Calm Parenting Podcast - An Emotional Story: Change Your Child by Changing Yourself First

Episode Date: January 8, 2018

Your child can’t deal with changes and disappointment. Or he screams and says inappropriate things. Situations escalate. In this emotional story, Kirk tells you how to lead an upset child to calm and build trust by controlling yourself instead of the child. Email [e-mail] with the word CALM in the subject line or call 888-506-1871 to book Kirk at your school/church or get help with our resources. 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 everyone, this is Kirk Martin from Celebrate Calm. Excited to be with you again. I want to start the new year off talking about the most powerful tool you can use as a parent, and it's this. It's not controlling your kid's behavior, it's controlling your own. Because the quickest way to change your child's behavior is to first control your own. And I'm going to tell you a story at the end of this

that's going to bring all of this full circle and really demonstrate this well. And so I hope you kind of hang around for that. What I wanted to start with is this, really talking about our own anxiety and control issues as parents. Because watch how this is going to work tomorrow morning. When Jacob, or whoever your son's name, doesn't get out of bed, you get anxious.

Because he's going to miss the bus. And what's going to happen if he misses the bus and he misses school again? He's not going to do well in school. And you start to project out. And Sarah won't eat. Is she going to be unhealthy? Is she going to get sick? Jacob's worn the same jeans and hoodie sweatshirt for three

days in a row. What are the other parents going to think about you as a mother? Sarah won't even brush her teeth or her hair. As you're rushing out the door, she remembers one final thing she just has to do before she leaves. Now you're in the driveway at 7.14 in the morning honking the horn, waking your neighbors up. Now you're on the way to school. Great. There's a traffic jam. You're going to be late again. So you grip the wheel tighter.

You ride the guy's bumper ahead of you. Tense. Your kids are trying to talk to you, but you snap back because you're still upset about their dawdling. We'll talk about this tonight. You snap as you drop your kids off at school. Now you feel guilty. And now you're rushing to work, afraid your boss will be mad again. And your mother's calling you, pressuring you to visit for the holidays. But you really don't want to go.

You're getting the usual guilt trip and will probably give in. And guess what? The PTA and church committee keep asking you to volunteer because they need the help after all, and you're the responsible one. You know what? The Johnson's kids are taking piano and an extra language after school. If they can do it, why can't your kids? What if you're not doing enough for them? What if they can't get into the right prep school or the right preschool? Will you be a failure as a parent? Heck, you're not sure whether you'll need that money for college or bail, given your son's behavior and grades.

Oh, that's right, you don't have money set aside for college anyway. The braces, new roof, summer camp, therapy, car repairs have all eaten away at that. You know what? Your house never seems clean enough. Why can't your kids just clean their bedrooms so you don't have to follow around badgering them all the time? You know what? Now you're dreading the battle over homework. You end up frustrated standing over your child scolding. You know what? If you would just focus, you'd be done in 45 minutes instead of it taking you three hours. And that works really well. Ugh, you forgot to lay out the chicken.

So now you're back to mac and cheese again. Again. And your kids still complain. Now it's dinner time. Dad's getting irritated because Jacob can't sit still at the table. Mom's getting anxious because she's sensing the coming explosion. So she runs interference between dad and the kids. Now mom's put in an awful position because she doesn't know whether to protect her son

because if she steps in, is she now undermining the authority of her husband? It's a tough place to be. Now it's after dinner. You've got to help your daughter with that project. It's a tough place to be. Now it's after dinner. You've got to help your daughter with that project. It's busy work anyway. So the dishes sit in the sink for a while. What would your mother say? She never seen this frazzled. What are you doing wrong? You decide that you'll finish up the project for Sarah because it's bath time, another power struggle, and then bedtime. Only Jacob has trouble sleeping and you threaten him repeatedly to get in your

