Calm Parenting Podcast - Calming A Screaming Toddler or Venomous Teen

Episode Date: November 1, 2023

Calming A Screaming Toddler or Venomous Teen You have a child who lets out a bloodcurdling scream or won’t calm down no matter what you try. You have a teenager oozing with attitude, spewing venomous words and glaring at you in the kitchen. What are you going to do in this moment? In this bonus podcast episode during BIG EMOTIONS month, Kirk shares a simple, but effective way to calm both situations. You’ll learn dozens of these strategies through our BIG SALE right now at CelebrateCalm.com. Kirk is available for Phone Consultations. Click here to learn more. This episode of the Calm Parenting Podcast is brought to you by Hello Fresh. Go to https://www.hellofresh.com and use code 50calm for 50% off plus FREE shipping. A Revolutionary Baby Monitor is Born. Visit www.MasimoStork.com to learn more. 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 maybe you have a child who lets out these blood-curdling screams, or they won't calm down no matter what you try. Or perhaps you have a teenage daughter oozing with attitude, hands on her hips, spewing venomous words and glaring at you in the kitchen. What are you going to do? What are you going to do in these moments? How are you going to handle that? That is what we are going to discuss on this bonus episode of the Calm Parenting Podcast

during Defiance and Big Emotions Month here at Celebrate Calm. Welcome. This is Kirk Martin, founder of Celebrate Calm. You can find us at CelebrateCalm.com. If you need help, reach out to our son, Casey, because he's certainly had big emotions and sometimes really big attitude. It's Casey, C-A-S-E-Y, at CelebrateCalm.com. Let's know what you're struggling with. We'll get back to you and help you because that's what our mission is. I'm going to try to do five or six podcasts this month so you're equipped to handle your kids' big emotions and your own big emotions. I encourage you, take advantage of the big sale we have going on. It's the biggest sale we've done because we want you to finally get a breakthrough with

these big emotions and your own big emotions so your home can change, so spouses aren't fighting and misunderstanding each other all the time. So go there. My personal advice, just get the Get Everything package. It's basically the price of one trip to a therapist's office, but you get about 35 hours of practical strategies. So let's go back in time. This is like 20 years ago. This is the beginning of Celebrate Calm. And what we noticed is we know

all these kids, and these are kids, strong will kids, kids on the spectrum, right? And therapy's not working because they go into a therapist's office and some weird person's staring at them like, let's talk about your emotions and your feelings. And here's how your kids respond. I don't know. I don't know. I guess so. And they don't respond.

And it's very overwhelming for your kids. And so we decided, I had this idea of like, hey, let's just bring kids into our home, into a natural environment, a normal environment in a home. And so I had this idea, and I called them Lego camps. Why? Because all of our kids love building with Legos. They don't want to go to social skills camp. And look, part of what was behind this is this thought. Most of your kids, probably all of your kids, they don't need to be fixed. And sometimes when we take our kids to a therapy, what's behind it is something's wrong with them and they need to be fixed. Now, that's not what's always behind it. Some of it is just like, hey, we want to give our kids some tools to help with

this. But sometimes it's just overwhelming being in therapy. And so you end up spending thousands of dollars on therapy and it doesn't do any good. So we wanted to have these kids in a natural home environment where I could control the environment. And I'd change, look, I changed plans on these kids at the last minute. Why? Your kids don't deal well with changes in plans and we transition them and we make sure that they were frustrated, right? It's not hard to do with your kids so that we could teach them in a moment. Hey, frustration is very normal. I want to teach you what to do with your frustration. So over the course of a decade, we had about 1,500 kids in our home.

And so they would come to our house because it was Lego camp. They weren't being fixed. And when they walked into that place, they felt at home because they were with other kids who were just like them, and they were good at building with things and tinkering with things. By the way, that's why they're so good at pushing buttons.

They're tinkering with your brain because they can see patterns. And if you take advantage of that, great qualities for later in life, right? So one of the defining moments of our experience was this eight-year-old kid named Max and And his parents had heard about what we were doing. And they called us because we were like, we tried to take Max to therapy, it's just not working. But here's the problem. We have never left Max anywhere on his own before. He freaks out.

