving along, dad is listening to the dad CD, mom is listening to Straight Talk for Moms, and the kids are listening to my son's CD program, Straight Talk for Kids.

So here's what they decided. After an hour, let's just do an hour, come back and tell me what have you learned. So first strong will kid, boy, pipes up. I learned I need to stop giving all of my power to my sister because she irritates me. And then I react to her. But that gives her power over me. And I don't want to do that anymore. Well, dad pipes up.

Well, guess what? I've got to stop giving all of my power to you, son, because you're really good at pushing buttons. But I want to apologize to you because I have taught you that you can get me irritated and that you have control over me. And instead of being the leader, I've been following and I've reacted to you. And I apologize to you for that because what I really know is you want my engagement, you want my intensity, and I'm going to start giving that to you in positive ways, right? And the car got really quiet and the mom inside was like,

that was worth everything in order for me, for my husband to finally stop reacting and complaining about our son because she said, and this is cool because she's emailing me while they're driving. And so she's like, to get this through to my husband to see that our son isn't just a little jerk, but that he really wants his father's engagement and intensity and do some positive things. This is a really cool breakthrough. So they asked their daughter, so what did you learn? And so she won't answer because she's one of our kids and they keep hounding her. And she eventually says, apparently you all have not been listening very closely because that guy says that you need to give the strong-willed child a little bit of space to process. And when you pressure me,

I'm not going to do what you say. So they started kind of getting a little upset at her, right? And you know what she said? She said, give me some space. I will not tell you what I've learned, but I'm going to show you. Oh, boom. I love that kid. I'll adopt her right now. Not really, because she's difficult. But I love, I love that attitude. So mom ended it by saying, here's what I learned.

I need to get better at saying no. And I'm going to say no to grandma and grandpa, to my mom and my dad, because I've been spending so much time trying to please them and not making them upset. And then I sacrificed my own family. And so I'm going to tell them that instead of staying for four nights this week, we're going to stay three nights. And then we're going to go somewhere and we're going to enjoy some family time together. And she said the car erupted in cheers

because she always commits too long and it ends up being really boring and they all fight. So I thought, that's cool. What a cool idea that this family had to do that. So I just encourage you. I wouldn't do the hour-long thing. I'd say listen for 20 minutes, listen to 30 minutes. Let your kids listen on their iPhone. By the way, in case I forget to say it, you can download these programs. Give them to your parents. Have the grandparents listen and say,

you clearly don't understand my kids, and it's a different era, and I know you like... Anyway, so five quick tips. I want to do five quick tips to get you through this holiday family time with your sanity intact. Number one, be assertive. Tell people what you want and need. Look, being bossy is telling other people what to do. Being assertive is telling other people what you're going to do or what you need. Have an

exit plan like this mom. Make it a short visit. Have a code word in your home because your kids are going to get overwhelmed. There's too many people around. And have a little bit of an exit plan for when you go places, right? If you have a Christmas party, don't stay the whole time. Leave a little bit early if you want to. There's nothing wrong with that. Look, here's one of my favorite ones. My way, because I'm kind of an introvert, is when I'm at a big family thing during the holidays, I'll say, hey, anybody need anything from the grocery store? Boom. Then I get to go to the grocery store either by myself, take a kid, take a family member, whatever. But I get out of all of that chaos. And now I've got a mission

at the grocery store. It gives me a little bit of time away. And so I frequently use that, oftentimes in the same day. Oh, looks like we ran out of milk because I just poured it down this drain. I'm going to the grocery store. Anybody need anything, right? We forgot batteries, so I'm going to the CVS, whatever it is. Use those things. There's nothing wrong with doing that because you know that you need it. Number two, kind of related, plan for downtime. Look, your kids, I want your kids to engage with everyone. I want them to engage. I want you to be engaged. I want you to have a good time with your family. But some of your kids just get overwhelmed easily. So plan on some downtime. I'm not talking about go play your

video games all the time, but take their Legos, give them other things to do, but allow them to have some space away from everybody else. And don't take it personally. And don't react when everybody judges you about what you're doing with your kids, whatever. Plan some downtime. It's really important. Number three, do what this mom did. Say no to your mother, your father, your mother-in-law, your father-in-law, your friends. Say no at parties, right? Don't go everywhere. You don't have to please other people, moms especially. Stop trying to please everybody else. I want to release you from that expectation that you can somehow make everybody happy or that you can create the perfect holiday or it's the perfect Christmas. It's not happening. And your job isn't to make everybody happy.