room now. Good. Let's end the day with some more guilt. What kind of bad parent are you that your kids won't eat, sleep, do their homework, or listen to you? Listen, can you see how much emotional, mental, and physical energy this anxiety takes from you, it's exhausting. And worse yet, it can destroy the very relationships that you cherish the most. So why is it critical as we begin the new year to attack this once and for all? Let's just look at the practical side of it. The truth is your control issues and your anxiety never, ever, ever, ever help. It never works. In fact, your anxiety causes you to get the exact opposite response that you want from your kids. When you tell your kids, move, guys, get in the car, get in the car, instead of running more

quickly, your kids tend to move more slowly. Why? Because they know when you're in that anxious mode, nothing they do will please you. Sometimes I tell a story, I'm not going to do the whole thing here, of how I used to get kids to move more quickly when I'd take them to the pool. And you know how I did it? Not from badgering and yelling at them. I did it by walking into the living room with a swimming towel around my neck, nice non-verbal, and sitting down by the front door. And one by one, each of the kids knew, oh, we're going to the pool. They knew what to do. They knew to put their swim trunks on and put their suntan lotion on and grab their towel. What strong-willed kids don't like being told is to be rushed with things, told exactly how to do it, because your kids are never going to do

things the way you want it done. And so I'd give them some space and I'd sit by the door and you know what happened? They got ready more quickly because they were drawn to me because I was leading them to calm and I was showing them. And when I was sitting by the door, they'd get ready and they knew if I, they came and sat down next to me, they'd get one-on-one attention, undivided attention, and I wouldn't be freaking out and yelling. See, you've noticed this. When you lecture kids constantly, it always backfires. They ignore you and they discount what you say. How many of you have found the more you care about something, the less your kids do and the more they resist? And the more words you use, the less valuable your words become. See, when you get on your kids about every little thing, they don't

thank you for being so conscientious. They fight you. See, when you react to them pushing your buttons, they are now in control of you. And I know it's frustrating because you have kids who are born expert button pushers. But the truth is you create power struggles over issues that don't matter because you keep reacting. And it's all because of your anxiety. And listen, I know it's all out of good intentions. You love, love, love, love, love your kids more than anything or anyone else in this world. But anxiety hurts relationships. Think about this.

When you lecture your kids, here's the message that you're really sending. Kids, I don't trust you to make a good decision, so I'm going to keep badgering you. You actually can't do it on your own. After all, what would I do if I didn't have to be responsible for you? See, this isn't really about you, son. It's really about me. You're also saying this. I don't really believe that you can be successful on your own, so I spend 95% of my energy trying to fix what's wrong with you instead of spending that time culting your natural gifts and passions. Because of my anxiety over your future,

I'm going to harp on you again and again and again. So no, I actually really don't trust that you have what it takes. And I'm more worried sometimes about my own legacy as a parent. Because if you don't turn out well, then I'll have been a failure. And I can't live with that. And you're also saying this. This problem isn't really yours. It's mine.

I have this vision of how life was supposed to be. What it was like to have kids and how successful you're supposed to be. I've done all the right things. I've had the right agenda. I feed you organic food, right? I've done all the right things and I'm compelled to make our family life work just so, so you'll be successful, but I can't just make it happen.

You're not cooperating with me. And so I'm gonna try to make all these little insignificant things just so, because that will give me the illusion that things are actually okay. And it never works. And I end up getting resentful at my kids because they're not doing things the way I want it done. Man, can you feel that? That just, it'll ruin relationships and shut everything down. And it'll cause you to keep from, it'll cause you to keep from enjoying your daily life. Some of you have health issues because of this,

because your central nervous system is on high alert all the time. You become exhausted. Now you've got adrenal fatigue, right? Stuff just doesn't work. So I want you to learn a different way. And I want us to start with, you know, all of us, not I hate New Year's resolutions, but with goals, tangible, specific goals of learning to control my own anxiety and my own control issues. Because truth is, when I learn to control myself, it will change

my child's behavior quicker than anything else you do. So let me give you a quick example of this. So this was when my son was younger and a common situation, you probably haven't happened before. My son would occasionally, when things didn't go his way, right? Or things changed at the last minute, he would get upset. Well, what happens? He'd end up taking it out on whoever was closest to him, which was usually his mom, right? And that's the way it usually works. Kids take out things on their moms usually. And he starts screaming at my wife and yelling things at her, right? Really inappropriate things. Well, I'd walk in the door and I'd hear that.

