Calm Parenting Podcast - Fights Over Bedtime, Fortnite & Swearing: How to Teach Delayed Gratification

Episode Date: April 3, 2022

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Do you have a kids who struggle with self-regulation, with delayed gratification? Well, of course you do because you're a modern family and that's what it happens a lot. So that's what we're going to deal with on today's episode of the Calm Parenting Podcast. I want to show you how to handle these tough situations without giving in, but in a way that you also teach your child self-discipline. And we learned this early on with Casey because there's this balance that you always have. Like, are we giving in? No, I don't want you to give in. But I also don't want to just shut everything down. I want to actually, my goal was to teach Casey how to

control himself so I didn't have to control him, right? That was a deal that I made with our son. I said, Casey, here's the deal. If you prove to me that you can control yourself, then I don't have to control you. And so in one of the programs in the Calm Parenting Package, it's called Straight Talk for Kids. Casey recorded that so he could share with your kids how to control their own emotions, their impulses. And one of the core principles he teaches kids is, listen, if you don't want your parents to control you all the time,

you've got to demonstrate that you can control yourself. It is really cool. If you ever need help with anything, reach out to that strong-willed son, C-A-S-E-Y at CelebrateCalm.com, Casey at CelebrateCalm.com. He will help you. We will help you. Tell us about your family, what you're struggling with. We talk it over as a family. We reply back to you, usually very, very quickly and very personally. and Casey gets your kids because he was one of your kids. So here's the question we get. So my son asked if he could play Fortnite in bed after he got a shower. And so dad was like, I calmly said, no, you can play tomorrow. Well, this child storms off and then refuses to go to bed, right? And when your kids refuse things, man, that's a trigger for you

because you're like, you're the authority figure and you don't want them to refuse to bed, right? And when your kids refuse things, man, that's a trigger for you because you're like, you're the authority figure and you don't want them to refuse to do things. That's outright defiance, right? And sometimes this kid gets mad and just says the F word. So how are you supposed to handle that? Now, typically this, we react to that blatant defiance right away. Fine. You know what? No bed, no Fortnite for the rest of the week. Or we'll say something like, you know what? You never listen. You always have to fight me.

You know, if you're not going to be grateful, if you're going to have this kind of attitude, then maybe you shouldn't just, maybe you shouldn't even play Fortnite anymore. Well, that's the perfect thing to do right before bed if you want to guarantee that your child doesn't go to bed and that you both end up going to bed feeling angry and resentful, right? Because that needlessly escalates the situation, right?

When you go, when you react right away, that needlessly, well, let me say it in a harsher way, you are needlessly escalating a situation that didn't need to be escalated, right? And I've said this lately quite a bit, that sometimes we escalate situations because we want to feel justified in reacting a certain way when our kids react in an even worse way. Like when they yell the F-bomb, then you're like, well, what am I supposed to do? The kid's dropping the F-bomb. Of course I should lay into him. Well, no, that's not true either. That's our own immaturity. So you needlessly escalate the situation. It ensures a nasty meltdown right before bedtime. And with some of your kids, that's accompanied, however you say that word, by throwing or destroying things, right? And then you know

your child's not going to go to bed, right? As soon as you say, you know what? You go to bed right now. Pretty much guarantees he's not. So now it's hard to recover from this, right? So you go to bed, you're angry, you're resentful. And then the next morning, it's awkward again, because the first thing you want to talk about in the morning is your child's attitude last night, what happened? And obviously he doesn't want to talk about it right then. So now you just relive the whole thing. So I believe there's a better way to do this without giving in, right? We're not going to give in and just let him play more because we don't want him to be upset and disappointed. No, not at all. But a way that actually enables you to teach your child self-discipline. So here

are two options, right? And here's the backdrop. Look, your child's disappointed. He didn't get to play Fortnite. I get it. You're disappointed, right? Because it's bedtime and I definitely don't want to escalate then. Let's give your child a few minutes and some space to process the disappointment before we say anything, right? So he's disappointed. He lashes out a little bit. Instead of you lashing out, I want to give a few minutes. I want to give some space.

Look, I'm going to get ahead of myself, but this is important. I want you to begin modeling how to handle your own disappointment. See, you're disappointed that your child reacted that way and didn't just go to bed when you asked. You're disappointed that he got upset and said a swear word. You're disappointed in that. But if you can't learn to handle your disappointment, then you're modeling for your child,

oh, when things don't go your way, then you just yell and lash out, right? No blame or no guilt in there. But I want us to realize the pattern that's happening so we can break that pattern, right? So I want to give a few minutes. I want to give some space so the child can process the disappointment, really so we can process our own disappointment before we escalate things. So it's giving him space. It's giving you space to calm yourself. So here's one way to do it. You lose that low-key, even tone, no drama. Look, son,

you're allowed to be disappointed and upset. You're allowed to complain. But there are lines you may not cross in my home. One of those lines is using the F word. If you do that, you will choose to forfeit or lose your fortnight and any screens for one week. So look, refusing to go to bed or using that language, it's going to hurt you and it's not worth it for you. But then watch, we're going to get up, move, and invite your child into something. But listen, I'd like to show you something I discovered today. It's actually kind of cool. So I'm going to be waiting in your bedroom. So watch the process. You're not angry. You're just telling him the way that life works, right? You're disappointed. It's him the way that life works, right?

