Calm Parenting Podcast - Coronavirus: Your Survival Guide to Long Days & Weeks Together

Episode Date: March 15, 2020

Coronavirus: Your Survival Guide to Long Days & Weeks TogetherHow does everyone get their own space during these days? What about a parent who works from home with noisy kids around (Kirk addresses this at the very end)? How can you structure your days so that your kids can learn while actually enjoying your time together? What about kids being bored, on screens, irritating each other? Kirk provides practical strategies and encouragement to use this time as a gift to explore interests you never have time for otherwise. For more practical strategies, podcasts, and blog posts, please visit our dedicated resource page at www.celebratecalm.com/coronavirus. Email [e-mail] for the most helpful service on the planet. 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. Welcome to the Calm Parenting Podcast. If there was ever a time when we needed calm and calm parenting, it would be right now. So lots of anxiety out there, of course. A lot of people freaking out, of course, makes sense to me. What am I going to do? Like Monday morning, I was going to send my kids off to school, have my regular day. Now they may be with me for two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, six weeks, eight weeks. Who knows how long it's going to last?

And so there's a lot of anxiety. By the way, this is Kirk Martin, founder of Celebrate Calm. I want to give you some tools today to help out with this and how we want to approach setting up the day, the days, the weeks, and some practical ideas of things you can do. In a separate podcast, I will deal with academics, schooling, how to get those brains focused, how do we handle that. There will be a little bit of overlap. But I want to do it in separate podcasts. So just so you know, I'm going to be doing some events on Facebook, some things where on Facebook page, it's just go to Facebook and Google Celebrate Calm. I think it's facebook.com

forward slash Celebrate Calm. Our website is CelebrateCalm.com. We've got a special coronavirus web page there where we're going to have lots of helpful tips and hints and other podcasts and by the way if you need please see the other podcasts we've done not related to coronavirus just on dealing with meltdowns and de-escalating and disciplining and every other topic there is we've got about 100 podcasts so this will be a good time to go through those and just put them on like autoplay and play through your home. So the calm thing kind of gets into your house and into your spouse as well. So let's roll with this. You've got to lead.

You've got to lead with calm. You set the tone as the parents. Remember our core principles. There's one person in life that you can control. That's yourself. Trying to control other people never works, always backfires, makes you really upset and your kids and other people upset that you're trying to control. The quickest way to change your child's behavior is to first control your own. If you're going to freak out, if you're going to be on edge all the time, your kids are going to pick up on that and you're going to have to be ruthless about your self-care. You're going to have to be ruthless

about saying, I'm the adult in the room. I'm not going to react to other people. I'm not going to give power to other people. When the kids are bored, I'm not going to get all upset. I'll go through that in a minute. You're going to have to lead with calm because your kids can pick up on it. Married couples, this is a huge opportunity for you to work on your marriage and your communication. Because if you two are getting snippy with each other, guess what's going to happen? That is going to snowball right down through your family. There's no way around that. Look, I'm just going to be honest with this stuff.

Please, well, if you want to be offended, be offended. But it's not meant to be offensive. I just have to say it bluntly. You have to be the grownups. And this is a good opportunity to learn that. Would have been nice if we would have all done this before, right? So that we're in this place, you'd be prepared for it. That's why we've been talking about this for years. Get your house in order, get your marriage in order, work on your relationships so that you can both be mature, grown-up human beings. Because if you're not, good luck the next few weeks. Sorry to be like that, but you've got to own this stuff, right? I know some of you, it's really

frustrating because there are a lot of moms who listen to this and who've really worked hard at this. And you may have a spouse like, oh, you just take care of the kids. My way or the highway, right? And you guys know my background, that that was me. You've got to grow up in this stuff. You've got to work on your marriage, right? Back in January, we put together a special thing.

We've got a Calm Cou marriage program. And I basically gave the thing away, pleading with people, please work on your marriage because it has a bigger effect on your kids than you can possibly imagine. They pick up on every subtle little thing that's going on because they're really sensitive kids. So I encourage you, not in a condemning way, but in an encouraging way and an opportunistic way to say, this is the chance. I'm telling you, this whole thing that's going on is a huge opportunity because some people are going to really get destroyed by this. And it's not even going to have anything to do with actual virus and health issues. It's just because they don't have

a solid foundation with their kids, in their marriage, and in their home, and with themselves. And they're going to have a really hard time with this. Those of you who've been really working on yourselves, this is an opportunity. Or those of you who've wanted to, this is an opportunity to really change and really put in place some really cool things that will long outlist this virus that will be generational change. So work on yourselves. I've got podcasts all over the place on that. We have all of our programs are designed to teach you how to control your own emotions and impulses so that you can lead with calm confidence. So embrace it and go with it, right? So I'd encourage you. Let's talk about a little bit of structure. Most of your kids have very, very busy brains. Your strong-willed kids

have busy brains. Everything feels like it's out of control for them. And that's why changes in plans are so hard. Transitions are difficult. They often are controlling and bossy. Playing board games is a lot of fun because they change the rules of the game, cheat, and quit. So now we're talking about your entire schedule is completely thrown away, and that's going to cause a lot of anxiety. So here are a few ideas for you. Quick perspective. Way back in the day, here's what we did.