I was like, it's not happening in my home. You know, you better, you know, right? And shut your little mouth. You better stop that. You're not going to talk to my wife that way. And I'd start amping it up, right? Which was always really helpful. You guys know it just doesn't work when you do that.

And so we'd mouth off a little bit. I'd be like, you know what? One more word, young man. And you know that's just a trigger for your kids to say, word, right? So don't do that. It's just, to be honest, it's provoking them, right? Because when they're upset, what do we end up doing? We get upset and we start yelling at them, you need to calm down, you need to control your mouth. And we're not even controlling our mouths. And I get it because we're frustrated and we're scared because when I hear, you know, when you hear your child talking back to you

and talking disrespectfully, you start to think, what did I do wrong? What would my parents think about this? I never did that to my mother. How is this kid ever going to survive in life? What's gonna happen to him? He can't even do simple things. He can't push through homework. Things are hard, so he shuts down. He doesn't have stick-to-itiveness. I've got a lecture. I've got to get on him, and he talks back to me, and I have all these, right? Can you feel all of that going

through your brain, and your only response usually is to begin to control the child's behavior, and it always escalates. And I used to escalate with my son all the time. I even taught him at times in that moment. And I can see, I can picture it right now. I'm seeing him in this little town home we used to live in on the stairs because he was getting ready to run upstairs. And he was upset. His face is all red. And look, look, at this point, you've got to realize your kids are beyond control. They can't control themselves at this point. They've gone too far. Right. But we want them to do it. And how many of your kids have ever told you because you sit

them down afterwards? What were you thinking when you did that? What was going on? And they're like, I don't know. I don't know why I'm doing this. I'm dumb. I'm stupid. I don't know. And see, the reason I want us to learn to control ourselves is trust, right? I'm the grown-up in this situation. So my son is out of control. And what happens? I get out of control. And now everything escalates. And I begin to provoke him by yelling at him, making him more upset. What do I yell? Consequence. You know, keep it up, young man. One more word. You know what? You're going to lose everything you own, right? You're going to lose your video games for a week and then he'll say something. You know what? One more word. You want to make

it two weeks? And that's when your strong will kids look at you and just say, why don't we just make it a month? And they'll call your bluff on kids look at you and just say, why don't we just make it a month? And they'll call your bluff on it. But you know what the hard part of this is? You're ruining your trust with this child. When I control myself, here's the message I want to send them. Your world is out of control right now. Mine's not.

I'm in complete control of myself. I'm not thrown by this. I've seen it before. It's happened before. Listen, I've done this before in life. I get it. You're frustrated. You're overwhelmed. Everything feels like it's out of your control. You're upset about something that happened in school. I get that. I can help you deal with that. You know why? Because I'm in control of myself, and I've got wisdom to help you. And here's the message I want to send. When you get upset,

I'm a safe place to come. I'm not going to take it, right? I'm just not going to sit there and let the kids scream at me. It's not what I'm doing, right? Because I can look at them and say, hey, I can tell you're frustrated. Listen, yelling at me, I'm not going to do you any good. It's not going to help anything. Listen, I've got to start on dinner.

I've got to go walk the dog. If you want to come walk with me, I'll help you with whatever you're struggling with. Or I'll grab, I used to grab a football with kids. We used to have kids come to our home. We had 1,500 strong-willed, obstinate, emotional kids in our home over the course of a decade. Sometimes you'd have two, three, four kids upset at any one time. And so sometimes you just grab a football and say, guys, listen, you can spiral out of control if you want. I know it doesn't feel good when you do that, but here's another option. I'm going to grab the football. If you want to come outside, we'll play catch.