You're disappointed. It's okay to be disappointed and upset, right? Because it is. What's not okay is to yell, scream, refuse to do things, lash out, swear, hit things, throw things. That's not okay. But being disappointed and upset, complaining, it's perfectly okay. I'm okay with that. But there are lines you may not cross. See, instead of it being so vague, you're saying this part of your response and reaction is perfectly

normal, but you can't cross this line. And if you do, it's just going to hurt you. And I don't think it's worth it. Now the energy goes to, but you know what? I found something today I'd really like to show you. And so I'm getting up. I'm moving him to a different place. I'm inviting him to problem solve. And I'm giving him a little bit of space to see if that space allows him to collect himself and calm down, right? You're not angry. You're inviting him to connect and problem solve, right? Not just demanding, you know what? You need to get to bed right now, young man, because that never works. Now, the second response I really like, and this comes courtesy of a couple who said, look, we've been reacting and yelling for years because that's all we knew. But we started binge listening to your programs on the new app. And I encourage you,

when you get the new programs, you download them to this app. It makes it really easy to listen to. And I'd encourage you to let your kids listen, especially Casey's program on there. And they said, we've been binge listening. Instead of Netflix, we're binge listening to the parenting programs. And we finally got it. And they said, once we learn to slow ourselves down inside, really important. Part of this is learning to control yourself. So the world slows down a little bit. So you're not just in reactive mode all day long because parents are like, well, we don't know what to do in that moment. And part of it is you're acting too quickly and you're trying to fix everything too quickly. And I want to teach you how to slow yourself down inside so you can

see the situation more clearly. And so this couple said, once they started listening to the programs, right? And part of the beauty of that is you hear it over and over again. And I give you all these different examples. It just makes it more natural. And they said, we're naturally beginning to problem solve instead of react. And we've been able to stop the daily battles. Kudos to this couple. Kudos to all of you who are working so hard at this. So here's the second option that they followed. You say this,

look, I know you're disappointed about not playing Fortnite tonight. I would be as well. But here's what I want you to think about. If you continue to push tonight, you won't get to play Fortnite for like three days. But if you can show me that you're a big guy, that you're maturing, who can handle disappointment, then you'll actually earn extra time to play tomorrow because you've shown that you can control yourself. Look, you don't have to give the extra time, but I kind of like it. Look, if you can show me right now while you're disappointed and you're upset and you're angry, if you can show me that you have what it takes inside to control yourself and handle that disappointment, man, that's maturity.

And I respect that. And because you're learning how to control yourself, I may give you a little bit of extra time to play tomorrow night because you're proving that you can control yourself. So then you say, well, so think about that. You know, let me know what you want to do. And then you walk away, you may invite, but you give the child space. So the main objective for me in this moment is not getting him to bed. It's not the main objective. There's something far more important here. It's to teach your child how to, one, delay gratification, to put off playing that game. There's a thing we give in the programs, you'll hear us say this, of you give your kids

video games 27 minutes to play. You tell them, look, if you're not off in 27 minutes, if that screen's still on, when I walk back into the room after 27 minutes, you've just chosen to lose your video games for three days. But when you get your video games back after three days, here's what I say. Look, I'm going to give you 27 minutes tonight. But if, think about this, if you turn off your video games or your screens two minutes early, I will give you an additional four minutes to play tomorrow night. And what we're trying to teach is, look, if you delay gratification for just a couple minutes tonight, you'll get extra time tomorrow night. It's a very practical, very specific way to practice this, a skill that very few kids and people have in 2022. Right, here's what else. You're teaching delay gratification. Number two, you're teaching your child how to control his emotions when he's disappointed. There's literally nothing more important than that

in life. Number three, you're modeling that you can control your emotions when you're disappointed in your child. It's one of the most powerful things you can do is just model this. So they begin saying, oh wow, my mom, my dad changed because he used to react all the time and blow up and things didn't go their way. They get upset in traffic. They got upset all the time. And now they're calm. And number four, I want to teach your child there is a benefit to delaying gratification.

See, your child already knows that there's consequences for not doing that, but that's all he probably knows is consequences. What your child doesn't know is how to control his or her emotions and deal with disappointment, and that's critical to what I'm after, right? And maybe you haven't modeled that yourself, right? There's no blame or no guilt, but also no excuses. So this week, let's learn how to model that for our kids so they see, hmm, my mom and dad can do that. I can do that. Because what would it mean in your home if both you and your kids knew how to control your emotions and handle disappointment? That would change everything. So that's our mission this week. Learn to do that. That's practice this. If we can help you get everything, get the everything package on our website. Easiest way to do it. You get

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