Calm Parenting Podcast - Big Changes Now: 3 Situations You Can Change Overnight

Episode Date: February 5, 2020

Big Changes Now. Your child doesn’t want to wear his jacket or do homework. Your toddler just pushed down another kids’ tower of blocks at pre-school. When will your teenager finally “get it” and change so he doesn’t cause so much drama? Kirk shows you exactly how to change these situations and more. Right now. Click here to Change Your Home Overnight and take advantage of our Big Changes Sale.  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. Okay, this is really cool and I'm super excited. Oh, by the way, it's Kirk Martin, founder of Celebrate Calm. Welcome to the Calm Parenting Podcast. So right as I'm about to click and begin recording this podcast, I get an email and the subject line says, big changes. And so I'm going to change a little bit the structure of this podcast, but still pretty much fits with what I wanted to talk about today, which really is about making big changes in your family. And so here's the email, and I'm going to kind of paraphrase it because it's kind of long. This mom writes and says,

look, I want you to know what has happened in my home. I'm a type A mom. I'm a go-getter. I have always been pretty intense. I'm very purposeful. I'm intentional. And I've been complaining all these years because I've got four kids. She's got a teen, a preteen, and then a couple younger kids. And so she's like, I've just been wanting these kids to change, and I've done everything I can. Like I feed them the right food. I make my own food.

We do organic stuff. We're healthy. We exercise. I've read all the parenting books. I do all the right stuff, right? Except the only thing that I wasn't doing right was I thought that I could change my family by changing my kids and by controlling everything, right? If I just do the right stuff, right, and I get my kids to make the right choices, they'll end up being really successful and it'll be great. And what I found was that I was causing the exact opposite response that I wanted.

My kids were not stepping up and being responsible for themselves. I was actually being responsible for them. I found you, a friend sent me your podcast. I ended up ordering all the CDs with the Christmas special and I devoured them. And it hurt me at first because I was like, oh, it can't be all my, like my issues here. Like the kids have to step up and start doing some things. And she really struggled with this. And she said, I fought it for a couple of weeks. And then I finally realized I started doing what you said, and I started noticing some changes. And she said, I got the No BS program for my older kids, for the teens, and I've walked through that with them. But here's the upshot of what she said. She said, for the past eight weeks, I have relentlessly and ruthlessly thrown myself into changing myself, changing my reactions, getting control of my control issues,

getting control of my anxiety. I have not lectured to the kids. I have not tried to control them. By the way, I haven't done it to my spouse either. And here's what I've noticed. My kids have come to me and said, mom, what's different around here? It's much more relaxed. You're noticing when we do things well, we're getting better grades. It's smoother. We're actually enjoying ourselves. Like this is the family life that we kind of always wanted. What's going on? And she apologized to the kids and said, look, I realized for the first, you know, older kids, like 16, 16 years of your life and your younger ones, I've just been trying to control everything because I love you guys and I want the best for you, but I think it was suffocating to

you. And I wasn't really giving you space. It's a big word in our big concept for us with Strong Will Kids. You've got to give them space, right? And she said, I wasn't giving you space to be successful, but I realized when I control myself, it gives you guys space to actually step up and be responsible for yourselves. And so she changed her language toward her kids, and she started saying to them, look, I believe you're capable of handling this,

because that's one of our favorite phrases with kids. So the upshot of it is, she said, thank you for being willing to tell me the truth that I was the issue. And she said, I didn't take it as any blame. There's no guilt in it. She said, it's just a fundamental truth of life that the only thing I can change from now on for the rest of my life is myself. And she said, I'm getting kind of addicted to it. I'm noticing that all of my relationships are changing, including my marriage. And it hasn't been because I've tried to change my spouse, my friends. And she said, even with my parents, I'm breaking some of those old patterns. And it's

not always pleasant, but it's sure a lot less stressful than changing everybody else. That is so cool. So kudos to you, mom. The big win for you, you've already seen it, right? Your kids are changing. They're taking care of themselves. They're getting their breakfast by themselves. They're doing their schoolwork without you standing over saying, if you would just focus, you would be done in 45 minutes instead of taking three hours. Like you're seeing the fruit of this, which is awesome. So in honor of you, I just texted Casey and I said, hey, let's call it the big, let's have a new sale and we'll call it the big changes sale. And we're going to do it in honor of this mom because she just inspired us to say, look, it's a new year. Let's do big changes,

right? Why nibble around with like little things with one area of your life? Why not change morning routine when the kids come home from school? Homework time, dinner time, bath time, bedtime, sports. Why not change your marriage? Why not change it all? So here's what I wanted to talk to you about, and it kind of all plays into this. And by the way, we're going to throw that up on our website, and I think we're just going to call it the Big Ch changes sale in honor of this mom and what she's done. And we're going to throw

together all of the CD programs, like 11 or 12. I don't even know. It's a lot of them. And there are a lot of them. And it's a lot of detailed instruction, which is really, really good. Anyway, she already told you that it was good. So you can believe her. Anyway, and we'll include in that the No BS program. If you already have the CDs, we'll put a backup on there, the No BS program, and you get that by itself at a reduced rate as well. But anyway, here's what I want to talk about. So we just got off the road. Awesome trip.