And I would lead the kids to calm, right? And so, okay, so let's go back to this situation. So he's yelling and screaming, and I'm yelling and screaming at Casey, and he runs upstairs. And I know what's going to happen. He goes upstairs, goes into his bedroom, smack, slams his bedroom door. And I knew it was coming. You know what? That would infuriate me because that's one of my triggers. You don't slam my door. And that's when I wanted to go upstairs and say, you know what? You don't have to respect me, but you're going to respect my furniture. You're

going to respect my bedroom door. I work hard all day long to earn money to pay for that door. Right? You've done that lecture before, and it's just useless. So he'd go upstairs and slam the door, and I'd want to go up and ream him out. So I remember at the very beginning of Celebrate Calm, of realizing, this doesn't work. The last 48 times, or 4,800 times I've done this, it's escalated. So what if instead of trying to control his behavior right now, I control my own? So I knew at the time, one of Casey's things they loved doing was building with Legos. So I'm kind of marching up the stairs and inadvertently, I trip over some of his Legos left on the floor. Now, there goes the calm. I had good intentions for about 12 seconds until I tripped on the Legos that he left on the floor because I've told him a million times, don't leave your Legos on the floor because someone could trip over those and

hurt themselves and fall down the stairs and all those useless parenting lectures that we give our kids, right? And now I want to go upstairs and start, those Legos at him for leaving him on the floor. But it triggered in my brain, oh, Legos lead to calm. So collect myself, spend a minute thinking, okay, what's the outcome? What am I looking for here? Do I just want to prove my point as a parent, right? To go up and prove that I'm the authority figure and I'm the ruler of the home here. And you're not going to talk to my wife this way and you need to go down and apologize to her. And is that what I really

want to get across? Because the truth is, here's what I know. He knows what he did was wrong. He knows that yelling at his mother is wrong. He knows that. He knows he's going to be in trouble. And so I don't need to go and reinforce that and somehow prove my point because he already knows that, right? And what we end up doing is we end up forcing an apology. You're going to apologize to me right now, young man. And what happens with a strong-wed child, they end up digging in and it keeps reinforcing failure because you know what message

we end up sending? You're an idiot. Why can't you ever do things the right way? What were you thinking? Listen, you've got to step back sometimes. Would you put up with your spouse or anyone in your life ever saying to you, honey, what were you thinking? Because your response would be, I'm rethinking my marriage choice. That's what I was thinking, right? It's a demeaning phrase that we say out of frustration, but the truth is it's hurtful and it's demeaning. And it doesn't do any good, right? Look, if yelling at your kids and throwing stuff and threatening them and taking stuff away worked. I'd write a book called Yell at Your Kids and Get Them to Listen. But the truth is it doesn't work,

especially with the strong willed kids. And it doesn't accomplish my real goal, which is to teach my child. Because discipline literally means to teach. And I encourage you, this popped in my head, we have a whole entire CD series called Discipline That Works. Get your kids to listen the first time. And it's all about this concept that discipline is not punishment. It never has been. It never will be. That's old school, honestly, very immature parenting says, well, I just need to send him the message that what your kids already know what they did is wrong. What they need are some tools to do it differently next time.

And they've told you that. We just tend not to listen to them, right? When they say, I don't know what I was thinking. I don't know why I did that. If they were mature, they'd say, I don't know. I just get really upset all of a sudden when things don't go my way or things change. And everything feels like it's out of control. And so I just blurt stuff out. And I don't want to do that because I know

it hurts mom's feelings. I know I'm going to get in trouble. Show me a different way. And discipline means to teach. And my goal is not to reinforce my point or prove my point and let them know that I'm the authority figure because he already knows that. And the way that I show that I'm in the authority figure, again, you've got to think through this stuff. The way I show the authority figure is that I'm cool in control of myself. When I start to lose it, I lose, in a sense, my authority. Because now the kid's looking up at this grown adult who's fuming and furious or lectures and badgers all the time, and they lose respect for you, right? Does that

make sense? The authority figures that I most look up to are the ones who stay cool and calm under pressure that I can count on when my world's out of control because I know I can trust them, right? So as I'm going up the stairs, I think, what do I really want out of this? Okay, I want some contrition from my son. Yep, I want him to apologize. I want to teach him a different way. And at the end of this, and this is one reason I want you to listen, if you don't have them already, get the Discipline at Work CDs.