We had, for those of you who are new to us, we have a very strong-willed son named Casey. If you ever need help with our programs or need help with anything, he's the kid. He's 26 now. You're going to talk to him. He was every bit as challenging and difficult as your kids and maybe even more. But today, he's a grown-up and he's awesome. And he will help you out. His name is Casey. And you can email him anytime at Casey at C-A-S-E-Y at CelebrateCalm.com. He was difficult so we decided to do something different. I wanted to help these kids who are made differently and wired differently and instead of bringing them into a therapeutic office to work with them one-on-one, we decided to open up our home. So the idea was we'll have eight or ten or fifteen strong will kids, some on the spectrum,

some not, just all strong will kids. We're going to have them in our home. And that way we can teach them in the moment. We can change plans on them at the last minute so that they'll melt down. So we can teach them how to control their emotions, how to deal with disappointment. And so these kids would come to our house. And over the course of a decade, we had 1500 kids in our house. It's basically what you are looking at doing the next few weeks decade, we had 1,500 kids in our house. It's basically what you are looking at doing the next few weeks is what we would do with these kids. So here's an idea for you. I would come up with an act like this is camp, like you're running a camp for kids.

And so let's say it's a two or three or four week camp. Let's lay out a structure for this camp. Call it whatever you want. Back in the day, we called it Trailblazers Camp or Innovation Camp or Adventure Camp. So each day or each week has a different theme perhaps, right? So you may have one week maybe all about learning about things all over the world. So one day maybe about Italy, you're going to make Italian food. You're going to talk like Italians. Maybe you're going to watch the Irishman with your little kids and have them be scarred for life. I'm kidding. But you can watch Italian movies. You can watch things on YouTube. Look, Italy's great because you can study great art that came from Italy. You can study architecture from Italy. You can look up different places in Italy that maybe you want to go on vacation one day. Okay. You can look up Russia, all the different, anything that your child is interested in. Maybe

each of the kids takes a different country. And maybe you do it. Monday is Italy day. Tuesday is Spain day. Wednesday is another country. Do you see what I mean? The theme, with the theme, you can end up creating a whole day's worth of different things, right? Just around food and cooking together and learning. Look,

why not use this time? There's all kinds of great apps. There's all kinds of free stuff out there to learn some different words, just basic Italian words, German words, Spanish words, whatever it is. Anyway, that's a theme that you could do. You could have a different theme based on the interest of your family. You could maybe have it around, let's say, every Monday is going to be learning about a different country. Tuesdays are always going to be about starting your own little business. There's a theme. What can we do to serve and help other people? How can we use all of these within this family?

I get a little whiteboard or a poster board. Start to write this stuff down. Write down the names of each of the parents, each of the kids. What are all of your strengths? Don't write down all of their weaknesses because that's all you focus on anyway. And that's what we not, look, you can't build a child's confidence and build a successful child by focusing relentlessly on all the things he's not good at doing and trying to fix that. That's why your kids don't have any confidence. You have to build on their strengths. So make a list. Here's our family tree. Here's what Jacob is good at

and Sarah's good at that and mom's good at that and dad's good at that how could we possibly put all of these strengths and write down their interests and their passions how can we put this together as a family and create a little side business I had a family that I challenged to do this many years ago

they're based in Atlanta and they're awesome and their kids loved working with wood and creating things. They now have a thriving business. They get reclaimed wood and they make custom wood pencils and pens and all kinds of stuff out of wood that they sell. It's awesome, right? So think about that. We had adventure camps sometimes.

Okay, so you've got to keep your social distancing, which is really great for me because I'm an introvert. So I'm kind of all over this. So, okay. So we're not going to be able to go to all kinds of, we can't go to museums and everything's going to be shut down, but outdoors seems to be pretty safe right now. So what's our adventure today? And I'm going to challenge you moms and dads. Part of the reason screens have stuck and been such a huge issue is no blame, no guilt, but it's your fault. Just kidding. But look, it's because we didn't take the lead. It's because we as adults allowed it to happen. We allowed it to happen. It's because we didn't take the lead. It's because we as adults allowed it to happen. We allowed it to happen.

It's not your kid's fault. By the way, it's not millennials' fault that they are like they are. It's their parents' issue because their parents created that. I'm a parent of a millennial. My son does not act like a millennial. Thank God. Right? But it's not the millennials' fault.

It's their parents who allow it to happen. We allowed screens to take over our lives. We gave up our authority. We gave up our responsibility and we stopped leading our kids. And we just started giving them these things and they became and they took over control. So it's our job to take that back. I will do a separate podcast on screens. We have a whole CD program on getting your kids off of screens. And if you want that, email Casey at Celebrate Calm, and we'll work that out. We're making it part of a bigger package we're doing on the website.