And your job isn't to go around and try to fix everything and smooth everything over and make sure everybody's happy and they have the right thing. Look, for other adults in your life, they're grown adults. Expect them to act like adults. And if things don't go well, expect them to deal with disappointment. And actually, same thing with your kids. Expect them to act like adults. If things don't go well, expect them to deal with disappointment. And actually, same thing with your kids. But stop taking all of that on yourself, or you will put too much pressure on yourself and your kids and your family to do everything perfectly.

Don't rush around. Say no to materialism, to false expectations of what Christmas is supposed to be like, don't rush around. You get to make the choice whether you enjoy this time or not. You get to make that choice. And for some of you, it's going to be really hard to say no to your parents because they've used guilt and manipulation on you, but you need to. And some of you, it's the best thing you can do for your marriage. Because you can't say no to your mommy or daddy, you subject your spouse and your kids to all kinds of things that they don't want to do. And that's all.

Look, it all comes back to controlling yourself and changing yourself, not other people. By the way, a little quick aside here. Look, we've got a lot. I hope this doesn't offend you. All throughout our family, we have a lot of kids with special needs on the spectrum. I've got a little nephew. He's a little Aspie kid. Don't judge me. I love little Aspie kids. And I know people are like, don't call him Aspie. I love the little name because I think it's actually a lot of great qualities come with that. And so my mom was always like, well, when Bryce comes in the house, he doesn't greet me like I greeted adults when I was a kid. I was like, I get that, mom. But he's not being disrespectful. It's not that he doesn't like you. It's that when

he walks through the door of your house, he's instantly overwhelmed because his brain is so busy and he's so busy trying to process everything and all of the noise and all of the people and it's all out of his control that he doesn't yet have the self-awareness and he doesn't have that internal control yet to get through all of that, walk through and come to his grandma, he's overwhelmed. So instead of putting more pressure on him and causing him to not like you by always uttering little comments about how your other grandkids say hi, but Bryce doesn't. Instead, why don't you be a little bit of a lifeline to your grandson who struggles a little bit? And why don't you, when he comes to your house, give him a job to do and you create a success for him and you give him something to do that he loves doing

instead of artificially making him come and hug you. And by the way, you're really old now and he might not want to hug you because you're really old. And I'm kidding. It's my mom. But anyway, you know what I mean. Relax with that stuff. Please teach your parents about your kids. Teach your relatives so they understand. Share the CDs. Download it to their phone and say, listen, look, we're going to take an hour, and you're going to stop judging me because I know what everybody thinks. If I just discipline my kids, they would be better.

Yeah, I've tried that before. These kids don't care about consequences. So for the next hour, why don't you listen to this stuff? Maybe you'll get some insight. You'll have them listen to the Strong Willed Child Program or the ADHD one. It'll change the way they see your child. Number four, unstructured time is really, really tough. So I want you to set your kids up for success. If your kids are home, if you're home all through the holidays, every day is unstructured time. And so here's an idea. Have a theme for each day. Have camp days. Hey, it's Camp Harrington today for our family name. What are you going to do today? Is it about cooking something? Is it a place you want to travel? Is it something you're

going to make together as a family? Is the camp day going to be giving to other people? So you're going to go feed people the homeless shelter, or you're going to take some food down to the animal shelter for the stray animals there. What is your day about? Give it some theme. Could be small business day. We're all going to start a little business today and try to earn some money. That gives some structure to it. When you go to your relative's

house, have your relatives, grandma, grandpa, aunts, uncles, give your strong-willed child a specific job, mission, or project to do using your child's particular gifts talents and passions something they're good at doing so when your child walks through the door and say oh man Jacob I'm psyched you're here listen I'm I'm building something in the garage I know that you're really good with your hands and building with legos and you can see in three dimensions and I can see you being an engineer an architect one day could you come help me with this project? Your child would be on cloud nine. And now someone, a relative, is seeing the good qualities in him.

And instead of having to correct him the whole time for his behavior, his misbehavior, his impulsive behavior, you've given him a job to do. When your kids are focused on a specific job that they're good at doing and they like doing, your kids rock. So whatever it is, I don't care. It could be coming up with a music video. It could be cooking, sewing, creating something, doing something outside, doing something with sports. Have your relatives especially greet them at the door and give them a job to do.