Email us or call us. Email my son, Casey, at CelebrateCalm.com. C-A-S-E-Y at CelebrateCalm.com. Email him and tell him you want that one. And here's why. Because good discipline, good, firm, tough discipline always leads to a trusting relationship with your child. It doesn't always make them happy in the moment, but in the end, it produces trust. And that's what we want in all relationships. So I bend down, I pick up the Legos, and I walk upstairs, and I knock on his door. Now, do I have to knock on his door? No.

I'm the adult. I have every right to barge into his room and start yelling at him. But I don't. Because sometimes the most powerful tool with a strong-willed child is humility. Because humility breaks down walls. Because the moment you go in and start reading the Riot Act and getting on your child, it produces a defensive response. And these kids are very good at arguing and pushing your buttons and you'll lose it, right? So I knock on the door.

I'm humbling myself and I'm respecting his space. And I walk in his room and instead of addressing his behavior, I control my own. And I remember this distinctly. I sat on his floor and I put the Legos down and I started building with them. And it felt weird and odd. And a lot of the stuff that we teach feels weird and odd, but it works because you have kids that sometimes are a little bit odd and weird stuff works with them. I sat and I started building with the Legos and I didn't say a single word to my son. And I could feel him looking at me wondering, what is my dad doing on the floor, just sitting there building with him? And you know what came to me as I was sitting there?

Because I started to cry silently to it. Here's what I knew he was thinking. Why isn't he yelling at me? Because every other time my dad has come into the room, he's yelled at me and called me stupid. Or he said, why are you doing that? What were you thinking? That makes me feel stupid. And he said, you know what, if you can't control yourself, you're never going to be successful in life. You know what, how are you ever going to be successful if you can't do this, if you can't do this? What were you thinking, yelling at your mother? But all those things that we tell our kids, if you would just apply yourself, you could be, listen, those words wound. I was with a lady the other night. This lady, I believe she's about 40. She is a friend of the family. She has her PhD. She's a brain scientist, neurological brain

scientist, PhD, really, really bright, and also has common sense, which is rare for many PhDs, no offense, but she's very rare. And as we were talking to her, here's what she says, you know, I've always felt inadequate. And I was like, inside, seriously? You were one of the brightest, smartest people that I know. You help tons of people every day. You have more degrees than I will ever even dream of having in my life. And how do you feel inadequate that you're not good enough? And you know what came out? It was, and listen, there's no guilt in any of this, but I want us to own up to our issues. What came out is when I was a kid, my parents never, ever really affirmed me. It was never, for her, it was

back to her mother. It was never good enough for her. And I think what happened as we talked, she went on to get her PhD, not because she really wanted to, but because she wanted to prove to her parents that she was smart enough and good enough. And here's a 40-year-old woman crying because at the top of her game, inside, she still feels inadequate. You know where that came from? Instances like this of what I did to my son for the first nine years of his life. And so as I'm sitting there building with Legos, I'm realizing the full weight of this, of what I've done to this kid, that he was just

waiting up there for his father, who he wants to love and respect, who he wants to be like one day. He was waiting for me to come in and give the same lecture and yell at him again and take away his stuff. And instead, his father walks in and sits down on the floor and doesn't say a word. And that was one of the key moments that began to change our relationship. And you know what happened? And by the way, little side note, for those of you who are Christian parents, religious parents, you get a picture of this. And even if you're not, it's a great story and you should read it sometime because it's awesome.

So I don't know if you ever heard this one of where Jesus is in the temple or he's outside in a courtyard somewhere and he's teaching all these people. And all of a sudden, the men in the community all drag in front of him this prostitute who was caught in the act of committing adultery. And what does Jesus do? Did he lecture her? What were you thinking doing that with a married man? What kind of tramp are you?

You know what he did? He said he knelt on the ground and started drawing in the dirt. Really, really cool. Why? Because he didn't want to look on her shame. Listen, this is a powerful concept. Again, even if you're not religious, read it because it's powerful. It gives you insight into what the God of the universe had every right right then to establish his authority that what she was doing was wrong and read her the riot act and demand that she apologize to the community and to him as God. And instead the God of the universe kneels, gets on down on his knees and averts his eyes from this woman because he didn't want to reinforce her shame because here's what he knew. She knew it was wrong.