But look, we gave up parental leadership. You've got to lead your kids outside. You have to teach them again how fun it is to get outside and conquer things and have challenges and overcome challenges. Now, we talk a lot in that program about getting out and getting connection with other people. Right now, that's not going to be easy to do and you probably can't do it. But when you get some kids who start making things and taking them down to the homeless shelter, again, can't do it right now, or the retirement home, and they start connecting with other human beings, having something to give to another human,

that creates connection. That becomes, over time, that will become more exciting to your kids and more meaningful than sitting on their screens all day. But you have to take the lead. So right now, we can do adventure camp every day, and we can look on a map, and we can look up stuff that there is to do in our neighborhood and in our community that we've never done before because we didn't have time. Guess what? Now you have time. But this is the hard part. I don't know how to say it, but you're going to have to get off your butt and you're going to put on some workout clothes or some clothes where you can go out and sweat and you can lead and you can hike and you can ride your bikes and you can be exhausted at

the end of the day. You're going to have to do it. Just telling your kids, go out and play, just doesn't work anymore. When we were kids, we knew what to do. That was our natural bent. It's what we just woke up ready to do. You're going to have to do it. So make it an adventure. Do it. Hike places. Look, here's the deal. Your kids aren't going to like it. Too bad, right? We had 1,500 kids. Guess what? 1,494 of them. This is stupid. I don't want to do it. My legs are tired. Yeah, you know what helps? You just keep your face forward and you lead. And you don't react to it. You don't lecture. You lead your kids and you say, yeah, look, if your legs fall off, could I take a picture? Because that would be really cool. And then you keep walking. I'm not saying mock your kids, but you got to keep doing it, right?

Moving forward. Listen, if your kids are going to be bored, they're going to be bored. So what? Look, there's so much of this stuff that's foundational that I want you to have, right? Of like looking at your child and say, boredom's your choice. I just say that to 1,494 kids. I'm okay with you being bored. Look, we used to do boredom camp days. I would get up in the morning and tell my family, hey, today's going to be boredom camp. You know what we're going to do? Nothing. It's not our job to entertain these kids. They're going to learn how to do it themselves. And we're going to bring out this little box filled with junk, like all this stuff that we're going to throw away, but we kept. And what we're going to tell them is boredom is a choice. And if

you choose to be bored, that's going to stink because you're going to be miserable. But you have the right to be miserable and the right to be bored. But here's the thing. I am not a circus clown and I'm not your entertainer. And my job is to not to make you happy. My job is not to entertain you or make you happy. Happiness is yours to do. Contentment is yours to figure out. I will provide tools for you. I've got a cool junk box. We have a whole world to explore. We can't interact with other human beings, but we have lots of stuff out there to explore, and we have stuff inside to explore. And if you're in a bad mood, and if you're bored,

that's your mood. But don't expect me, right? Here's some whatever phrases. Your mood does not determine my mood, and your behavior does not change or determine my behavior. It's up to you. So you're going to have to lead instead of reacting to your kids. And I know it's going to be hard, but welcome to life. Welcome to parenting. Parenting is hard, right? So human relationships are difficult. You know why? Because the purpose of human relationships is not happiness and joy. It is transformation. Human relationships transform you as a human being because you come into contact with irritating human beings and you're one yourself and you have one of two options.

Blame everyone else for your issues, right? My way or the highway, if the kids would just stop doing that, I would be happy. If my spouse wasn't so like that, I would be happy. No, you've got to start with you. And it's a huge opportunity to change yourself rather than changing everyone else. Look, I used to make this joke. Look, if you've got a 38-year-old guy who's single and not married, it's pretty sweet. He gets to work, come home, he can play video games, do whatever he wants. But that guy's probably not growing up a lot. Because if you're that same 38-year-old guy and you're married and you've got two kids, you now have three other people in your life who are bringing out the worst in you, the best in you, your immaturity, and they're provoking you. And you can either say it's everybody else's fault or you can own it and

say, this is a chance for me to grow up and stop letting everybody else control my moods. Does that make sense? So, sorry I'm getting on the tangents here. This is real life. This is what you're going to have to do. And this is where all of your plans mean nothing if you don't embrace these core points of my job is to control myself and not other people, right? So let's have a structure. Camp days, camp themes. Let's write an itinerary down every day. So I'll tell you what we did when kids came to our house.

One, they had a secret mission. Every day when I met these kids, I'd meet them outside my house and I'd give them a little envelope and say, they had a secret mission. Every day when I met these kids, I'd meet them outside my house and I'd give them a little envelope and say, inside is a secret mission. It's something that only you can do and I bet you can't do it. I would wake your kids up in the morning with a mission. Some of you have two, three, four, five, six kids. So guess what? You're going to be exhausted. But come up with a mission because you can either help focus that brain proactively or it's going to devolve into chaos pretty quickly. I learned very quickly on when we did those boredom camp days or I didn't have a plan, it was miserable. Take the time. So when your kids wake up, give them a mission. What's something they have to accomplish? Not a

chore, not a piece of homework, but something they have to find. Little kids' treasure hunt. Maybe you hide their breakfast. Maybe you hide their clothes that they have to wear. Maybe you do a treasure hunt. Maybe it's something that broke in the house and you need it fixed and you have a child who's good at breaking stuff. I mean, well, you probably have a child who's good at taking things apart and not putting it back together.

Give them a mission. You know that idea that I throw out there all the time of waking your kids up? Hey, guess where you're eating breakfast this morning? Outside. I hid your food out there. You got to go find it. Now you have time to do that. Why would you not do that?

Some of your kids would love eating their breakfast outside. Why not hide it outside? I don't care. Just throw some stuff out in the backyard and let them go eat on their hands and knees. Many of your kids would love that. But if you hide their food outside, look, seriously, why not? Please don't be so resistant. Look, all of this comes back to, it's funny, I don't have any of this extra stuff in notes in front of me, but it all comes back to controlling your own control issues and your own anxiety issues. Well, I don't want to do that. Well, then you're going to be miserable all day, right? Like, why do the kids have to come down and eat some rigid breakfast every morning or eat rigid meal with their parents yelling at them and getting on them about their table manners?