And I said, bring him over. And I remember this day like it was yesterday because we were in this little tiny town home. And I remember this family walking in and I could feel the anxiety all over the mom and dad, really good parents, love their son, just at their wits end, don't know what to do. They can't leave them anywhere. Can't send, you can't do anything. And so I remember Max coming in, hiding behind his mother's leg, right? And many of your kids do that. Please don't do the

thing. Honey, come here. Say hi to Mrs. Johnson. Say hi to Mrs. Johnson. Don't do that. You're just going to create more anxiety. When they're ready and they're confident, they'll come out and then they won't stop talking and they'll exhibit good manners. But right now, let them hide behind their leg. It feels your leg. It feels safe there. And so Max is hiding behind his mother's leg. It's kind of sucking on his thumb and he's just oozing with anxiety. And so I was sitting on the floor building with Legos and I didn't even look up. And I just said, man, I'm trying to figure out how to build this airplane the right way. But I keep messing up. Max, I heard you're pretty good at this. I could use some help here. And I never looked at him because you've heard me say, I don't do a lot of eye contact when kids are feeling embarrassed, ashamed, and self-conscious.

I just kept fumbling around with the Legos. And within a few seconds, guess what happened? Max is sitting on the floor, breathing heavily. Because look, this almost makes me cry thinking of this because this is hard for this kid and I can hear the breathing it's labored it's heavy he's stepping out of his comfort zone from behind his mother and now he's in this weird place sitting on the floor and I can hear that breathing because this is a big moment for this kid. This is hard. But he starts putting the Legos together.

See, that's motion changes emotion. That's giving him a specific mission. It's not using words. And I glanced up at his parents and I shooed them away with my eyes. And I just said, hey, we'll see you in 30 minutes, okay? And then I mouthed, go, go to them as the mom, because I knew it was going to happen. The mom was about to come over and reassure Max

in her kind words, you'll be okay, honey. Mommy will be right outside. And the reason I didn't want to do that is because that creates more anxiety for the child. It reinforces that they aren't capable of handling this. And it's the mom's anxiety or the dad's anxiety dumping and spilling all over the child. And that's why when I like when you take your kids to school, don't get out and walk them in with your reassuring tone.

That actually is counter, it's counterintuitive, but that creates more anxiety because they feel that you're not really confident in them. So I shooed the mom away and I had said this, right, in a very matter-of-fact tone with no emotion and no concern to Max. Hey, your mom and dad are going up the street to Starbucks. They're going to be back after we get this plane built. See, that matter of fact tone says, I'm in complete control of myself. I've got this.

Everything's good. I wasn't trying to convince him. Max, it's going to be okay. Your mom and dad are being really close by and I'm really into this guy and we're going to have a good time. See, that convincing often creates more anxiety. Hold on just a second. Look, this is a real life. I'm in the middle of doing this, but I'm getting more insight, things I haven't written down.

So convincing creates anxiety. I'm writing this down because I do create, sometimes create newsletters or Facebook posts out of this to Reinforce those who like it written and I just wanted to put that down so That was the first day that max ever went somewhere by Himself and that's partly when I knew we're on to something here. This is non-traditional It's a different way of doing things, but the traditional way doesn't work with strong will kids and kids on the spectrum.

And we grew to love Max. He became one of our favorite kids. He'd sing while he was building, and that was a self-calming tool for him. But here's what else he would do. He'd occasionally scream when things didn't go the right way for him. And he was the inspiration for something we call Color Me Calm. And so we were in this town home in DC. We're surrounded by literally hundreds of neighbors. And Max would go up, get upset, go out on the front steps, of course, and scream like he was being hurt. And no amount of trying to calm him down would work. Remember from our first episode, you don't try to calm people down. It makes them more upset. So one day I grabbed some sidewalk chalk. I walked and sat two steps below Max so I wasn't watching him. Remember, nobody likes to be watched while they're melting down, while they're upset. And I began to draw on the steps, not trying to fix him at all. A few seconds later,