Nashville, Kansas City, up into Iowa, Michigan. Awesome. We meet so many people. So I wanted to tell you the story about three parents who came to the workshops and how interesting this is. First night, I'm there. I do a little Q&A beforehand. First lady raised her hand.

Up. I'm a mom of a 16-year-old. She won't wear a jacket. It's wintertime. And then she complains about being cold. How can I get her to stop complaining? And I said, do I have permission to be honest with you? She says, sure. I said, it's your issue, right? Because look, you want your daughter to stop complaining, but here you are in front of

a bunch of strangers complaining about your daughter, right? She's not going to wear a jacket and she's not going to die, right? You don't live in Alberta. You're not, right? You're not Canada somewhere. And even for my Canadian friends, your kids aren't going to die either, right? They're not going to wear their jacket. Just please let that go. Please let it go. Half your kids listen to this. They're going to wake up in the morning in the winter and want to wear shorts to school and they're not going to die. And they're not going to wear their jacket. And if they get cold at the bus stop, they'll steal another child's jacket. And then you can just tell them at the end of the day, hey, that's called being resourceful. Well done, my friend. They're not going to die. They don't want to wear the jacket. I don't want to wear my jacket. Why? It's too confining and they'll end

up losing it and you'll yell at them for losing it and leaving it at school or someplace else. So stop worrying. You're not going to die. If you're honest, what you'll admit is the real issue is you're worried because you think that the other parents and teachers are going to judge you for sending your child to school with shorts on or no jacket in the winter. And that's your issue because that's an embarrassment. Totally your issue, right? And I asked this mom, I said, look, I'm not just being tough on you, but you've got to relax because, look, you're all stressed out over something you don't need to be stressed out over. She's 16. She hasn't died to date from this. She's not going to die now.

So just let it go. Well, what about her complaining? Well, what about your complaining? You're sitting here complaining. There's no need to complain. You have a 16-year-old daughter who takes care of herself, and she knows what to do. So go home. And my challenge for her was go home and apologize to your daughter for creating needless power struggles that don't

need to exist. And instead, look at your daughter and say, you know what I love about you? That you don't do things the way everybody else does it. You know what I love about you is you've got your own mind, and you want to do these things, and you'll own it, but stop letting her complaining bother you. So she complains, she complains. Why does that have to ruin your day? That's entirely your issue because you're allowing her mood to determine your mood.

You're giving her complete power over your emotions just because she's complaining a little bit, right? When she gets tired of being cold, she'll put on her jacket, but she probably won't. So don't worry. You know the sad thing about this? This mom the whole night, when I really have a heart for people like this, because it's really, really hard, and I knew that was just the tip of the iceberg, right? That's not the only power struggle. And I was like, you've got to accept your daughter on a deep, deep level, right? And that's part of what that No BS program goes through is accepting your kids on a very deep level.

Not talking about loving your kids. That's pretty easy. If you don't love your kids, then you're probably not listening to this podcast, right? So everybody loves your kids. That's pretty easy. If you don't love your kids, then you're probably not listening to this podcast, right? So everybody loves their kids. We don't always like them and we don't always accept them as they are. And I will tell you that's a huge thing here because if you don't accept your child, look, many of your kids are just very opposite of you or they're just like you. And you've got to learn to accept them as they are. And this mom left after the break in the workshop and it stuck with me now. It's been almost two

weeks. I'm profoundly sad because I could tell kind of by her body posture and the tone of voice and just the way she kept interacting that she wasn't really getting this. She came to the workshop because she wanted me to tell her how she could change her daughter. And that's not my message to her. My message was, if you will change and accept your daughter, you can enjoy your daughter as she is. And so tomorrow morning, instead of it being a power struggle and endless lectures over everything, you could actually enjoy that daughter. And when she wakes up tomorrow morning, say, you know what? I wish I was a little bit more like you. I'm a little bit of a people pleaser and I'm a little bit, I'm too concerned with what other people think. And I love the fact that you're