Feed them outside. It's a gift for your kids. Your strong-willed child will probably be happy as a clam just being outside by himself where he can eat his breakfast and talk to the chipmunks and be out there. And by the way, throw his clothes out there and throw his schoolwork, and he may be happy all day. By the way, it's bonus for you because when your strong-willed child's outside and you're inside, you don't have to listen to him and neither do your supposedly good kids. And it's a bonus for your strong-willed child because guess what? He doesn't have to listen to you and his annoying perfect siblings. So again, I'm just having fun with it a little bit, but do it outside. And then we would do a little bit of schoolwork. So I always had a little bit of schoolwork, a lesson plan, planned for the kids,

but it was short and sweet and very intense. And I like to play music. I'll get into this when I do the school podcast. We do a little bit of work because I like getting them outside. I like getting a secret mission done. We start the day, you create a success when you start the day. Now I just started my kids off on creating a success. Now I get one subject matter done. Maybe one subject we do. I don't know what it is, but do an easy one. Get the day off to a good start. Then we would hike. We would go outside. Did the kids like it? Not at first. And you know why? Because it was summertime usually and it was really hot and humid. It's hot and humid. Too bad. We're going for a hike. So they have to get their backpack. Now, I don't know if

you can do this. It depends if your grocery stores are still open and if there's still any food in there. But we would have them hike up to the grocery store. Now, we lived in kind of a planned little community. We didn't have like great woods, but there were some trees there, a little bit of woods. So we would hike through the woods. Guess what happens when you start hiking through woods? Kids' natural curiosity takes over because sometimes there's a stream there. Guess what your kids are going to want to do? Get in the stream.

Let them. Let them play. Let them explore. Look, part of this, I'm just being realistic, you just got to eat up some time, right? Because you got day after day after day. And so if you get in the woods and the kids start climbing things, roll with it. The reason I want their backpacks with them is one, so they can carry their own water and their own stuff so that mom, dad, you don't have to carry everything.

I wasn't going to carry. Look, I'm not a mom. I'm not going to carry everything. Mom, stop doing everything for your kids. So when I hiked these kids, they carried their own backpack. Why? Because I'm not a Sherpa, right? I'm not a Sherpa. So if you guys are going to get hungry, you better plan for it. You better get the bottle of water. By the way, I got rid of the juice drinks, all the juice stuff, because it's just basically colored sugar water.

If you want to use it, fine. It's up to you. But I just went to all water at our house. Why? Because it just tends to be better for the kids. Do they like it? No. We miss our drinks.

This doesn't. Well, guess what? When kids get thirsty enough, guess what they'll drink? Water. And so just like we did. Look, we didn't even hydrate. Didn't I talk about hydrating when we were kids? We were way more active. We drank out of a hose that probably had all kinds

of nasties. Who knew what we drank out of and did when we were kids? Probably built our immune system. Anyway, so hike through the woods. Look, I want them to have their backpack. You know why? Because you may just find that they do better schoolwork while they're in the woods. Watch, some of your kids are going to build a dam in the woods because that's fun. So teach them like, hey, you're going to be a little beaver. Build a dam. And they may lay by the water. Some of your kids are going to lay in the water. Who cares? I don't care where and how you do your schoolwork as long as we're learning and doing that. And they're going to skip rocks in the water and they're going to find trees that have fallen down. And they may want to go get a, they may look when you get them

out there, their natural curiosity kicks in of like, mom, can we build a fort? And usually you don't have time for that. Now you do. So let them go back and get the chainsaw and let them start chopping down. I'm kidding. But let them get some things and they have to build a fort. Guess what they can build? A fort where that becomes your new, that means your one room classroom is now a fort in the woods where you go to. Does that make sense? And what we found is, so we kind of, we would have these kids at our home and what we had in our planned community, we had those big drainage ditch dishes, right? Those like big culverts. And so you could actually go down underneath the ground and walk through them. Now, what I told the kids is, hey, these

are drainage ditches for all the wastewater coming through the neighborhood, so we can't go down there. And so that immediately made them want to. And because whenever you tell a child not to do something, they're going to want to do it. Guys, it's not safe down. Okay, we're on it, right? We were speaking in Chester, New Jersey doing a parent workshop. And by the way, if you want to do a workshop, we're still planning to do some of those in April and May. If it doesn't work out, we'll switch to the fall. But set it up with my son because our live workshops are awesome. So we are doing this morning workshop. So school was in and the principal came over the loudspeaker

and said, intercom and said, kids, we're going to have outdoor recess today, but remember, stay out of the wet grass and out of the mud. And right then I looked at all the parents said, I know where your kids are going. Expect your kids to come home muddy because that's what they do. So we would do schoolwork underground. Why? Because that's pretty cool. Sitting in this big culvert with water running through it. Guess what they had to do? They had to challenge themselves to sit so that they didn't get wet. And then they get wet. Who cares, right? Look, play games with your kids. If you want to get them off screens, play games with, I played a game with the kids where they would get water and they would have to fill up the water balloons. And then they just got, they were, I would stand underneath the

deck and they had to throw water balloons at me. Why? Because it's really fun to throw stuff at an adult. Have fun with your kids and get outside. So then we'd hike up to the grocery store. They would have to make a grocery list and I would make it a challenge. Guys, here's what you have today. We have $38.43. You guys have to get enough food for us to fix lunch today. By the way, they would fix lunch. You have to fix lunch and have snacks. But you've got to come in under $38.43, whatever I mentioned. Now they're being really purposeful, and they've got to look. Do we get this?

