Calm Parenting Podcast - Chores, Fortnite, Authority, Respect. Kids Who Give Up When It’s Difficult

Episode Date: April 8, 2019

Do you agree or disagree with Kirk’s shocking advice for handling a child who yells at his Mom and defies her authority? Learn why some kids shut down and aren’t motivated. What do you do when one child takes all of your energy and attention? How do you help kids who give up when work becomes difficult? This is a fantastic podcast so don’t miss this one. Learn how to get your kids to push through and be responsible for themselves with our new No B.S. Instruction Manual for Strong-Willed Kids at www.CelebrateCalm.com/NOBS. If you need help, email [e-mail]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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new No BS program. Well, what about my child when he doesn't obey my authority? And so I just wanted to bring up and say, so how are you defining authority? Right? Because I think when I hear the questions from most parents, it's, well, I'm the authority figure, and that means I get to tell my child what to do, and his job is to listen to me. And I get that, totally get that. But when I think about the good authority figures in my life, they weren't just bossing me around. They were people

who led by example, who took time to teach me, not just a lecture and shout things at me. They taught me. And they were people who protect me. See, and sometimes I think we're not actually doing any of those things. I think we're just telling kids what to do in order to be productive because we've got an agenda, right? We've got to get through it. I'm a parent. You're the child. I've got things to do on our day. We've got all these things that are kind of mandatory. You've got to get done, so you've got to get rolling, kid. And it's out of good intentions too, right? We want our kids to be successful. So as the authority figure, I'm telling you in order to be successful, you've got to be able to do A, B, and C. But again, that's not necessarily what an authority figure does, right?

You've got to watch that because I don't think we're always leading by example. I don't think we're teaching. And I don't actually think we're protecting. Some parents, and this happens all the time, they'll send me like a little video because they want to show me like how awful their child is. Trust me, I know. Your kids are really difficult and challenging. I've got that. For those of you who know Casey, I mean, our son was, all those videos that you send, it's like PTSD from when Casey was like eight, right? And it's like, oh, I remember that. But they sent me the videos wanting me to see like, man, you've got it tough, right? And they's like, oh, I remember that. But they sent me the videos wanting me to see, like, man, you've got it tough, right? And they're like, yeah, my eight-year-old, he just can't pull

his uh together. And you know what I see on the videos? I see the 35-year-olds who can't pull their stuff together, right? And I'm like, yes, your eight-year-old is out of control. I've got that. But so are you. And you're the 35-year-old, right? So listen to what is often happening in these situations, right? Because when you react to your child and you find yourself lecturing or yelling, here's what you're really saying to your child. I need you to behave so that I can behave. Put another way, I need you to behave because if you don't behave, I'm not sure I can, right? If you don't do exactly what I tell you to do right now,

then I'm going to lose it and you do not want to see me angry. That's not a good authority figure. That's not a good parent, right? We don't want to do that. The message I want to send to my kids is when your world is out of control, mine's not. I can handle you at your worst. And I want to bring you back to this. And this is why I'm loving this new program because it gives me an opportunity to hit this kind of in some fresh ways and in very blunt ways to let people know, look, this eight-year-old, this 10-year-old, 14-year-old, but especially the younger kids, right, who have all of these things and they struggle because they have these very busy brains and they want to control everything. That's why I always hear from, well, he just wants to be in control. Of course he does. He has such a busy brain. He doesn't feel like he's in control of anything.

And that's why he's controlling other people in situations. He dominates conversations. He wears the same clothes, eats the same food. You can't play board games with him because he's going to change the rules of the game. He's going to cheat. He's going to quit. And he does all of those things. And I know that they're irritating, But he doesn't wake up every morning saying, hmm, I like to be really irritating to everybody around me. Right now, I know some of your teenagers will do that at times where they're intentionally like that. But usually there's some pain and frustration under there as well. But these little kids who are just trying to, like, they're just trying to get through their daily life. They didn't, they didn't ask to be like this. Do you know what I mean?

They're kids. And if it's okay for me to say this, even if it's not, I'm just going to say it, but that's part of me getting a little bit older is looking like I did it, speaking in a special education conference today. And I looked at the parents and said, you're the grownup. So act like it. He's eight, he's 14. So I'm 35, I'm 40, I'm 53. We've got to be able to handle this stuff. So, um, I get this email, um, because we're doing with part of the new BS program, you write in, you tell me what you want me to address. And so I'm doing all of these really cool case studies. So when we release this program, it'll be released on April 15th, celebration of tax day.

