Calm Parenting Podcast - 5 Simple Tips to Calm Down & De-Escalate Situations

Episode Date: September 5, 2022

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we hear your annoying voice reminding us to control ourselves. But HOW? In this short podcast, I share five simple tips to calm yourself and de-escalate situations. You can do this. If you want more tools, take advantage of our sale on the Get Everything Package. https://celebratecalm.com/products/ Want to book a LIVE EVENT in 2022/2023?! We are now booking IN PERSON and Zoom events for schools, PTAs, churches, synagogues, corporations, and agencies! Simply email Casey@CelebrateCalm with LIVE in the subject line and he'll share a one-page proposal within hours. It's EASY!  Questions? Need help deciding on the best tools for your family? Email [e-mail] and Casey will help you personally!  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. So what do you do in that moment when your child's misbehaving, they're not doing the right thing. You're just frustrated and you don't know what to do. And you'll hear me in your head being annoying saying, you need to control yourself. Well, how do you control yourself? I want to do a really quick, short podcast to give you a few ideas that you can begin to practice. So that's what we're going to talk about on this very short episode of the Calm Parenting Podcast. This is Kirk Martin, founder of Celebrate Calm. You can find us at CelebrateCalm.com.

If you need any help, I'm talking really fast, aren't I? Contact Casey, C-A-S-E-Y, at CelebrateCalm.com. Tell us about your family, what you're struggling with. We will answer personally because this is important to us and we want to help your family. You can always go online, get everything packaged. It's everything we've ever created for like the cost of one therapist appointment. If you want to talk to me, let's do phone consultations. I'll talk to you personally. We'll get a lot done in a quick period of time. Why? Because I talk really, no, I don't talk that fast on phone consultations, but we do get to the heart of the matter and come up with really, really specific solutions. Or you can

sign up for one of our boot camps for back to school time. So here's some ideas for you very quickly. Number one, sit. I know this sounds stupid. It sounds too simplistic, but I like simple stuff that works. You're busy parents. In that moment, when you're getting frustrated, when you want to yell, when you want to lecture, instead sit down. It is almost impossible to sit down and yell at someone. If you do that, you're a freak and you need to stop, right? Like marching into a room, right? The very fact that you're marching into a room means I'm standing here, I'm towering over the child, right? Or if it's a teenager, I'm kind of looking maybe up at them. And it creates a confrontation and it's a defensive response. And I kind of want to

yell or use this tone. But as soon as I sit down and if I sit down and cross my legs, causes me to breathe in a little bit. It just changes my body posture body posture changes my tone and tone is almost everything with the strong will kids. You have to practice using this tone, even matter of fact tone. I don't want to be too much like this and talking like, honey, I really need, I really need your help. That's weakness and that's condescending to a strong will child. So that doesn't work.

I also don't want to start to get this, you know, Casey, how many times, see, as soon as you go there, you're done, right? It always escalates from there. The even matter of fact tone says, I'm in complete control of myself, right? My yes is my yes. My no is my no. I'm not going to yell. I'm not going to scream. I'm not going to scream. I'm not going to beg you. Just let you know this is how I roll. Giving kids some space. Take a little time. You don't have to address every single issue in the moment right now. You don't have to. You don't. It's better if you don't. I know, but we're supposed to do it promptly. Sure,

but not right away. It's better if you took a couple minutes, gave your child a couple minutes, rather than jumping down their throats and expecting that they're going to respond well. I give you permission. Take some time. Take some space. Now, here's one. I was thinking about so many moments with Casey because he and I are both strong-willed and we both know how to push each other's buttons. And there are times where the child is doing something legitimately wrong or they're just being irritating or they're getting an attitude. So many times I felt justified and I could feel it within me I just wanted to bark at him I wanted to teach him a lesson I wanted to lecture him I wanted to come down on him but I remember I would stop I just stopped for a second and I would humble myself there was something about this

thing inside where I'd say, I'm justified. His attitude is wrong. I have every right to do this. But I would humble myself realizing it just didn't work. It never works. So why keep doing it? And it was ruining my relationship with my son, right? And so I would let go of my control of the way I wanted to do it. Remember there's this one time we used to go down when we lived in Nashville on Friday nights, we'd go downtown under this bridge and we'd feed homeless people.