Do we get a three-pack? Oh, if we get a six-pack, it's cheaper. Oh, this one's buy one, get one free. And now they would have to do math and they'd have to figure it out. And the other part was, if you come in, if you are wise with money and you come in under that amount, you guys get to bank that amount and we'll put it in a separate fund to do something different. So if you can get feed all of yourselves, have everything you need, and it comes in at $22.22, you guys just bank nine bucks and we'll put that aside for something fun.

So now we're making everything that we do a learning experience, but we're doing it together and we're outside and we're moving and I'm giving them challenges and I'm making everything purposeful. And then on the way back, they had to carry the groceries. Why? Because most of these kids had sensory needs and it feels really comforting for them. They didn't like it, but it's good for them to carry heavy objects and to be walking down the street with a backpack on their back or food in their backpack and carrying both hands filled with canned goods or whatever they got. Try to get some fresh food, but whatever. Now, we would always stop again. Why?

Because they needed a break. And then we would often do some schoolwork, one subject or one lesson, while we stopped in the woods or in kind of a fun place. By the way, we did fun stuff. Occasionally, we would take a shopping cart and we would have shopping cart races down the street. One time, we got pulled over by the cops. That was awesome. What a great learning lesson for the cops to come up and catch my little group racing shopping carts because they were concerned about us stealing shopping carts. And so we had to talk politely to the police and promise to take back the carts, which we did. And then we just took them out the next day

because I wanted to set a good example of here's how you break rules. I'm kidding. Kinda. But anyway, so we mixed learning, fun, all of that stuff. There were times where I took the kids to a construction site. Why? Because it's kind of interesting to watch these people. When do we have time to slow down and watch everything that goes into building a home or a building?

And the kids would get to see it go up. And it was kind of interesting to them. And we'd take snacks and we would walk there. Some days we had our bikes. So I just encourage you, think about in your neighborhood, what are all the different things that you can do? Where can you go? How can you structure it like this? And look, I had 10, 15 kids. You may have two kids, four kids, six kids. Get them moving a little bit. Come up with some projects, right? What are some outdoor projects you've wanted to do at your home? Find an outdoor project maybe for your neighbor.

Maybe you have an elderly neighbor or someone who's handicapped that you can help. Maybe your kids can start their own little businesses, right, with that woodworking. Maybe an internet business where they're selling stuff over the internet, creating duct tape wallets, maybe doing hard work in the neighborhood. Some of your kids would love, some of your kids love things like shoveling mulch and landscaping and pulling weeds and raking leaves and cutting grass. Why not use this time to start a little business? Many of your kids are great at that, right? Have some traditions in your home. Oh, by the way, clean out your home. It's a great time. Clean out your home. I don't know if you can drop stuff off now at the, you know, donate stuff for the Salvation Army and all those places. You may not be able to do it, but you could set it

aside or start selling stuff on eBay that you don't know, right? Use this time to your advantage. Have some traditions in your home. Traditions are an awesome thing because rules tell a child what not to do. Traditions tell us what to do. So Tuesday is taco night. Tuesday is technology free. Tuesday. Wednesdays. Every Wednesday morning, we just live in our pajamas all day long. Maybe we go outside in our pajamas. Whatever it is, Thursdays, maybe it's a movie day, and you get to watch a fun and silly movie. But there are a lot of movies and documentaries,

and many of you have kids that are very, very bright, and they would love watching all those documentaries that they want to watch on stuff they're interested in, in World War II and on robots and on all kinds of things that you don't have time to normally do. Do a deep dive into those documentaries. Look, documentaries are awesome. Podcasts. There are so many interesting podcasts out there.

If you want your kids to learn the F word, listen to Joe Rogan. Right? I'm kidding. But look, if there are podcasts on science, who's the main big science dude? I forget his name, but he's like a PhD super. He's got all kinds of Discovery Channel things. He's got a weird name. But anyway, there are all kinds of podcasts on specific things like on science, on technology. Listen to podcasts with your kids. Look, some of your kids, look, if I had to do it all over again and I was going to

do homeschooling, I wouldn't use a lot of books necessarily and I wouldn't use the standard stuff. There are so many fascinating people on podcasts right now that you could develop a whole curriculum around your kids listening to interesting people with their earbuds in while they're walking while they're exercising while they're making and creating things with their legos while they're drawing they can be listening to podcasts and documentaries and youtube things that they can learn not stupid cat videos but interesting stuff like just this morning um i get this email every day it's called art daily because i'm kind of as i get older i'm really into art and it's really interesting and they have all kinds of history stuff too and there's this really

cool video on there's a three minute video from from the BBC, who tends to produce really, really well-done educational stuff, plus they're British, their voices are more interesting, and it was a three and a half minute thing on Hadrian's Wall, the Roman wall built through Great Britain, three and a half minutes, so I sent it off to Casey, because we're history geeks. You know what? I had that on. And guess what? After that comes up, another BBC little clip related to the Romans in Great Britain. That's awesome learning. And so why not use that? My son taught himself how to play guitar by watching YouTube videos. He don't want to go get lessons. Your kids don't like authority figures. They don't like people telling them what to do. But on their own, they're very good