not so bound by that. And I wish I was more like you see now your daughter's going to go go off to school after hearing from her mother that her mother wishes she was more like her you don't think that's going to change her day and change that whole relationship but again that comes down to you changing your attitude instead of changing someone else so this was uh I don't know why that this particular workshop, I think I'd had a really nice nap right beforehand. So I was kind of wound up. So I was like, well, Q and A is going well, who else has one? So the next one was like, how can you help my daughter? She's got a daughter, I think that's three or four, not be such a jerk. And I was like, well, it's kind of a loaded

question. So what'd your jerky daughter do? Well, preschool today, she pushed down little Ben's tower and little Ben got all upset. And so I was kind of in a mood and I was like, well, maybe little Ben needs not be so sensitive about his tower. I didn't really mean that, but it kind of, but anyway, I was like, mom, come on, you got to watch your, like, I get it. Your daughter's difficult. I don't have a problem saying that. I get it. Strong-willed daughter, age three or four, is going to have trouble. She's going to push Ben's tower down. Here's what else is going to happen. The really nice, good preschool teacher's going to say, okay, kids, it's circle time. Everybody sit

on your assigned square. And guess what? This little four-year-old is not sitting on her assigned square. Why? One, because it's kind of dumb in her brain, which it kind of is. Two, it's arbitrary. I don't want to sit on the square. Everybody else is sitting on a stupid square. I think I'll just walk around the room or walk outside the room. That's what these kids do. I'm not justifying it or saying it's right. It's what they do. And you have one of two options. You and the teachers can go through their entire life thinking that they're just disobedient and unruly and they can't listen and everything else and everything's negative. Or you can look at it and say, I've got a really bright little four-year-old and she's just not going to follow directions that well

because when she wakes up in the morning, she's got an agenda. She's got stuff that she sees inside her brain from the time she wakes up. And she's goal-oriented and she's driven and she's persistent and she's going to get that stuff done. Like your little boys who see things in their brains, little Lego projects, and they're going to get that thing built one way or another. Right. And so again, not saying it's right or wrong, it's the way they're made. And I can either work with that or I can work against it and crush their spirit for their entire childhood and get them to shut down so that when they're teenagers,

they won't listen to you and they won't do their homework or anything else. Or I can use that with that little girl and say, okay, I've got a bright kid who knows what she wants. Let me channel that energy. Let me look. So I kind of redirected the mom. I'm like, look, I just encourage you don't assign motives, right? Does your daughter do jerky stuff? Of course. But so do you and I all the time, but it's not just that we're always jerks. It could be a number of different things, right? By the way, watch that thing that you say about your kids are like, they're lazy. I guarantee you most of the time they're not lazy. They're just not motivated. They're not motivated to do the same things that you want them to do, right? But with this little girl, what was going on when she pushed down a little Ben's tower? One, she probably

wanted the reaction. It's kind of cool to see stuff come crashing down. You learn from that. How do things fall? What does it sound like? What does it look like? That's what kids are supposed to do when they're three and four and five and six and seven and eight, right? So she probably wanted to see the reaction from little Ben. And guess what she learned? Ben can't take it when things don't go his way either, right? So look, we all get, watch, this is kind of cool. We all get on this little girl because she's a jerk and she pushed down Ben's tower because she didn't get what she wanted. Well, Ben started to melt down too because someone came and pushed down his tower. I get it. I'd be upset too. Spent some time building that tower and I would assume they may have dropped gloves

right there and had a little fight, right? That's what little kids do. And like, I get it, but Ben's not perfect in this situation, right right someone's going to come along in life and push your tower down every day it's probably called your spouse or your boss or a politician or someone in traffic or your kids they're going to push your proverbial tower down all those things that you've been working on and all of a sudden it comes crashing down so how are you going to react to that so she learned pretty quickly that gets ben's uh pushes his buttons think i'll do that more could be a sensory component to it she likes the feel of pushing on things she liked the feel of that coming crashing down right don't underestimate the sensory needs your kids have and that's why I want them getting their sensory needs met before they go to school every day.

During school, we train teachers how to do this right in the middle of class. It's cool. So contact Casey, C-A-S-E-Y, at CelebrateCalm.com. And we're about doing teacher training, parent training. He does school assemblies. If you need help with our products, if you need help financially, contact Casey. He's extremely helpful. And he was way worse than your kids, so it'll encourage you.

She was experimenting with how this works. I push here, stuff comes down. Who knows? She may have been anxious. She may have been frustrated. And that's a negative way for her to deal with that. But at least I know instead of being a jerky kid, I've got a really frustrated kid. So instead of being frustrated, I can show her in different ways. And she may have been bored.

