Calm Parenting Podcast - Better Than Behavior Charts? Build Confidence Instead of Crushing Spirits.

Episode Date: May 22, 2018

Jacob is a student just like millions of others in class right now. He struggles with impulse control issues and often gets in trouble for blurting out and not keeping his hands to himself. He interrupts the teacher and sometimes refuses to do his work. Recess is difficult because he gets bossy or changes the rules of the game. He struggles with anxiety and won’t stay on task. What if with one example using five different practical tools we could improve your child’s focus, executive function, social skills, sensory issues, and confidence? Listen and learn how. Share this podcast with your PTA, principal, school counselor, teacher, church school, or parish. Email [e-mail] or call 888-506-1871 to bring this training to your school, district, or parish. 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, founder of Celebrate Calm, and I wanted to do a short podcast for teachers because I admire the work you do. I know it's incredibly challenging, especially in this day and age with all of the different issues that you face, and I hear from teachers all the time. They just struggle with kids who have impulse control issues like blurting out, not keeping hands to themselves, right? Kids interrupting and not following directions.

You know, kids who refuse to do their work. Anxiety is huge now among kids. And we have a lot of kids who are a little bit more emotionally volatile. And then kids who just can't or won't stay on task. And I know in a lot of schools, what we resort to are those behavior charts, and the traditional behavior charts just don't work. And it's partly because we're not getting to the root of the issue, and because in some ways, we just tell kids, like, stop doing this, but we don't show them what to do. So instead

of just taking a reactive approach and say, well, the child's doing this, therefore I'm going to give consequences. And by the way, you know the kids, a lot of your strong-willed kids and kids with learning disabilities, they just don't even respond to consequences. They simply don't care. So instead of a reactive approach, we like a very proactive approach where we're actively giving kids tools to succeed because this reduces frustration for the school, for the teachers, for the kids

themselves. And so I know this because we have trained, probably trained more teachers than anyone across the country and actually all over the world we've done this. And so what we like to do is take the science and research and best practices from hundreds of classrooms and apply it in very specific, concrete ways. So I wanted to be able to do that and give you just one example from our teacher training that hits on so many different issues, right? Because a lot of our kids do struggle with focus, attention, executive function. They have auditory processing issues, right? Many of our kids struggle with sensory issues. They're always pressing up against things and other kids and can't keep their hands to themselves.

Many of our kids have social skills issues, right? Deficits. So they have something called asynchronous development. So they're out of sync. Intellectually, they tend to kind of be up here, right? Very bright, great talks with adults. But emotionally and socially, they're often a year or two behind. And that's when they'll act silly or do, you know, kind of try to be funny in class and do inappropriate things so other kids will like them. Well, these kids struggle to connect with kids their own age. Well, that's hard when for 12 years of your life,

you only go to school with kids your own age. These are kids who struggle with confidence as well. So I want to do just one example that shows how in a very practical way we can meet all of these different needs. So imagine you have this child in your class, right? I know many of you, you have like five or seven or eight of these kids in your class, but we'll call him Jacob. And he does struggle. Recess is difficult because he is sometimes controlling and bossy and he wants to control the game. He'll make up his own rules. He'll change his rules. He'll cheat. He'll cut in line so he can be the first, right? He has to be the first in the game of kickball. And when things don't go his way, he gets really upset. This is a kid who struggles with social skills. When he transitions back into your classroom after lunch or after changing

classes or after recess, it's really difficult for him and he ends up kind of getting in trouble a little bit. He has trouble with auditory processing issues. So there are a lot of things going on with this little guy, right? And this could be a 10th grader too, but I'm going to do an example on this one. You know, we'll apply this to probably a little bit more of an elementary school age kid, but this kid has a lot of problem, trouble, right? And a lot of challenges, but he's really bright, right? And he's got a really big heart and he wants to do well, but he just seems to always do something that's over the line and he can't accept. And so you have to go sometimes to those, you know, the negative things with him and lecture him. And he ends up on red on the behavior chart.

And he ends up just kind of giving up, right, and is confident in his shot. So see if this makes sense. This is how I may approach this in kind of one example. So I may say, Jacob, man, I could really use your help. And you know, those are magic words for strong-willed kids because they love to help. They love to feel like an adult. So Jacob, listen, I need your help. Next week, we are starting a new unit on reptiles. And I've noticed you're really good at drawing, right? Your graffiti in the boys' bathroom, highly inappropriate, but actually really well done. Kidding, but you know what I mean.

So listen, I need some help. So at recess, I'm going to bring some poster board outside or wherever you're doing recess, maybe inside. Could you do me a favor? Could you draw some reptiles? Because I know you love them and you're passionate about that. You're really good at drawing. And then next week, I'll hang your poster up on the whiteboard so we can use this as a visual to really help me out. And by the way, you know, Johnny over there, Johnny loves drawing as well. So if you two could work

on this together for me, it would really help me out. Now, let's break this down what we've done. One is we're identifying his gifts and we're starting from a strengths-based approach, right? And we're using that I need help. We're giving him a very specific job, something he can do well. We're teaming him up with another child. And again, I know this isn't your job to work on social skills. I know that. But this just tends to help in a lot of different ways by helping him connect in a positive way with another student. And they both happen to love reptiles. And a great way to learn social skills is to work on a project together. And now just think, we did something positive with him. We partially kept him away from playing kickball with the other kids, which we know, honestly, just usually ends in disaster.