independent learners. So use that. My son taught himself German. He taught himself, there's all kinds of free apps. There's all kinds of stuff. You know what he does? He looks up, there's a German TV show called something, Sokol, I think it's Sokol Leipzig. It's like CSI Leipzig, Germany. So he watches that and learns conversational German. And through a bunch of different sources, he read German children's books. Why? Because that's how you learn German best, apparently. He taught himself. So come up with a goal for your kids. Look, this is a fantastic opportunity. I don't want to sound like I'm anti-school. I'm not.

I'm anti much of the way we do school. I'm anti the school structure. I'm anti sitting all day, listening to someone talk, and memorizing information for a test. That's not a really great way to do it. That's the system. It's not the teacher's fault. That's just the system. But I'm very much, our sole goal we had when Casey was little was,

this is what we came to. We want to raise a curious child who loves to learn. But you just were given a gift. Your kids are now out of a place that they largely hate and that they're in trouble all the time in. So don't recreate it at your house, right? Because you're going to walk around with like a little, you know, you're on red already.

You're going to be like, great, may as well just go back to school. So you have an opportunity to have new traditions, to have a new way of learning, to pursue your child's curiosity and learn in all kinds of different formats. Look at it as a gift because you're going to learn how their brains work. You can spark their curiosity. Look, I don't want this to sound bad. I hope you hear this in context, but a lot of the schooling that we do for our kids is not a helpful thing and it ruins their

curiosity because that's just how the system works and so this may be a gift the greatest gift we ever got was the Montessori school where Casey got kicked out right and he basically kind of got kicked out we decide had decided it was mutual we were like we're going to withdraw him from your school and I remember the headmaster of that school looking at me and saying, you will never educate your son the way we do. And there was something in me, and I kind of regret that I didn't look at him and say, go. But I didn't. But that fueled inside of me a desire for these kids to learn how their brains are wired, how they're made, how do they learn best, what do they respond to. And I'm going to get into this with a school-based podcast, right? But use it as an opportunity. Stop fearing this of like, oh, we're going to be together all the time. I understand that. I understand being together all day is going to be a challenge, but I will also challenge you and say this. Why the, did you have kids? Right? And I'd encourage you, please do not walk around

and mutter these things. Your kids are going to hear you talking to your friends and your sister-in-law or your siblings. I don't know what I'm going to do with the kids all day. Right? They're going to hear that. You know what you're going to hear from your kids? Yeah. You know, I'm not really excited about being around my parents all day.

Because they're negative and they lecture all the time and they yell at me all the time. I'm sure the feeling's mutual. Don't do that. Right? That'll destroy your kids. I know your kids are difficult. We had them. Your kids were in our home. We know what a pain it can be, but you got to change your attitude with that, right? I'm not saying it's all polyamory. This is a wonderful opportunity, children. I love you so much. I can't wait to be with you 24-7 for the next eight weeks.

I'm not saying that you have to be rose-colored glasses, but I am asking you to change your attitude and be proactive. Look, I'm going back to the screen saying really quickly, we allowed that to happen because we weren't proactive and we didn't put enough energy into saying, yeah, I know all your friends have those things, but I'm going to show you a different way. We're going to get outside and we're going to play games and we're going to forge connections with other human beings that are so much more fun and so much more meaningful and mean so much more to you and meet so many more internal needs inside of you that when you do go over your friend's house and play with their screens, you will tell them, hey, you know what we did yesterday with our parents? And the other kids are going to want to come join our family. We abdicated leadership. We did. And that's on us. Don't blame your kids for being addicted to screens, right? I've used that joke before of giving your kids a little bit of heroin after school or cocaine and say, look, just do a little bit of blow.

It'll take the edge off, but don't do too much. You can't do it. And so be the leader. This is awesome opportunity, right? Try those new things. Don't complain about your kids. Here's another one. Let your kids teach you something.

You don't have time for that in a normal day. Overschedule. Got to go, go, go, go, go, go. You can't do anything now. I want you to go to that son or that daughter, that teenager, and say, you know what? I've dismissed your interest sometimes because we didn't have time for it. Forgive me for that.

Forgive me for dismissing what you are naturally curious about because I've been beholden to good grades and good behavior, and I apologize for that. But I want to see, I want to build, I want to feed your curiosity. Will you teach me something about that subject? Will you teach me, German? Will you teach me how to play the guitar? Will you teach me how to play that game? Will you teach me how to build like you do? Teach me how you see the world. I'm going to come in and lay off the sofa upside down with you because I want to see the world from your point of view, right? Moms, create that junk box. Be creative, right? And tell your kids it's up to you to solve your own boredom, right? Do all those things. Use our CD. Look, if you have our CDs already, use them as curriculum. It is awesome.