I'm going to have all these case studies because I really like doing case studies because you'll see yourself and you'll see your child in that. And that way it's very, very specific and practical to a situation. So I get this email from a mom. She went on literally six paragraphs of why her teenage son is not trying and how he's not motivated. He's not living up to his potential. So as I'm reading through, like I really do try to help people. Like I really, it, um, I'm not, I'm not, uh, saying this for my own benefit. Like I really do work at it. Like I really work my brain to think, okay, how can we do this? What, what, what's the lever here? What, what could we possibly use? So my brain's working away. And then I get to the last sentence and it says, oh, my husband has anger issues and yells constantly at my son.

Oh, could have just said that sentence alone. Didn't need to have the previous six paragraphs, right? And this is what I'm realizing about dads. And I've known this part that one of the main things that we want as men is men. We want respect from our kids. But you know what the deeper part of it is? There's a sense in men of, we want to pass along our wisdom to our kids. It's kind of our legacy to them, right? Like we've worked hard, we've been through life, we've been disciplined, we've done the right things. So we want to pass that along to our kids. It's very strong inside your husbands.

And that's why I try to, in this program, and what I encourage you to do is, I don't want you going home, just say, you got to stop yelling at your son, right? The appeal is you want to impart this lifetime of wisdom to your four-year-old, your seven-year-old, your nine-year-old, your 12-year-old, your 17-year-old? But then you do the very things that cause your kids to not listen to you. So I guarantee in this situation with this teenage son, you know what he's done? He's shut down. And it's a passive-aggressive way of saying to his dad, I'm going to live down to your low expectations of me.

You think I'm a loser? Good. I'll call your bluff, and I'll not do anything. What are you going to do now, tough guy? Right? Because he doesn't have the, well, he's smart enough not to go to his dad and tell him to F off to his face for being on him his whole life, right? Because he doesn't have the, well, he's smart enough not to go to his dad and tell him to F off to his face for being on him his whole life, right? So the son's not going to do that. So what's he going to do? He's going to shut down. Because I know that my dad wants to

pass along my wisdom and he can't stand for his son to grow up and be unsuccessful. So guess what? I'm going to do just that. What are you going to do? Take away all my stuff? You already did that when I was nine, right? So this stuff doesn't exist in isolation. You have to get to the different ways in this program, which is, well, my strong-willed child takes a disproportionate amount of my time, and it's not fair to the other kids, and how do even try. And if I'm honest, I'll tell you this too. It's a gift to the other kids. And I'm not being funny here, but it's a gift because you're going to spend so much time fretting about lecturing being on the more challenging child that the other kids can get away with a lot of stuff. Truth is, my oldest brother took the brunt of the punishment and attention from my dad. As a third child, I'm thankful to this day, and I mean it. I tell my oldest brothers all the time, thanks for taking the brunt of things from dad. It allowed me to disappear a little bit, and I kind of hid, and I got away with a lot of stuff.

I just kept my head down, and I was quiet, right? And so you can't even it out. I know, parents, I know, but all the kids need to do the same number of chores. It's not happening. Here's what's going to happen. The strong-willed child is going to pay his one brother to do his chores for him and manipulate his sister, right? Doesn't matter gender. But, and you're going to be like, oh, that's not right. That's not fair. No, here's your appropriate response. And I believe this with all my heart. You need to go to that strong willed child and say, listen, that was smart thinking because you don't like doing

chores because chores are boring, but you do like making money and you're driven by that. And you're a born entrepreneur. And so what you did is you went and earned some money. You paid your brother to do your chores. That's called delegation. And you're going to need to know how to do that because you're going to own your own business one day because God knows nobody's ever going to hire you because you don't know how to follow directions.

But guarantee after you get out of jail, you're going to – I'm kidding with this. You know what I'm saying. But look, you're going to own your own business and you're going to have to do that. And you know what you did? You've got really good insight into human nature. That's why you're so good at pushing people's buttons. It's why you make inappropriate jokes about all the relatives during the holidays.

