Calm Parenting Podcast - Confrontation with Long Island Mom--Can You Change My Child Quickly?

Episode Date: September 4, 2019

Confrontation with Long Island Mom--Can You Change My Child Quickly? So this Long Island Mom approaches me after a live event and says, "We don't have time for all this stuff. How can you change my kids more quickly?" We fought a little and then I showed her 5 ways she could change morning routine, homework battles, school performance, meltdowns, and a bad attitude overnight. For more ways to change your child overnight, visit this page: https://www.celebratecalm.com/change-your-child-overnight/ If we can help you, email [e-mail] or call us at 888-506-1871. 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 everybody, this is Kirk Martin, founder of Celebrate Calm, coming to you live from the Carolina coast where we are under a mandatory evacuation. And I thought since we have to be out of our home in the next couple hours that maybe I'd record a podcast. Nice juxtaposition between all the people freaking out around us and being calm. And you could do a lot of different podcasts on this, right? Between like what happens when you feel all that nervous energy of everybody else in the media making everything a big deal, right?

And how do you stay calm then and how do you kind of resist that? But I'm not doing that today because what popped into my head was this. There's a lot of urgency right now going on. And I recall this situation seven years ago. We're Long Island, New York. We're doing a live workshop. Two hours, we get done. I always stay afterwards so I can talk to parents.

Nice mom comes up. She's like, Kirk, stuff's interesting. It's good. It makes sense. You described my home. But here's the thing. I don't have that much time. We're busy here on Long Island.

We don't have time. Like, what can you tell me that will make some changes pretty quickly? I'm like, inside, I'm like, okay, this is going to be interesting. And she was full on, no offense, I love Long Island, full on Long Island with the whole accent. So I asked her to tell me about her kids. She got like two kids, a 12 and a 10 year old, right? 10 year old daughter. And she's got her son. I was like, tell me about your son. What's he into? Well, he's not into anything I want him to do. I was like, of course, that's why you're here. Strong will kid doesn't want to do

what you want him to do. What is he into? Oh, he's really into like World War II and military strategy. I was like, okay, but we could use that. So I said, so it's taken 12 years to get to this point and you want quick changes. What would be quick for you? Like to change your entire home, to transform you and your home, like in the next year, would that be good? No, no, no. We don't have that much time. We don't have that kind of time here. And I was like, okay, so what do you think? Six months. And she goes, what about like in the next couple weeks? And so I'm kind of oppositional myself. And I said, I'll go you a couple better.

I bet you, I would be willing to bet you that we could make at least 20 changes in your home overnight if you were willing to do some things differently. But it's not going to be all about your child changing. It's going to be about you doing some things differently with your kids. Are you up for that? And she was skeptical. She's like, really, you can change it overnight? I was like, look, you're the one pushing me to make some changes really quickly. I just upped the ante on you, and so let's go overnight. So she's like, okay, sure. What about this? So we started doing kind of like this back and forth thing.

Now, it's kind of funny because her husband was there standing a few feet behind her, obviously, and just smiling like, oh, what's he going to do? But I like a challenge. So I was like, let's go through 24 hour day, throw out a power struggle, a battle that you have, and I'll give you one thing or maybe two that you could actually do that would begin changing things overnight. Now, a little caveat here. Some of these things are going to be deeper, right? And it's not like you can just go like one thing like, oh, I did that for that and it

changed everything immediately overnight. We have no more problems, right? I'm not saying that, but the truth is there are a lot of things that you can do that will make a difference later today, within an hour of hearing this. Tomorrow morning, when you do a morning routine with your child, right? So here's what she started throwing out, right? She's like, well, what about morning routine? Like my son, he just never wants to get out of bed and it's always a power struggle and the morning ends up with us yelling. I was like, of course it does. So he doesn't want to go to school and a lot of reasons, but anyway, anxiety, all kinds of things. So I said, well, the first thing you have to do is this, and this may offend you, but it's a big key for you is you have to stop talking so much. Like you talk way too much.

Like I love your voice. I find it melodic. I found it to be beautiful. It's a work of art. But if I were your son or your daughter, I think I wouldn't like you because you never stop, do you? And now the husband at this point behind me is starting to like turn away and like wanting to walk away. And I was like, sir, you're staying right here. I need that. I need the support because it's going to get ugly here. The mom's like, ah, you know, I'm Long Island, Long Island. I'm Italian. I was like, okay, I've got a little Irish in me.