But we used one of his strengths. And next week, when you hang the poster board up in your classroom, guess what the other kids get to see? Oh, Jacob, yeah, he struggles sometimes. He gets in trouble. But man, that kid struggles sometimes. He gets in trouble. But man, that kid can draw. He can really draw. He's talented at that. And if other kids in class who love reptiles or whatever you're talking about,

now they have a way to connect with him, right? So here's where we take it one step further. We say, Jacob, listen. Now remember, after recess, when I call you in from recess or when you come back from lunch, because you guys know cafeteria for many of these kids is very difficult when it's really loud in there. And these kids are sensitive to that and they get overwhelmed. And many of these kids sit alone at lunch. And so when they come back from lunch, they're kind of overwhelmed and it's hard for them to get on task.

So imagine we're saying this. Hey, when I call you back in from recess, remember the tradition in our classroom is we don't run through the doorway. We come through in slow motion. Quick aside. Rules are great, but rules tell kids what not to do. I love having traditions in the classroom because a tradition creates an expectation of this is just what we do in my classroom. When I had, over the course of a decade, we had about 1,500 kids in our home and I'd have 10 to 15 kids at a time. And I got tired of saying,

stop running into my house. You need to, right? So one day I said, hey, new tradition in my house. When anybody walks through the front door of my home, they do it in slow motion. And little kids loved it. One day we had a FedEx guy bring a delivery package, and he came into my house to deliver it. And all of the kids, because you know what they're like, they're like little judges, cops, and attorneys all rolled into one. And said, hey, Mr. FedEx guy, the tradition in Mr. Martin's home is you have to come in through in slow motion. So they made the poor guy go outside and come back through. And then he changed his route because I never saw him again. But anyway, now we've got a tradition that we're working on. I like it. Now, Jacob, listen,

when you come back through into my classroom, I want to pick you to picture these three things in your brain, one water bottle, three paper towels, and the front four desks in my classroom. Now, here's why I do that. There's research that says when you use images, paint images in the brain and use specifics, it often helps these kids remember things better. These are kids with very, very busy brains. They often have auditory processing issues. Too many words get jumbled in their brains, but using visuals is very effective. I was also very specific, right? I said one water bottle, three paper towels. I didn't say the whole roll of paper towels because that's what he's going to do. Now, here's what Jacob knows. When he comes back in my class, I have a job for him. He's going to clean the four desks in the front of my classroom. And here's why I like it, right?

So just think, I gave them a job to do. So rather than just saying, hey, when you come back from recess, you need to be on your best behavior, right? They don't even know what that means. And most of our kids are like, yeah, that was my best behavior, but it just wasn't that good. So I like specific jobs because it focuses the brain and I'm doing something else that I'll get to. So he comes in the room, grabs a water bottle, three paper towels. Now he's cleaning the front row desks of my classroom. And watch what we're doing. Remember Karate Kid.

Remember? Wax on, wax off. And there's a purpose to that because we're crossing the midline of the brain and the body, right? We're getting both hemispheres of the brain talking to each other. It's great for focus and attention. It's also very calming for kids. It's just a great thing to do. I am now giving him some sensory pressure.

He is pushing down on these desks instead of pushing down on other kids in the classroom. For the kids who are a little bit OCD-ish, and some of you are like this, it feels good because now I'm seeing this desk go from being dirty to clean, and it creates a sense of accomplishment. I guarantee a fair number of you at night, you do this. When life feels like it's out of control and you say, I can't control my spouse or my kids, you go and you clean your kitchen sink and it feels good. And the whole night you walk by that thing, you're like, the rest of my life may be out of control. My sink is spotless, right?

It's a sense of accomplishment. And now I get to end that scene by saying, hey, Jacob, good job. Thank you. Throw the paper towels away. And I went with a nice low-key praise, but I affirmed him for doing something good. And here's the final thing. I just created a success because the truth is with these kids, if you just wait long enough, they'll mess up. They'll end up pushing someone or not listening or doing something

wrong. And then you have to go, Jacob, how many times have I told you this? You have to stop doing this here. Now you just moved from yellow to red, right? And instead I just created a success. And I love this approach because it builds confidence. It also in the end makes it easier for you as a teacher because you're proactively creating successes rather than continually reacting to kids making bad choices. So I want to give you more tools like this. I'm just going to be honest. We are booked up because, look, our presentations to teachers and to parents, but I'm going to address teachers here. What's different is that we take the science and research, but instead of talking about theory, we put this into very, very practical applications. So when teachers leave our training,

they have 10 to 15 very concrete ideas that they can implement the next morning. And our training, by the way, is also fun. You know, we use humor so that the teachers aren't, because I know teacher training is hard and they often complain of like, oh, it was boring. It wasn't practical. Teachers actually come up and will say, man, we could have listened to you longer. And I know that usually doesn't happen ever with teachers because their stuff is really good. And so look, we're booked up in August, September, and October. We have two dates left. So we're going to do this because we're a little bit OCD around here and we like to have our schedule planned out in advance so we can

plan. And so we have two dates left for back to school time. And I want you to reach out to us because I'm doing something special. Teacher training is usually about $5,000, and that's for an unlimited number of teachers. So you can have one school. You can partner with three schools. You can have an entire school district. We've had entire parishes of Catholic schools do this. We're giving a 50% discount to $2,500. And if you divide that by the number of teachers that we can train, it is extremely reasonable and it is extremely effective. So what I need you to do is reach out to Casey. It's Casey, C-A-S-E-Y at CelebrateCalm.com

or you can call at 888-506-1871 and just ask us about the teacher training. You just email us, tell us the name of your school, of your district. We will send out a very concrete proposal that's very easy. And if you're a parent, you can send this to the school, to your PTA. If you are a teacher or a principal, please just reach out and we'll give you a very concrete proposal and see if we can fit in the dates into your schedule. But thank you for what you do for our kids. Thank you for your patience. And if we can help you in any way,

please just let us know. Thanks so much. Bye-bye.