You can play them in the background so your kids hear. And I guarantee if you play our CDs and you get them as, look, instant download. So you can play it in the car. You can play it on your phone. You can play it on an iPad, on the computer, play it through the loud system, play it 24 hours in the background. I don't care. I guarantee your kids are going to listen to those in the background and be like, huh, mom, that guy's describing me. Wait, did you tell that guy and

his son about me? Because they're describing me. Oh, so there's nothing wrong with me? No, there's nothing wrong with you at all. I just need to learn how to use your awesome brain in different ways. Oh, here's what else they're going to say. Mom, Dad, he's describing you. You guys do that. You guys lecture. You react. You give all your power to us. You do that all the time. Mom, he's describing you. And you can say, I know, and I apologize. I apologize because instead of controlling you from now on, I'm going to control myself. Hey, kids, what's one thing I can begin doing instead of lecturing you, instead of controlling you? What's one way that I can begin? What's one thing I can begin doing so that I'm not on my phone so much? See, ask your kids to teach you something.

Use the CDs as curriculum. Guys, maybe you have that as one of your themes. Hey, every Tuesday and Thursday, we're going to listen to one of these programs for 15 minutes, for 30 minutes. We're going to do one on learning styles on ADHD University or Casey's. My son's straight talk for kids. Kids, this is for you to listen to. He's going to teach you how to control yourselves because if you control yourself, we won't have to. Maybe it's on defiance and disrespect. Listen to the one on discipline with your kids and say, so how do you think we should do discipline differently in our home? Why isn't what we're doing difficult? Listen to the ones,

some of them on anxiety. Do that stuff with your kids. That would be awesome. If you don't have them, then get them and go on our website. We have all kinds of specials now at CelebrateCalm.com or email Casey, C-A-S-E-Y at CelebrateCalm.com. Tell him about your family. He'll put together a custom package for you. He'll put together pricing that works for you. We just want to help you. So do that stuff. But here's another one. I want you to practice space. You guys are going to need space from each other. So create space, create boundaries, have code words when you need a little bit of space. If you can with a spouse, let's split the kids up if possible with the parents. So if possible,

sometimes mom takes one or two of the kids, dad takes one or two of the other kids. You don't have to do everything together. There are days where mom's going to have the kids all day, days when maybe the dad has the kids, and you give each other a break. Right? Let's do a thing. Moms, especially, I want you to have, because I do this with my homeschooling parents, at least two times during the day, mom time.

Kids, here's how it works. Every morning at 10.48, I get 13 minutes of alone time. And then every afternoon at 242 PM, I get 17 minutes, or you can do it the same number of minutes, I don't care, 13 minutes of alone time. This is time. Or maybe it's a half hour of alone time, or maybe it's an hour, depending on how old your kids are. During this time, I will not hear a peep out of you. Not a peep. You're not going to talk to me. You're not going to ask me for anything. You're not going to complain. Siblings, you are not going to fight. Because this is my alone time. This is my time. And my time is important. And I promise you, if you ruin even a second of my

alone time, you will rue the day that you did that. I will declare martial law in this home and anytime you are trying to do anything that you enjoy, I will talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. Dad and I are going to yell and scream. We're going to, we do not mess with us. I want this time. I need this time. And you guys need me to have this time. Because if I do not get this time alone, I will murder you. I'm kidding. It's true. Not true about the murder. It's enforcing alone time. That's self-respect. That's saying that my time is important and you need to respect my time. And if you don't respect my time, there will be to pay, right? It's not a threat. That is a promise that you make. Look, that's how we discipline, right? Even matter of fact, time

laid out. Moms, dads, I want you to have your time together. Quick little note, and I'll try to hit this on another one in case any of you tuned out. Coming up on 45 minutes, but you don't have anything else to do. So I'm kidding. You have tons to do. You've got lots of homework to do after this. By the way, maybe you let your spouse, maybe you let your kids listen to this podcast so they can come up with some ideas. It may spark something in them.

Mom, we've always wanted to do X. Now we have the time. Why can't we do that? All kinds of projects that you can work on. Project learning is awesome because you'll learn so many different things, right? For the dads who stay home or are going to be home working, I want to speak to the dads. It is not fair of you to expect your wife to keep one, two, three, four, five, six kids quiet for you all day. It's not going to happen.

And I promise you, I'd rather be you working in your office, right, than I would be having to be with the kids all day long, that responsibility, right? Like that's going to be easier. So have a little bit of mercy and grace. And don't expect, like, you know what, you need to keep, you know, I run the money for the family. You need to keep the kids quiet. That's unrealistic goal. That's unrealistic. And it's not right of you to do. So here are a couple of things you can do. Dads, give your kids intense, intense involvement, intense interaction right away in the morning.

And a couple times during the day. Here's why I want it to be intense. It's more than just like, hey, Dad, hey, kids, we'll fix breakfast together. Not just being in the same room. The reason your kids want to be with you is because they want your intense personal involvement in their lives. They want the intensity. So in the morning, play a game with them. Play some kind of game where you're down on your hands and knees or where you're totally engaged.

You're not distracted. You're not doing something else. With your teenager, you're looking at something he wants to show you. You're listening. You're saying, hey, what is that thing that you were talking about the other day? What is that music, that new music you're listening to? Because I actually kind of like some of that. What is that? Can you play that for me right now? And with your little kids, get down on your hands and knees. Play a game, a treasure hunt game. Play a game of hide and seek. Because when they get that from you, that intensity, it will kind of feed their little souls and spirits for a little while.