Does that mean I need to be an alcoholic, right? Like, come on. You can't just make excuses for it. Like, I know it's tough. It's what you grew up with. But you're going to have to stop talking because I guarantee you your kids have told you before, mom, got it, got it. Yeah, I guess they have.

Okay. So entirely within your control is that. But let got it, got it. Yeah, I guess they have. Okay, so entirely within your control is that. But let me give you something else. Tomorrow morning, we can change morning routine, morning madness, overnight by one thing. Walk into the bedroom tomorrow morning. Instead of barking, come on, Jacob, you got to get up for school, get your clothes on, you got to get a shower, come on, get downstairs. Instead of doing all of that, you're not going to say a word, you're going to sit, you're going to walk in calmly, you're going to sit on the side of his bed. And look, this will only take eight seconds. This stuff that I tell you, it doesn't have to take a long time. It's going to take eight seconds to do this. And

I guarantee sometimes when you do this stuff, it is far quicker than the 20 minute power struggle where you go back and forth with your child over and over and over again and get sucked into an argument that lasts forever. You walk in, you sit on the side of the bed and say, hey, Jacob, listen, after you get your shower and get dressed, when you come downstairs, I wanted to ask you about something because I read something this morning about this World War II guy and about military strategy or about some World War II airplanes. And I was wondering, do you agree or disagree with it? I'd be interested in your insight. And then you walk out of the room. Again, that's like eight seconds. I identify with something the son's interested in, and I'm drawing him. Because a lot of times we're push, push, push. We're pushing strong-willed kids. You can't push them. They'll always resist. So by changing my

tone of voice, my body posture, and what I talk about, because look, we go in in the morning, we're like, come on, come on, you got to get dressed. You got to do everything you don't want to do early in the morning because you have to go to school. Well, I hate school. I'm really sensitive with my clothes. I don't like taking showers. So what else you got for me, mom? Right? And I didn't mention any of those things, right? I just mentioned like, hey, when you have to get your shower and get dressed, I didn't make it like you have to right? I just mentioned like, hey, after you get your shower and get dressed, I didn't make it like you have to do that. I was like, after that, here's your payoff.

Here's what we're going to talk about. And I'm drawing him. That will change. Will it change everything? No. But I've got 10 other things that you can do to build on that. My point is, there are things. So she went through, she was like, well, what about homework?

It's always a fight. Okay, two things. Music. went through. She was like, well, what about homework? It's always a fight. Okay, two things. Music. Tell your son and daughter. They are allowed to, and in fact, you encourage them to listen to very intense music while they're doing their homework. And if they want, they could actually sit in a closet and chew gum while they do it. Weird, I know, but it works for a lot of kids. Well, my son has ADHD and he

has focus issues. So if he listens to music, that's going to distract him. No, no, it's not. See, here's the problem. You're asking your child and expecting your child to learn the way that you learn when in fact his brain is completely opposite of yours. So when he listens to intense music, it actually calms his brain and creates rhythm and order inside the brain. The rhythm in the music creates rhythm in the brain, helps him concentrate. Sitting in a closet is a nice little weird thing. One, because a lot of our kids like confined spaces and because you won't be in a closet with him looking over his shoulder, badgering him, saying, if you would just focus, you would be done in 45 minutes instead of it taking three hours. Again, will

that change everything with homework? No, but it will change the dynamic and you can do that overnight. Well, what about the classroom? Okay, maybe he can sit underneath his desk and take his test or he can sit in the back of the classroom and sit on the floor with his knees up with a clipboard holding the test so he can do it on his knees because that feels good for sensory kids. And maybe he's allowed to chew something. And if he can't chew gum, he can chew the tassel on the hoodie sweatshirt that I know he wears every day, right? Well, he's got a bad attitude. All right. And inside the sarcastic part of me is like, well, if I had to live with you, I'd probably had a bad attitude too. Please don't get offended of those things because you probably think the same thing.

And it's true. So I said, look, here's a phrase you can use. Go home tonight and use this phrase with your kids and just say, guys, you know what? Does it ever feel like I've misjudged your motives? Right? Does it ever feel like I kind of assumed the worst about your intentions? Because if I have, sorry about that. I'm going to try not to do that anymore. And then walk away. Again, 10 seconds. Will it rebuild the whole relationship all at one time?