I feel his nasty little warm breath on my neck because he breathed so heavily when he was upset. And I heard Max say, and he had a little speech impediment. It was cute. Mr. Cook, you don't know how to draw. And right. And it's very much like our kids with honesty. You don't know how to draw. And instead of correcting him, Max, that's not very nice to say. I'm a grown adult and you should respect me. You don't need to say those things. Look, I'm a grown adult. I don't react to those things. And by the way, he was right. I don't know how to draw. So I said, very matter of factly, yeah, I know. Could you show me? Could you show me how to draw when you get a chance? And with that, Max stopped the blood-curdling screams and began to draw all the way down

our steep steps onto the driveway. And along the way, I could hear his breathing ease. And while we were both drawing, again with no eye contact and no concern in my voice, I simply said, hey, I'm curious, Max, what happened inside that got you so upset? And he didn't look at me. He just kept drawing and coloring. And he began to talk plainly to me. And then we were able to problem solve. And I was able to say, ah, I can see why that would make you upset. So what could we do differently next time? And we began to problem solve while we were both coloring. See, there's something beautiful about

that and very calming about that. And that whole tone of voice isn't like, Max, we need to talk to you about your big emotions now. It's no,, I'm just talking to him, kind of talking to an adult, like, hey, I get it why that happened inside. So what can we do differently next time? And so we're kind of on an even, we're kind of, I'm not trying to fix him. I'm just trying to help him there. And we're trying to problem solve as adults. And I've identified with him. See, I hope that makes sense. It's really cool. I want to show you how to apply this, actually, with a teenager with attitude, because it's kind of cool. So, Casey was involved in all of these situations growing up

because these highly emotional kids were in his home. And it was awful sometimes, because we'd have these camps in the evening, sometimes on school nights, and a lot of times it was Saturday morning in case he wanted to sleep in, but all of a sudden there's some kid like barging into his bedroom door because they were impulsive, highly emotional kids, right? And so anyway, while he, see, he got to witness all of this while he was actually learning how to control his own big emotions and he got to witness all of this while he was actually learning how to control his own big emotions. And he got to practice this with other kids. And here's what's really cool.

That became the basis for his own program. He had school assemblies. It's called Straight Talk for Kids. And he traveled across the country with me, and he trained hundreds of thousands of kids how to control their own impulses, how to control their own emotions. He taught them that by showing how he learned that. And then he eventually recorded his own program. It's actually our most popular program we have ever sold. It's called Straight Talk for Kids and teaches your kids how to get control of their own emotions because they're not listening to some boring adult or their parents. They're listening to another kid

talking about his own issues. And so if you ever, if you get the Get Everything or the Calm Parenting podcast, it's part of that. Your kids can actually listen directly to Casey talking about that. Now listen, I've never done this before on our podcast, but give me like 90 seconds. I wanna share with you what's actually in this package.

And I'll do this quick. First program I want you to listen to is the 30 Days to Calm. It goes through the steps I took to learn how to go from being freaked out and always upset, fear and intimidation, big emotions, to learning how to calm myself down in very specific detail. It's got a workbook that you work through, and we work through your triggers. There's a program called Enjoy Your Strong Will, Child. Stop the Power of Strong Will. And I really want you to listen to this one probably first or second because it's insight into your strong will, kids.

You have to have this. And dads, I need you to listen to this so you stop misunderstanding your kids and just think they're being lazy and not trying. There's a program called Discipline that Works When Consequences Don't. It shows you how to discipline your kids while building trust and a strong relationship. There's one on defiance and disrespect. We're going through that this month, but it's filled with that. ADHD University, your kids don't have to be labeled or have a diagnosis.

But if we're describing your kids, we go through what's happening in their brains. We used to sell this program when it first launched for $200 on its own. Why? Because it's so foundational, teaches you how your kids' brains work, and helps you with homework time, helps with school. There's a program on stopping sibling fights. That would be worth $200 alone as well, right? There's one on stopping the fights over screens.

Entire program, how to replace screens with other things that meet the same needs that the screens meet. There's a program called Straight Talk for Moms. It's just for moms to learn how to demonstrate self-respect. There's a program for dads. And I talk to dads very directly. It's short and sweet because dads like concise stuff.

There's Casey's program for kids. There's one on motivating kids for younger kids, ages two to seven. There's a calm couples program. So you can go through this with your spouse right from home because most men aren't going to do marriage therapy because it feels like the therapist and our wives are teaming up against us. So I made this very practical for couples. If you get the Get Everything package, we include the No BS program, which is awesome.