It could be fixing their electronics around the house. It could be setting up your grandparents with the grandparents with their own Facebook account so they can keep up with the kids and grandkids. Number five, and this is related to it, have a real life report card ready. And here's why. School's going to come up. All the relatives are going to ask, so how are the kids doing in school? Because that's typically all anybody cares about. And if you have more than one child, you likely have one child who's awesome because she pays attention and raises her hand and she studies so hard and she's so driven and motivated and she's doing so well and she's on an honor roll

and she's going to go to college and she's already taken her SATs in fifth grade and she's awesome. But then you have the strong-willed child who doesn't necessarily do that well in school. And this is just going to reinforce to that child, something's wrong with you. You're not as good as your siblings and nobody likes you as much. And everybody's going to get on that child the whole time. It's going to be miserable. So he doesn't even get a break from school when he's away from school. So set them up for success. If you've listened to previous podcasts or the ADHD program, you'll hear an idea I had that I love.

Create a report card for your child, a real-life report card, so when they come home with a regular report card, you can place appropriate emphasis on it, but then you can say, but I created a real-life success report card. Here are the qualities necessary for success in life. Persistence and tenacity, creativity, problem solving, compassion, figuring things out, ingenuity. And guess what? You're awesome at all those things. And so when your relatives ask about your child, how's doing school, say, oh, I just want to tell you about my son.

Here's what he did last week. He came up with this idea to build a robot, to take apart the toilet, to do whatever. And he started on it. Man, that kid, when he's interested in something, he works for hours at a time because he's persistent. I love that quality. You know what else he did last week? He saw a neighbor down the street struggling with something. He got out of his warm home and ran down to their house, and he helped Mrs. Johnson, that elderly lady down the street, with X or Y. You know why? Because my son's got a big heart, right?

And you can pull your child and say, Jacob, come in here. Tell everybody how much money you made last night building your own little business, walking dogs in the neighborhood, shoveling mulch, shoveling snow, raking leaves, doing whatever it was. Let everybody know and let your child be impressive to them, right? And show your family the other side of your child. And then you can say, you know what? He earned all that money and guess what he did? He took some of that

money and he bought Christmas gifts for kids who wouldn't normally get them because my son's got a big heart, and he's awesome. And you're not being defensive at all. You're just showing another side to your child that nobody else really ever sees, right? You can tell him like, oh, yeah, is he still pushing your buttons all the time? Yeah, but you know what I realized? I'm listening to this Celebrate Calm guy, and he let me know that my child pushing my buttons is really my issue because I have too many buttons to push. And if I would stop reacting to my child, and instead of giving intensity in negative ways, I actually gave him a job to do or helped him run his own business,

he'd stop pushing buttons, and we'd be getting along a lot better. And by the way, I downloaded all of his programs onto your phone. So instead of judging me for the next few days, maybe you could listen to them and then we can figure out a way together that you could support me because raising a really strong-willed child is pretty tough. And if just discipline and consequences worked, I would have done that already. You know why? Because I'm not an idiot. And so if you want to get on board and help me out, I encourage you to listen to these and it

would be really cool. But the whole idea is you're showing them a different side of your child. And it's a really cool thing. So I want you armed with this. I want you going, enjoying time with family. I want you to say no. I want you to have an exit plan. I want you to not try to please everybody. Relax, moms. Enjoy your time for once. Ask other people to serve you instead of doing everything for everybody else. Set your kids up for success and come up with ways that during these holidays, no matter where they are,

they can use their gifts, talents, and passions, whatever they're good at doing, to help other people and to serve other people. And you will not only survive the holidays, you will actually enjoy them. So to everybody out there, happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, happy holidays, happy New Year. If I forgot anything, I forget, I'm sorry. But I just want to wish you and your family a really meaningful time together. If we can help you in any way, reach out to us. We're at CelebrateCalm.com. You can email my son, Casey, C-A-S-E-Y,

at CelebrateCalm.com, or call us at 888-506-1871. We've extended the Christmas sale. You know why? Because we just figured, why not run it until Christmas? And we don't want to make any changes. We're getting all kinds of good testimonials. So if you need help, go on the website. Download the programs. If you order by this Saturday before Christmas, we will be shipping right up until they close at the post office. And some of you will get the physical CDs by Christmas. Some of you after.

But no matter what you purchase, you will automatically get the instant downloads that come right to your phone, computer, tablet. So you can listen literally right away and do that. But if you don't order it later, it's fine. All right. However you want to do it. But this runs through Christmas. So it's right there on our website, CelebrateCalm.com. Look, there's a tab that says Christmas sale. It's an awesome, awesome deal. And we love helping families. So if we can help you in any way, just let us know. Thanks so much. Bye-bye.