Then take a break at lunchtime. Or maybe you take a break at lunchtime or maybe you take a break at 10 45 because you don't work most of you don't have to work straight through all that you can take little breaks so take a little break maybe at 10 48 when your wife is taking and look it could be opposite it could be that dad's taking care of the kids and mom's uh working home. Okay. So just switch this up. Dad comes and says at 1048, he takes a 13 minute break and goes outside with the kids. Says, guys, what are you learning today? And you bring some intensity. What do you guys been doing today? You guys have been doing an awesome job because I, you know, it hasn't been so loud and I'm getting

my stuff done and I appreciate you doing that. So let's go outside and give mom some alone time, right? That'd be an awesome thing to do. And then at lunchtime, have lunch with your kids. And maybe again, if your wife's been with the kids all day, dad, you do lunchtime. Make your kids fix lunch. Fix lunch. Go eat outside. Throw a blanket on the ground. Eat outside. Do the stuff. Look, then you don't have to clean up. Just all the crumbs go on the ground, right? Mix it up. And then in the afternoon, when your wife takes her 2.48 in the afternoon break or whenever it is, take another break. Intensity. And you give them intensity. You take normal breaks anyway, instead of just, you know, instead of just surfing the net or doing whatever you normally do when you take a break. Instead, spend it with the kids. And

now you're bonding with them and you're doing something. Look, dads, you don't normally get this time. You're often at home when they're at school or many of you are usually working outside the home and you go away on business trips. You have an opportunity to forge a relationship with your kids that you didn't have before, right? So this is a cool opportunity, dads. Don't miss out on it. Don't say like, oh, it's going to be awful for the next four or six weeks. I'm going to have to figure out. No, this is a gift you've been given. You get to be home with those children that you, look, you were there unless you adopted

them. Well, when you adopted, you were there too to adopt them. But they're your kids. Look, you were there when all this happened. You're a part of this. They have your DNA. Engage with them. But they're your kids. Look, you were there when all this happened. You're a part of this. They have your DNA. Engage with them. Look at this as a gift that you get to have that time with them. Take advantage of this. Look, if you want your spouse to start being more intimate with you, here's a good way to do it. Take the burden off of her. So you take those three, four,

five times throughout the day and you give her a little break with you being calm with the kids and you leading the kids to calm. Look, one day when the kids are melting down and you can hear it from your office, and you come out of that office, instead of coming out yelling and screaming and escalating situations, if you come out of that office and you calm that situation down by being the calm, confident leader, confidently in your home, I guarantee your wife will want you. She will want you. And wives, I'm kidding, but I'm not kidding. She will want you. And that is a gift that you just gave to your wife. And it doesn't cost anything except a little bit of emotional work on your part, right? Give your spouse a break. Dad, if you're really good at math or a certain subject, then you take care of those certain subjects and give

your spouse a break. And you can do that in the evening. Guys, let's do math tonight, okay? Because I love math, or I love history, or I'm a good writer. You take over those subjects, right? Do that. Look, put a little, put a little, you can do in your little office, you can put a little white noise thing on there because it disperses some of the noise. Some of you may be able to work outside while your kids are inside. But I want the kids outside a lot because this will help with this whole scene as well. Go work out of your car. I know most of you aren't going to be able to go out to a coffee shop

because I'm not sure about how serious this is going to get with the social distancing. But you may be able to sit outside of Starbucks because you can still pick up their Wi-Fi. You may be able to do that to get out a little bit anyway because you're probably going to need to. We do because we travel a lot. Casey and I do work. I do a lot of work from the car.

I do work from the car. I just get a hotspot where we pull up outside of a Starbucks and use their Wi-Fi. And we work from the car. I do work from the car. I just get a hotspot where we pull up outside of a Starbucks and use their Wi-Fi. And we work from the car. I take naps in the car. I do all kinds of stuff in the car. We work on the road really, really, really well. So don't be afraid to do that either. But I'm going to close it now because it's getting a little long. Come up with a theme. Let's attack this. Let's not be all anxious and all dreading this. Let's go on the attack and let's make this a time that we look back and we say, that coronavirus, while it was awful and caused major disruption,

a lot of people got sick and a lot of people died from it. And it was a horrible time. It was also a time that our family changed and that we began to understand our kids like never before. And we started our family business. And we discovered that family business and we discovered that our child had some interests and passions that are going to propel him forward. And we learned about some new podcasts and we started learning together and moms and dads worked on

their marriage and we worked on our family life together. And we can look back and say, that was a turning point for us. And that was awesome. We learned how to bake together and cook together and do all kinds of different stuff together. And so I want you to listen. If you don't, if you have our CDs, use them right now. This is the perfect time. If you don't have the programs, look online at CelebrateCalm.com, email Casey, C-A-S-E-Y at CelebrateCalm.com. We will help you out with this because we can teach you how to calm home and stop the power struggles and get your kids' brains working with that ADHD university program. It will be fantastic, and you need that one for schooling. Anyway, thank you.

If we can help you, let us know. Go to CelebrateCalm.com. Look for the coronavirus tab. We're going to have all kinds of tips, all kinds of different podcasts there. And you can also find all of our other podcasts online as well. And follow us on Facebook because I'm going to do some Facebook Live events where I'll answer your questions live, okay? Thank you. Not just hang in there.

Let's not just survive. Let's thrive during this time. Talk to you later. Love you all. Bye-bye.