So if you're interested, go to CelebrateCalm.com. Listen to those. They come on an easy-to-use app. So you can listen. Your spouse can listen. Your parents can listen. Your kids can listen. So Color Me Calm became a pretty common strategy we use with kids with

big emotions. And guess who else it works well with? Teenagers. So picture this, a mom and teenage daughter. Look, it could be a mom and a son. It could be a dad and son, dad and daughter. It doesn't matter. Picture a mom and teenage daughter at a standstill. The teenage daughter is coming at mom with teenage tone and attitude. Mom, you've got every right to respond. Young lady, you will not talk to me like that. To which my teenage son once said, just did. Yeah, Casey was a handful and he was correct because he had just talked to me like that. So mom wisely doesn't take the bait. She doesn't take it personally. Instead, she recognizes her daughter is in an irrational place, which is where teens tend to live. So rational talk won't

work. She isn't going to convince her daughter to speak kindly to her, but she doesn't also doesn't want to keep escalating the situation. Now, there's a number of different ways to handle this. There's one we go through in the program where we say, hey, I've got too much self-respect to let you talk to me like that, but that's not what I'm doing this time. So mom, in this situation, grabs some paper and some crayons and sits down. Sits, remember that from the first podcast, sitting down, changing your body posture, sits at the kitchen table, because it's really hard to yell at people when you're sitting. She begins to draw in color, and she pushes some sheets of paper or a coloring book,

and I do recommend this. Get a few coloring books, keep them on hand in your home. They're really effective. So she kind of pushes this coloring book and some crayons in front of her, right, out toward her daughter and doesn't say a word. Her teenage daughter is staring at her mom like, what are you doing? Mom takes her own tone down a notch. Honey, I can tell you're frustrated. I'd like to hear what's going on. And without looking up at her daughter, she could give her a caring, knowing look, and that would be okay too. But she just keeps coloring, pushes some coloring book and some crayons and say, I can tell you're frustrated. I'd like to hear what's going on. Mom could also say this, you know what? I've had a really long day and I'm frustrated too. She could add, sorry I yelled at you earlier. That humility will break down walls. And somewhat reluctantly at first, this

teenage daughter who was a few minutes ago wrapped up in her big emotions because everything in the teen world is immediate. It's now, it's in the moment with such urgency, and it's all that matters. And if I don't get to hang out with my friends, I'll be left out. My life will be ruined, right? You can hear that. Remember back to your teen years. You're not thinking three years, eight years, 12 years out in the future. Everything is right now what's happening. That's what it's like in the teen world. And it's even worse now because of social media. It's so immediate. I mean, one of the best favorite apps is Snapchat. It's right now.

It's in your face. It's constant. It's visual. So mom didn't try to convince her daughter that everything's okay, and she didn't try to calm her down. She calmed herself down first. She slowed down that train, that confrontation, that whole situation. She slowed it down. And she did so by coloring. Because it's really hard to yell and scream while you're physically sitting and coloring. It changes the dynamic completely. And now she draws her daughter in. She leads her daughter to a calm

place instead of trying to make her calm down. And now picture this. A mom and a teenage daughter are sitting together, not separated. You go to your room, young lady, sitting together and coloring. It's grounding. It's settling. It provides a focus for their energy. It's something they both can control in that moment. Look, the sensory feel of the crayon or pencils in your hand as it brushes against the paper, it feels good, settling. And they're both looking down at their sheets of paper. That confrontation, that urgency is all gone. And now they can actually talk together, but with a different tone. Now, look, you may not choose to color with your kids. You may need to do something more intense and physical when they're upset. But I want you to practice using these principles

this week. Look, next week we're going to go over a couple more big emotions topics and I'll give you a preview if you want, right? But we're going to talk about anxiety. We're going to talk about anxiety. We're going to talk about when there's a broken relationship. We're going to talk about when there's outright defiance. But what I really want you to practice this week is start putting these principles, right? Of giving them something they're in control of, controlling yourself first, motion changes emotion, giving some space in that intensity. Do that this week. Let me know how it goes. And the next week we'll jump in with a few more

podcasts. If we can help you in any way, please let us know. Reach out to Casey at CelebrateCalm.com. If you need help financially, even though we've got a big sale, if you need additional help, reach out to Casey. We want you to have the tools. We make it really easy with this new app so everybody can be on the same page. And you can even share this with your child's teachers, which is really cool as well. Anyway, thank you for listening.

Thanks for sharing this with others. Love you all. Bye-bye.