No. But I guarantee it will begin the humility, the understanding, will begin to soften a child very, very quickly because humility has a way of doing that. And we misjudge their motives. Look, I'll tell you one that happens all the time. Well, my son is lazy. Well, is he lazy or is he just not motivated by the same things you're motivated by? Because those are two different things, right? I could find 10 things that you're not going to be motivated to do. And I come back and be like, well, you're lazy. You're like, no, I just I'm just not interested. And I don't care. Okay, those are two separate things. But by using that phrase, right. And so I've got a couple more for

you that I that I jotted down. They're kind of interesting, but I remember at the time, and here's, what's kind of important to me thinking like, okay, it's true. Like I saw certain things in my relationship with Casey and with all the kids we work with and with the people we were working with then I saw things change literally within minutes, within seconds by doing, by taking a different approach. But what I struggled with back then was I didn't want people, I didn't want to lay it out there as like, oh, you can just, you know, you just, it's not hard. You just, you just do a couple things and you're going to have a completely new family in three days. I was like, I kind of resist that because I'm old school. And I also know some of these changes have zero, nothing nada to do with your kids and everything to do with you. And that doesn't change overnight. You're going to have to work at that. But at that

time, I started working on this little program, this little project. And it was called 20 ways to change your child overnight. And I never released it because I kind of resist that whole, like everything's so fast, but the more and more that I talk to parents and young parents, right, they say the attention span of people now, or the ability to, to wait for people's like 15 seconds. I mean, honestly, I listen to a lot of really long podcasts, but I try to keep mine short and sweet because people just don't say they don't have the time for it. So I began back then. So thank you, Long Island lady who helped me come up with this program. Honestly, she was the inspiration for me really pulling it together. And I pulled

all this together from morning madness to stopping fights in the car, behavior issues in school. I can do a few things for behavior issues that will change your child's experience in school tomorrow, right? Stopping tantrums overnight, messy meltdowns, the afternoon chaos, stopping the dinner drama, homework battles, stopping bedtime battles. I can do some of that stuff overnight, even sibling fights. There are a few things I can give you to change that stuff really, really quickly. And so thank you, Long Island Lady. So anyway, I put this together in a new program, and I called it a crash course. Why? Because I want you to get it, because here's why. Let me relate this to you, what the Long Island lady said. So here's the cool thing. So she goes, oh, what about this? He gets really upset.

He gets really mad. And I try to talk him through it. And I was like, oh, you can't talk a child through that. The more you talk, the more upset that they get. But I guarantee you, if you were to come and sit down or even lie down on the floor and say, you know what, Jacob, if I guarantee you, if you were to come and sit down or even lie down on the floor and say, you know what, Jacob, if I were you, I'd be pretty frustrated by that too. And that's it. That's it. Is it going to solve everything? No, but that will change that situation immediately. And it'll go from escalating to calm down where you can have a great conversation, teach your child how to do it. So here's the cool thing about the Long Island lady. So we go through all this stuff right that night and she leaves. And about a week later, she emails and says, all right, have to admit some of these things

starting to change. He said, I did the thing with my son and he actually got out of bed and he went to school on time and he had a decent attitude but he didn't eat all of his breakfast and I was like oh like look we just got a lot of progress there right and he went to school and he had a good attitude and he got up and you two bonded but now you're upset because he didn't eat exactly what you wanted him to eat like see some of this is your expectations of like, I don't want to, like, that's not my job to change. Right. Like that's like, you've got to change that. Like let's, let's celebrate some wins and some successes here and know that it's different. She was like, well, homework's getting better. I'm like, good, a progress. And what I started to realize was

sometimes you need like a quick hit. You need a success. You need to know like, oh, okay, I can do this. Like I can do this. And what happens is like, I always tell parents, like, you've got to give your kids some successes, create successes, because that builds momentum. So then they'll start working harder at it. And so what I noticed with this Long Island lady was we just kept, was we kept in really good touch over the months and over a year. Finally, like a year later, she said, Kirk, you know what I need to tell you is I was so intense that night that I met you and I didn't even know it. It's the way I grew up. It's the way my mother was.