That's probably likely. So what do we do with boredom? Well, we start making things a challenge for her because she's four, but she's probably going on 14. So I'm not going to treat her like a four-year-old because she's going to be bored to tears and just keep pushing down Ben's tower. But if I make things a challenge for her, if I motivate that brain by giving her very purposeful, specific missions, things she has to focus on, and I create successes, and I begin giving my intensity to her when she makes good choices and when she does things well, right? Instead of just giving intensity when she doesn't sit still, when she puts people's things down. Because look, this girl's day can be entirely different based on

how the mom and teacher look at her. Because if you look at her as she's just a little jerk who lives to make people's life miserable, well then just be negative all the time. And guess what? She'll live down to the negativity. You know what happens with teenagers at this point and if you get a dad who will not affirm his kids and everything's negative and all he ever does is lecture and point out all the things they do wrong guess what your teenagers gonna do he's gonna shut down he's gonna start to fail and he won't do his stuff and you know what he's really saying inside he's saying you dad? You've said I was a loser basically my whole life. You've never been happy with me. So guess what? I'm lazy. I'm not going to do anything. So guess what? You thought I was a loser? Here you go.

I'm a loser. What are you going to do now? And you know what it is? It's a big F you right at the parents when they do that. And I don't blame the kid for doing that. Now, would I prefer that the child learn how to say, mother, father, I'm suffocating under the weight of your false expectations. And it feels like nothing I do is ever good enough. Of course, I want him to be able to say that. But how are you going to expect your teenager to do that if you can't even own your own stuff? Do you know what I mean? So I'm not expecting the child to be defiant, but it doesn't surprise me that a teenager would shut down and basically as an FU back at his dad or parents just begin to shut down because that's all they emotionally need to know because that's probably what they've been emotionally taught in the home. And that's

why the No BS program, if you don't have it and you've got older kids, you must, must, must, must go through it to rebuild that relationship. It's going to take more than like, hey, sorry about that for the first 13 years. Let's be friends now. It doesn't work that way, right? You're going to have to rebuild from the ground up and accept that child on a deep, deep level. It's going to change you as a human being. And you'll be, you know what you're going to find is you'll begin accepting other people much more. My son opened up a whole new world to me. My son, because he was so difficult and it caused me to change, opened up my entire spiritual life changed because of my son. Because I, one, I came face to face with all of my own issues and continue to do so.

And I learned to change and see people in a completely different way. And it changed me spiritually in ways that I can't even explain at times. And it was through my son that that happened. Because we mentioned that in the past couple podcasts, that's why we have relationships, because they're about transformation, and they will change who you are. And so, look, these two examples, I got to change the way I look at the 16-year-old, and I'm changing the way I look at the four-year-old. Is that right? And so, final one was, this was in Michigan. And so, this mom's like, oh, by the way, with that four-year-old, that mom, that one, same night as the mom with the jacket story, she stayed there the whole time, came up at the end and she said, you know, I came here thinking I just needed to change my daughter. And now I feel hopeful because I know I can't change someone else, but I know that I can change my perspective. perspective and you just gave me an entirely different way to look at my daughter from a negative perspective, which was based on my own fear, my own anxiety over her, my own way of doing things. And you now have allowed me, enabled me to see my daughter through a completely different

prism. And now I can teach other people to see my daughter like that. And now I have hope that I can actually enjoy my daughter's childhood, even though she is difficult. See, that's a beautiful thing. This doesn't, nobody's discounting the fact that your kids are extremely challenging, not discounting that at all. What I'm saying is when you learn to enjoy them, even as they are like that, then you'll see big things change. And that brings me to the final example from Michigan. Really good mom. And I love this mom. She's awesome. She had said, her question was, my son's 12. Like when, when's it going to stick? Like when's he finally going to change? And so I said, ask permission to be blunt. She said, yes, I like you. I know your stuff. And I said,

you're 29. Cause I was being nice. You're 35. You're 40. When are you going to change? So you come here asking question, when's my 12 year old finally going to get it? And I said, mom, when are you finally going to get it? Because you're 35 or 40, right? When are you going to change? And just so you know, I wasn't being a jerk to her. She kind of knew of our stuff and she'd heard us before. And to her credit, she said, you know, you're absolutely right. That's what I needed to hear that I need to change because we pick power struggles. So why does your child bother you? What is the big trigger or triggers?