She knew it and she felt ashamed. But you know what? Many people, all of us at some point are like that. We do stupid stuff and we don't know why we do it. Maybe we're looking for love. Maybe we're just looking for acceptance. Some people get desperate in life, and maybe she just needed the money, and maybe she felt unworthy, and making a few dollars from men who would come

in and do this with her would make her feel loved somehow. You know what the God of the universe, what Jesus knew, is that she knew what she was doing wrong. There was a deeper need there that she was trying to meet by doing something really wrong. And so it was mercy and compassion and humility that he showed that led her to a place of repenting, of humbling herself. She knew it was wrong. What he wanted to do was not enforce some rule and some law in his household of you can't do this. He wanted to change her heart. And that's what he did. And my goal when I walked into that room that day with my son was not just to prove that what he did was wrong. I wanted to change his heart. And that's what ended up happening. So a couple minutes go

by and my son, I kind of hear him slowly moves to the end of his bed and he climbs down his bed and he sits on the floor next to me. And now you have a father and a son. It could be a mother and a son, a mother and a daughter, a father and a daughter. It doesn't matter. Could be a husband and wife doing this. Now we're sitting on the floor together, building with Legos. It's a beautiful scene and it's emotional, right? And it's like inside, you're still going to be like, when's he going to apologize? When do I lecture him? And you don't have to because you're leading him to contrition. And you know what happens a couple minutes into this? Here's what I hear.

Dad, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have yelled at mom like that. I shouldn't have yelled at you. I shouldn't have said those things. I'm sorry. And now I just got contrition. Now the heart is changing. And now I get to forgive him and I get to say,

I know, you're overwhelmed and I get that. And I forgive you and I get that. That's not my main, that's not what I want to get to forgive him and I get to say, I know, you're overwhelmed and I get that and I forgive you and I get that. That's not what I want to get to though. I want to help you because look, tomorrow you're going to get overwhelmed with something. Every day of your life, you're going to get frustrated and overwhelmed and things aren't going to go your way

and the reason I want to help you is not for my sake. I don't need it. I don't need you to treat me a certain way. I'm a grown adult. you is not for my sake. I don't need it. I don't need you to treat me a certain way. I'm a grown adult. I'm not offended by this. I've seen this before. I've done it myself before. It's because I love you, and I know that life can be hard sometimes.

And I want to teach you so that you're equipped for when things don't go your way. So tomorrow afternoon when you come home and things don't go your way, what are you going to do differently, right? How can you handle your frustration, right? Why don't we just have a code word? Why don't we just, Legos. Next time you're upset, why don't you come into the kitchen when I'm not home, you can do it with mom or when I'm home and hold up some Legos and just say, hey, can we build with Legos? You know why? Because it's a little code word because most kids aren't mature enough to come and say, mother, I'm feeling quite overwhelmed by all the stresses of life. Could we retire to the den and speak about my anxiety?

They're not going to do that. So I want to give them tools, simple practical tools. So when my son would come into the room sometimes, I could see it on his face and he'd hold up some Legos and say, dad, would you come and build with me? He didn't really want to just play usually. Now, sometimes he did, but in those cases, he didn't want to play. What he was really saying is, I need your help. And I know that you have wisdom to help me. And I trust you. Will you come play with me? Will you come build with me? Because I want to build. You know what? It's a beautiful metaphor too of building. Because instead of tearing him down, I was building with him. And that's what I want to do is build a relationship.