And I remember this one night, Casey had a big attitude. He was just being, right, all those words you want to use, defiant, disrespectful, right? And you know what it was? He had left his favorite sweatshirt, because your kids all have their favorite hoodie sweatshirt. They wear like 18 days in a row, even when it's 100 degrees, or when they're wearing shorts to school in the winter when it's minus 20. But they've got their hoodie, right? That favorite hoodie he had left at the gym. And so he was afraid he was going to lose it because with our kids, little things really throw them off. Okay. If our house had been burning down, he would have been fine. He'd be like, okay, cool. We'll build a house. I get a

new bedroom. I didn't really like the house anyway. But if I lose my favorite sweatshirt, I'm not mocking him, I'm mocking myself because I'm the same exact way. And so in that moment, I wanted to go down the path of, you know, it's just a sweatshirt. There's no need. There's no need for the attitude. Can you hear my attitude when I'm doing that? So I remember literally just stopping, humbling myself. Should I have to stop at the gym on the way to feed the homeless people? No. It's a pain in the butt. I'm a time guy. That's going to take me an extra seven minutes and I've got to get off the highway and go down a side street. He's got to run in the gym and I don't like driving through shopping centers because you have to go slow and there's all these people pulling out. I don't like it. It irritates you have to go slow and there's all these people pulling out.

I don't like it. It irritates me. It's bothersome to me. All those things are going through my head. I just don't want to go by the stupid gym just because he left his sweatshirt. We'll get it tomorrow when we go to the gym. That's what I want to do. And there's nothing wrong with me wanting to do that.

But there's also nothing wrong with him wanting to do that but there's also also nothing wrong with him wanting to go get his sweatshirt it's just an inconvenience to me and so when I stop and I humble myself and I adjust it's almost like I kind of cock my head a little bit I change I change my demeanor I change the tone from that clipped, sharp, I don't know why we need to do that too. Hey, Case, got an idea. If you will load the waters in the car right now, I'll go get ready really quickly.

We'll stop at the gym, grab your sweatshirt, and then go down to feed the homeless. Bingo. That's all it took. That's all it took. And guess what? He loaded the car with the water, which I didn't want to do, right? And we got it done and we problem solved. And instead of, right, we're doing this good work of like, oh, we're going to go be good people and feed the homeless. But meanwhile, I'm yelling at my son and ruining my relationship with him, right? So it ends up being a bonding time and it wasn't that big of a deal, but that was me changing my tone and my demeanor, right?

Here's another one. Then I'm going to wrap up in under 10 minutes. So do the opposite of what you'd normally do. I remember when we had all these, we used to have all these strong-willed kids in our house and we'd take them to the pool. And what it usually sounded like, guys, you know what? I want to take you to the pool, trying to do something nice. You guys need to pick your stuff up. You need to get your swimsuit on, put your suntan lotion on, grab your towel, move. And when I see all that anxiety in my voice creates chaos and they didn't know what to

do. And then they'd resist even more. So one day I walked into the room. I put a swim towel around my neck and I literally sat by the front door. I sat down. Why? It's kind of weird. Threw them off. They looked at me and I watched. They looked at me one by one. They looked at her like, oh, we're going to the pool. I know what to do. And then they would go do it because I was reading them. I was drawing them. I was doing a phone consultation with a really awesome dad. We do kind of a special mentoring thing with him as a guy. We have a phone call every week, holds him accountable, right? Every week we do a short call because he's a guy. We don't want to talk that much. And it just keeps us on track. And he wants

to get the kids in bed. And it's cool because we found that he plays guitar. And I was like, have a show time every night. Every night, the show begins at 8.30. How you get ready, don't care. You want to brush your teeth outside, don't care. But the show begins at 8.30. So you better be ready. Jammies on, teeth brushed, all those things by 8.30. Because he was drawing and leading them to this rather than it being, I'm tired. It's at the end of the day. I want you to be in bed. And the child, the thing they want is to delay and not be in bed. So you have these two competing interests. And so instead it becomes, I'm going to lead and draw them and create this bond where I put on this show every night and sing a song for them. See, that's how we do it. That's

pretty cool. So thank you for listening. Share the podcast if it's helpful. If we can help you, reach out. Get the everything package if you want or do the phone consultations. However we can help you. Just listen to the podcast. I don't care. Read the newsletter. Just do this stuff. Let's do it because when you do it, it works and it will change your relationship. And it does get addictive because you see, huh, when I changed my tone, it actually changed their behavior. It's kind of cool. All right. Love you all. Talk to you later. Bye-bye.