Why? Is it your own control issues? Yes, because you have control issues. You know why? Because everybody does. And anybody who says that they don't is in denial, right? And then that's another issue. So they don't only have control issues,

then you have denial issues. Kidding. But perfectionism issues. You've got to learn how to control that. Strong-willed child's not going to do things your way. They're going to irritate you. Your anxiety. You have a tremendous amount of anxiety over your child's future because you watch what they're doing now and you don't see them living up to your expectations. And you're afraid for their future. How are they going to be successful? Who's going to marry them? Who's going to hire them? And you're going to feel like a failure as a parent. You've got to control your own anxiety. And you're going to have to come to grips with the fact that this child irritates you because either he or she is just like you, which will bother you because you're both going to trigger each other, and you don't want this

child to make the same mistakes you made, or this child is opposite of you. And you have no idea why they can't just do things the easy way and listen to you like you did as a kid. And because they're not just like you as a kid, there must be something wrong with them. And you're going to have to change that. And when you do, and that's why I just put down February challenge is this, is to stop laboring, stop trying so hard to change your kids and to change your spouse and to change your parents and to change everybody else and put that same energy into changing yourself, change and control your control issues, control your anxiety, change how you see your child, change your reactions, right?

So that whether it's morning routine, homework time, right? Instead of trying to change your child, get them to do homework the way you did it as a kid, you can say, of course that homework is difficult for you, but I believe you're capable of doing it. I believe you're capable of handling that disappointment. I believe you're capable of doing it in a different way than I would do it. And I'm going to accept you as you are. And I'm going to give you tools to succeed. And I'm going to step back so you can step up so I can enjoy you and I can enjoy your childhood. And I want that for you and your kids. So this is what I want this February. And I think I'm going to use this as my theme. Let's go for big changes. It's the beginning of the new year. Most of your resolutions you've dropped already. So good. Let's go for big changes. It's the beginning of the new year. Most of your resolutions you've dropped already.

So good. Let's just wipe the slate clean, right? We're going to be like, okay, no resolutions, no resolutions. Commitment. Here's what I'm doing. Big changes in myself. I become in 2020 a new human being. I see the world differently.

I see people of the other political persuasion in different ways. So I don't walk around with bitterness or feeling like I'm better than other people because my party's right and they're wrong. Whatever. If that's too much for you, just scrap it and be bitter and whatever with politics if you want. I'm kidding, but not really. Look, I'm sorry I mentioned that part, but I'm really not because it will change who you are from a deep, deep level. And you'll learn to love people like you've never loved them and accept people. And I'm not talking about just, oh, we just accept everything and everything. And if kids are disrespectful to me, I'll just love them. No, what you're going to

learn through the program is how to have self-respect. I don't want anybody listening to me getting walked all over. Not how it works. Being calm isn't a doormat. Not at all. But, think about this, when you react to your kids, you're basically being a doormat. When you yell at your kids, you're basically letting them control you. Does that make sense? So it has nothing to do with being weak. In fact, this is all about being very strong by changing and controlling yourself instead of controlling them. So you don't have to be a doormat at all, but just realize those of you who kind of yell and scream and demand all the time, you're a doormat when you're doing that. You know why? Because your child's in complete control of you, right?

I want you to be in control of yourself because that's confidence and strength. And your kids will feed off of that, and they'll learn how to be like that themselves. And now you get to change yourself. And even better than that, you change your family for literally for generations so that when your kids are your age, they don't have to go through the same process as you have had to go through a changing because you changed it and you broke the pattern yourself. That's cool. So celebrate calm.com. Look for the big changes sale. It's a really good sale. And even if it wasn't on sale, it would be worth it. Why? Because you're going to spend hundreds and thousands of dollars on all kinds of therapy that hasn't worked or testing that doesn't necessarily always need to be done and all kinds of other stuff that you buy because you're depressed or you buy for your kids.

Look, you're going to learn in the programs. I don't believe in buying your kids a lot of stuff. They want experiences. So this program, if I was really selling it the right way, I'd say you invest in this program. It'll save you money on all kinds of things, right? Because you won't, especially single moms, you're not going to go out and because you feel guilty about the divorce and everything, you buy your kids way too much stuff, right? It will save you money in that sense of, anyway, I'll leave it at that. But if we can help you in any way, let's do it. Let's do it this February. Email my son Casey, C-A-S-E-Y,

at CelebrateCalm.com. Ask him a question. Ask for help financially. Ask him put the right together, the right package for your family. Ask him how he can. You can book us so we can come to your city so we can do a live Q&A and I can be really tough on you in front of other people. I'm kidding. But it was fun that night. We had a great night that night when I was tough with people because they end up changing. So kudos to this mom who is responsible for the big sale. Thanks for changing yourself. I hope I get a thousand more emails like that from people who are doing it. As you walk through the program, when you have trouble with your triggers, email me and say, here's my trigger. Here's what I'm struggling with. Right. And we'll work through it. Anyway,

thank you all very much. Talk to you later. Bye-bye.