And it's inappropriate, but I can't stop laughing because it's spot on. It's why you know exactly how to push my buttons, dad's buttons, everybody's buttons. Why? Because you get human nature. So you went to your sister and you manipulated her and used the guilt trip into getting her to do your chores for you. Now, some people call it manipulation. The flip side of it is it's called influence. And you know what? That was actually really smart of you. And you know who you really not need to talk to is the daughter who's allowing herself to be manipulated because you need to teach her don't let people manipulate you you need to be confident you need to be assertive you need to speak up for yourself because if you don't one day you're going to make a really bad mistake in your marriage you're going to end up marrying a guy that you think you can fix and it's's going to end up horrible on a controlling man. And I say that this little thing in live

events. And I always ask women, how many of you in here did that? And some women foolishly raised their hands, especially with their husband sitting right next to them. But anyway, you know what I'm saying? So this stuff is difficult at times, but you've got to look at them a very different way. So here's one of the, oh, here's a great one. I get this all the time from almost everybody who's writing in with this new program. My child gives up when schoolwork or anything, getting a scout badge when it gets difficult? How do you get them to push through and not give up? How do you motivate a child who's not shut down? That's a fantastic question. I'm going to have so much on there and all these case studies. I didn't even write on the website yet that we're

including those, these case case studies. I just keep adding stuff to this program because I want it to literally transform your relationship with your child. I want to rebuild and save relationships. I want to rebuild and save relationships. I want to rebuild the relationship with these teenagers who've been shut down over the course of these, all these years and don't have that relationship anymore and save parents of younger kids from making all the mistakes ahead of time. Right? So look that up, celebrate calm.com forward slash N O B S. If you have a need help with that, um, uh, email me, uh, my son at Casey, C A S E Y at celebrate calm.com Casey at celebrate calm.com. So I want to end with, um, this is a really tough one and

you may disagree with me and that's okay because sometimes I hit things from different angles and sometimes I just sense something. And so I just kind of go with, and this's okay because sometimes I hit things from different angles and sometimes I just sense something. And so I just kind of go with it. And this is a tough one. And this is a mom of 11 year old boy with ADHD. They typically had a good relationship, but lately he's been playing Fortnite. He's been on his screens a lot. He's now he's been telling her to shut up, shut your mouth, stop talking, right? So he did that this morning. Mom's immediate response was, of course, take away the video games. And then she also canceled his play date with his friend after school.

And so what happened was, kid came home, and what he did was, he stayed off the video games, but he ended up leaving the house. So he went out, he went down to his friend's house, and they ended up actually riding bikes all afternoon. But it was blatant disregard for her consequences and for her authority, right? Like, I totally get that. And she's like, well, it's difficult for me to allow him to yell at me this way. It's unacceptable. And just listen to the words, when I attempt to parent him, he yells or talks over me. And sometimes when I hear that, when I attempt to parent him, I'm not knocking this mom at all, but parent him like that, it just sounds like you're trying to lecture him,

tell him what to do all the time. He's an 11-year-old kid, right? And so anyway, do you have any guidance? And so here was my kind of really tough advice to this mom. And you don't have to agree with it, but I hope you can hear in it, and I hope it triggers. Listen, I want to challenge us to do things differently, because if what's happening now, if you're listening to this podcast, it's probably because consequences in the traditional path, and just telling kids, if you do this, this is what's going to happen to you. It hasn't worked, and it won't work, right? So I told this mom, look, this is different advice than you were expecting from me. Because I know she wants to say, that's horrible.

He shouldn't be talking to you like that. I can't believe that he would blatantly disregard your authority and defy you and just go over to his friend's house. Like, man, you need to declare martial law in the home. Like, there'd be nothing wrong with that advice. And I'm sure that's what she expected. But I can tell you this. I guarantee if she went down that path of like, you know what? I'm tired of you talking to me like that. And you can't blatantly disregard what I tell you and defy me for that. You know what? For the rest of the month, you're grounded. I can get, look, is that, you're listening to this from the outside.

In the moment, for this poor mom, this is very, very difficult. But from the outside, you know, that never really changes anything. So I emailed her back seven things. Number one, don't take it personally. She's getting, you know what, you're understandably, you're getting very worked up about this, but I want you to take the bigger picture view. And I encourage you, you have to stop taking stuff so personally. It's not about you. You're the grown up. Your job is to stay in control of yourself so you can be calm, so you can see clearly the

situation. Otherwise, then just react every time and just say, you can't talk to me. You can't do this. You automatically lose all your stuff. And now we're just going to have a face-off and we're not going to have a good relationship. It'll just slowly go downhill. It doesn't work. Number two, some of you are going to be rankled by this, but I believe it to be true. Number two, I would apologize to your son for allowing him in the first place to play an addictive game like Fortnite and then to watch YouTube videos of other people playing Fortnite. The truth is you introduced him to an activity that's turning him into another person. Look, there's no blame and guilt in this.