It's the way our neighborhood is. It's the way all the parents are just intense, intense, intense all the time. It's so much anxiety. And I've never really thought that it was my issue. I thought that's just the way we are. And like the kids have to bend around that. She said, what I've learned in the past year is the quicker I change myself, the quicker I watch my tone and my body posture and change just my whole energy, the quicker that I see my kids changing. And she said, I apologize for pushing you that night. And I know I was tough

and you're probably looking at me like a freak, which I was, because I was too, by the way. But she said, I'm a new person now. And see, that's what I'm looking for. Right. And so that's why, like, if you go to our website, celebrate calm.com, look under the products page, you're gonna see something called change your child overnight. I'm not, it's 114 page PDF workbook. It's a crash course, you're going to read this stuff, you're gonna be able to do a ton of them quickly, quickly, quickly. But I'm not selling it independently. You have to get the other materials. Why? Well, you just want to make a lot of money. I don't need your money. I get paid fees wherever I speak, right? The reason I want people to get it and the reason I do want people to invest,

and I'm very serious about this, is you got to want this stuff, right? Not my materials, but you got to want to change. You've got to invest and You've got to have a little bit of fight to say, okay, we're going to work through this. Otherwise, you're just going to throw your hands up in there and say, well, we'll take them to another therapist. Well, maybe we'll try this. Well, what about this consequence? If you've listened to our podcast, you know, if consequences worked, none of us would have any problems in life. They just don't work. They don't fix things. They don't give kids tools. And so I do want you to listen to, you know, do the crash course, get some successes, say like, oh, that's good. That's good. Like that, that

worked. And then what I want you to do is work through the other programs. And what we put together in that package is 11 other programs from the 30 Days to Calm, which will teach you how to create a new family tree, how to stop power struggles, and stop the defiance and disrespect, right? To stop the meltdowns, to get your kids to listen the first time. We've got a program where my son talks to your kids directly because kids listen to another kid and he shares how difficult his childhood was. Now he felt different, but how he learned how to control his emotions and impulses. And there's one for moms and dads and one for stopping sibling fights and screens. We have a whole program on stopping

fights over screens and there's stuff on motivating your kids and for toddlers and for men. This is very, very, very robust and it will change your home. And just so you know, we're doing a sale on it, right? Because I know people like sales and I, you know, I'm, anyway, I can't say what I really think, but I should. I think it's worth the full price. Like you're going to change, you're going to change your family's life. And this is where I struggle sometimes, where as a team, we talk about pricing. I tend to price stuff based on, okay, so you go to a therapist, two trips to a therapist, it's going to cost you 250 bucks. And you're probably just going to walk out, he's going to tell you what you already know. What are you going to do for consequence to have a behavior plan and a contract? And none of that stuff works with your kids. And yet what I'm

saying is for that same price, I can give you about 30 hours worth of insight and it'll change your family. But I want you to invest so that when you get this stuff, you work at it and you make it a priority. Because what I know after doing this for 20 years is if you listen to this stuff and you do it, you're going to email me. And you're going to be like, hey, like this really worked. Like one of the things she said with her son was, oh, I just lost my train of thought. Sorry about this. But anyway, she had said it was over disrespectful talk. And I gave her a phrase to use.

And she's like, I didn't believe that that phrase would work. And I'm like, it works, but so much of it is the tone with which you say it. And that's why I want you listening to these things over and over again. Anyway, look, if you need help with any of this, by the way, thank you again to the Long Island mom for inspiring this. I may just change the name to something with Long Island. But if you need help, reach out to my son. His name is Casey. He's the poster child for the Strong Willed Child.

He's an amazing young man now. But it's Casey, C-A-S-E-Y, at CelebrateCalm.com. Or call him, 888-506-1871. Thank you for listening to our podcast. Spread the word if you find them helpful. If you have a topic that you want us to address, shoot me an email and I'll try to do that for you. Now it's time for us to evacuate. So for all of you in the path of the hurricane, look, I'm not going to do that. You know why? I say prayers for people in the path of the

hurricane, but you know what is even worse than hurricanes sometimes? The stuff that's happening in our homes, right? Because we've got people listening to me right now. There's fathers and sons who haven't talked to each other in a long time. There are families that are being ripped apart right now. There are wives listening to this right now. You're counting down the days until your kids go off to college, and then you're going to divorce your husband. There are people listening to this every day. A spouse comes home, starts yelling at the child, and you're caught right in between. And you're watching a relationship get destroyed right in front of your home, right in front of your eyes. And to be honest, our home could blow

down, could lose everything, but it doesn't change my relationships. And that's why I want you to focus on this because the relationships are, look, I'm 53. Relationships are the most important thing in your life. And I wish I had more guys listening to the podcast because we get all into all these other things about fitness and work and leadership and war and all those things and politics. And I love all that stuff, but none of it matters if you don't have good relationship with your kids or your spouse. So anyway, prayers to the people on the path of the hurricane, but even more so, uh, prayers and encouragement to the moms and dads who are fighting for their family and, um, fighting for the relationships. If we can help you let us know, we will do it. Thanks so much. Bye-bye.