Does that all make sense? So I want you to put this into practice your own way, however you want to do this. But it starts with controlling yourself. And I want to encourage you to email us, to call us, because we can help you with this, because we've done it, right? We've done this with 600,000 people. I know how this stuff works, and I'll tell you about one special we have right now. It's on our website, CelebrateCalm.com. We have this bag of CDs, and we call it Getting the Bag, and the bag isn't all special. It's a little canvas bag, and it says, uh, Got Calm, and we like giving that away so you can carry it around to remind you not to freak out on your kids. But here's what's in the bag this month. We've got four programs. First one is called this. It's called 30 Days to Calm. And I want you to go through that in January. For the

next 30 days, it's all of January that's focused on just getting control of your own control issues, your own perfectionism, your own anxiety. All of these things attack you. We go through 30 specific action steps, and as you go through them, you can email me and I'll help you out with it. Because listen, this is about creating a new family tree, a new you. It's not about changing your child's behavior. It's about you becoming a new person and your kids following you and respecting you as the authority figure because they see you changing. And I guarantee you this will change more than anything else that you do. Do that. Now that usually that program I put together, I guarantee you it's like 10 therapy sessions. It's

worth at least a thousand dollars worth of therapy, but we do it for 150 bucks. And for 150 bucks, that's one appointment with a therapist. I'm going to give you at least 10 therapy sessions with that. You're going to change yourself. And then we give you three different programs. One of them is that discipline that works program. Get your kids to listen the first time that comes for free with it. There's a program in there on understanding your strong willed child, which is invaluable. And I want your kids to listen to that because they'll feel very understood with that. And then the third program we put in there

is our most popular thing we've ever done, which is my son's program. It's Casey's program. It's called Straight Talk for Kids. And your kids listen to that directly because it's my son speaking to your kids about his own issues and how he learned how to calm down and control himself.

And it's very, very powerful because kids don't often listen to their parents, but they listen to my son because he's a cool kid and he plays guitar and he talks on their level. You get all that for $150. Now, I will be honest with you. I wanted to raise the price. Case and I just had a little argument over it. I said, why $150? That's not enough.

We ought to be charging $300, $400 for that because it's going to change their home. And he's like, dad, sell for 150 bucks. We'll help more people. And I was like, I know, but I want them to have an investment. I want them to value it. And he's like, they'll value it at 150. So if you ever want to complain about pricing, complain about me because I always want to charge more, not because I'm greedy because I give away a lot of money because that's just what we do here, right? And I don't have any problem with that at all. I don't have a problem with charging a lot of money, because I think that it's worth it. I want people to value it. But this month, it's 150 bucks, right? And if you have trouble and you need help with that, email Casey at CelebrateCalm.com, C-A-S-E-Y. If you want to call, call 888-506-1871. And we'll talk to you

personally. We're a family. We know what this is like. So if we can help you, let's do this. But here's my main point. Not to get you to buy our stuff, but you should, because it's really good. It'll change your family. So it's always weird when you do that stuff, right? Because always like, he's just trying to sell stuff. Yeah, no, right? I want, look, I want you to get our stuff. right? Because always like, he's just trying to sell stuff. Yeah, no, right? I want, look, I want you to get our stuff. Why? Because making that investment and saying, I'm finally going to change myself and saying, we've done it this other way for the past three years or five years or first 14 years of my child's life. It's not working. Most therapy hasn't worked because it's only focused on changing the child and fixing them when sometimes they don't need to be fixed. They just need some tools. Instead, I'm going to get this thing and I'm going to work on myself. There's

something magical that happens and we get, that's where all the testimonials come from. It's really cool. So if you need help, get it. But here's what I really want for us this month. Let's put this time into controlling ourselves, our own anxiety, our own control issues. Picture that little story of how I went up and did that with my son. How are you going to do that next time with your son? It may be tonight. It may be tomorrow sometime, but they're going to get upset. So how are you going to look at them and say, you know what? Your world's out of control. Mine's not. I can help you with this. I'm the trusted authority figure in your life that provides for you and protects you. You can trust me and I can help you out. That's what my goal is. So thank you for listening to this. If we can help you in

any way, let us know. We do live workshops all across, actually across the world. So if we can actually, if we can help you out with that, email Casey again. We will come to your community, do a live presentation. And when we do that, we tell lots of stories like that one because it helps illustrate the key principles. Anyway, we love you. We want to help you. Bless your family. Thank you for listening and investing this time.