But if you want the no BS response, you allow him to do it. You're allowing your kids day after day after day to be addicted to these video games. And it's turning them into a different person. And everybody's emailing. Well, I just want my kids to learn how to manage their screen time. Fine. Go find an alcoholic and just hand them a few beers or a six pack and say, listen, I trust that you'll know when you've had enough. I'm not equating the two, but they're not that far apart. You're talking about a kid here and you're handing him this electronic device in his hand.

Look, you and I are having a hard enough time controlling ourselves with our screens. How many times a day do you just look down at your iPhone or Android for no reason other than you're hoping something stimulating is coming through on it? A text, a message, or something interesting. So I'm asking you to own your part. You introduced him to this game. You allowed him to do it. And now all of a sudden he has a bad attitude? That didn't come from just nowhere. So number three, of course, taking screens and his play away away wasn't going to work i understand why you did it but those kind of consequences never work right so big key you have to de-escalate the situation and problem solve first before you go in all offended is the parent which you're just look you're justified this mom is is justified in being very angry.

She's justified. But acting out of her anger never gets us anywhere good or positive or productive or effective. You have to de-escalate first. So, number four. This will irritate some of you. He was wrong to go to his friend's house and ride bikes, but that's exactly what you should want him doing, playing outside with a friend and getting exercise instead of watching an addictive screen. So number five, right? I would say I'd relax with

this situation tonight. Of course, defying you was wrong. But the truth is, and you've got to have some perspective. Most of us did all kinds of things like this when we were kids. We snuck out of the house. We were mischievous. We hit cars with snowballs. We did all kinds of things. Plus things plus I wrote this to the mom you shouldn't have taken the play date away in the first place so I'm just going to call this one a wash I'd even say this you were wrong to disobey to disobey me but I understand why you'd want to play with your friend riding bikes is what you should be doing, and I'm glad you played outside. I shouldn't have taken that away. Look, I don't have any problem with saying that at all. It's

just pure honesty, right? Number six, Fortnite and the screens are gone. Done. Personally, I'd never let a child get involved in those things. If you haven't already, don't do it. Delay the screens as long as possible. Very few of any kids can manage their own time on that game, on all these things. My son, when he did it, we went over, like we practiced it. We had all kinds of things, right? I taught him things like you own your time, right? So when your friends are texting you, you don't owe them an immediate response. You own your time. And he would actually practice, because you have to practice impulse control, we would actually practice not answering his friend's text until three hours later or the next day because he was building up his self-discipline

to know I control this. It doesn't dominate me because my son likes to dominate other people in situations, not have things dominate them. So I just played to that. But look, I want to get your child outside riding bikes, hiking, starting a little business, creating and building things, anything but being on screens. So my final advice was tonight, relax, enjoy your time, reset the situation, get on a new positive path. Because if you double down and just go like, well, I've had enough of this talk. I've had enough of this defying me. I'm going to lay down the law. It's not going to work, is it? You guys have all done that. It's just going to draw you further apart. So get to the root of this stuff. If you need help with it, all this, email us. Email my son, Casey, at CelebrateCalm.com. He will help you if you want to set up a live event

so we can teach. The live events are fun, man. They're a lot of fun. There's a lot of energy. I fit a lot. I spoke today at the special education conference. I had 60 minutes. I bet I fit three hours material in there. And we work in stuff because you've got to laugh. It's funny because we get these kids and you have to laugh so you can make it through the day. But if you want to set something up, email him. Again, the new program, we've got one more week. This is the final week of the pre-sale, which means you get a 20% discount when you do the pre-sale. And then after this, this price is going to go up. And to be honest, I'm probably going to raise it even higher than I thought because I keep adding material to it. And I know people get offended by that,

but this can literally change your family's life. You've been to a lot of therapists and therapy and all kinds of programs that did nothing because they didn't get your kids. And this is actually helpful because we get your kids and we know exactly what works. So anyway, it's celebrate calm.com forward slash N O B S. Thank you for listening. Thank you for challenging yourself and allowing yourself to, to try something different and something that's really challenging. I know this is hard stuff, but it's necessary if you want to change your family. Anyway, thank you. Love you all. See you soon. Bye-bye.