Calm Parenting Podcast - Get Rid of Your Child's Shame This Week

Episode Date: March 29, 2021

Get Rid of Your Child's Shame This WeekHave a child who lies, won't look you in the eyes, makes up excuses, lashes out when in trouble, and/or gives up when things get tough? Kirk shows you how to change these behaviors in this powerful podcast. Please share with others. GET THE CONFIDENCE YOU NEED TO LEAD YOUR KIDS. Email [e-mail]. Tell us your family situation and we’ll put together a custom package to meet your specific needs within your budget or take advantage of our Big Spring Sale this week!  Big Spring Sale: Get the Calm Parenting Package for only $179 (Reg. $475)Digital downloads are included with all orders: Listen directly on your iPhone, Android, or Tablet. Get 100+ tools to replace your child's shame with confidence.Click here to learn more about our Big Spring Sale.  Email [e-mail] for the most helpful service on the planet or to customize your bundle!  NOW SCHEDULING LIVE EVENTS & ZOOM CONFERENCES. We can provide high-energy, customized presentations for your PTA, Adoption/Foster Care Conference, church parenting conference, and Teacher Professional Development training both via Zoom and in person!  BONUS: When you schedule a TEACHER TRAINING, we will provide a Parenting Event for FREE. Take one action step today:  Email [e-mail] with the name of your school, city, and state. We will show you how easy it is to train your parents and teachers. 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. Do you have a child who lies? Who won't look you in the eyes, who lashes out when he gets in trouble, who gives up when things get tough, or maybe feels teamed up on? Well, if you do, you're in the right place because I'm going to show you why they do that and how we can change it on today's episode of the Calm Parenting Podcast. So welcome. This is Kirk Martin, founder of Celebrate Calm. You can find us at CelebrateCalm.com. We hope that you will share this podcast with other struggling parents.

And if you need help, reach out to our strong-willed son who exhibited all five of those behaviors when he was young. His name's Casey. You can find him at Casey, C-A-S-E-Y, at CelebrateCalm.com. You know the drill. If you're struggling, tell us about your family, ages of the kids, what they're struggling with. We're gonna give you some ideas and some tips and some strategies. If you need any of our resources, we'll recommend the right ones within your budget.

Right now, it's really within your budget. We have a big spring sale going on, so you can find that at CelebrateCalm.com. Look up the Calm Parenting Package, or if you wanna make it easy, just get everything, and we'll give you literally 30 to 35 hours worth of practical strategies for pretty much the price of one visit to a therapist's office. So you have kids who often are in trouble a lot, probably since they came out of the womb, right? And kids who are in trouble a lot often feel ashamed. And so I want to show

you how to get rid of your child's shame because many of your kids have impulse control issues. They've got lots of energy and they often make bad decisions in the moment and they keep doing the same things over and over again, even though it brings them harsh consequences, right? Which never worked for these kids. So then your kids beat themselves up continually inside with a lot of negative self-talk. I don't know if you've ever heard your kids say like, I'm such an idiot. I'm dumb. I'm stupid. My brother doesn't do this right now. My dad's going to be mad at me. I'm going to lose all my video games. My siblings never get in trouble. Why is everybody teaming up on me? Right? You've heard that before. So how do we change that internal dialogue? So today I thought it'd be helpful to share five insights from our programs

to help you repair your relationship with your child and also really repair your child's relationship with himself or herself. So, number one, shame is why your kids lie. Look, most of the time for your kids, it's not an integrity issue. So please stop lecturing about the need to have integrity, and we need to tell the truth. Look, most of you don't tell the truth. You don't, because you're not honest with your spouse about all the things that your spouse is doing that irritate you. You don't do you

because it's really hard, right? And so, but here's what's happening with your kids. They lie because they're always suffering from consequences and they don't want to again, right? They were impulsive. They did something wrong. Now they're going to be in trouble. So what's the natural instinct? To lie to get out of it. So look, the lying isn't the issue. It's just covering up the shame from the impulsive behavior. So that's why just giving consequences piles on more shame and the cycle never ends. That's why we have to get to the root of the issue and create successes for our kids and show them how to be successful so that they just don't keep repeating the same thing over and over again. Number two, shame is why your kids, for the most part, do not look you in the eyes. And that's why I want you to not

look kids in the eyes when instructing them or talking about misbehavior, right? Because dads are always like, well, that's just a sign of disrespect. No, it's not. It's shame. Because the only time we ask kids to look in the eye, look at me, look at me, look at me when I'm talking to you, right? We never say, hey, look me in the eyes because I'm really proud of you and you just made a good choice, right? We don't do that. It's always something negative. So what they associate eye contact with is their own shame, right? That's why I encourage you not to look your kids in the eyes when addressing their behavior. Do it while you're going for a walk, while you're building with Legos, while you're playing catch. Number three, your kids often lash out of you when they're in trouble because of their own shame. And what I realized when Casey was little and he would get

so upset at me and I was like, why are you yelling at me and blaming this on me? Well, because he's an insecure little kid, what's he supposed to do? And when I realized, oh, you're not mad at me, you're mad at yourself, then, see, that's why I don't wanna take these things personally. Please, parents, we're the grownups, we're the adults. I know, but my child's being disrespectful

and he's yelling hurtful things. He's a kid. You're a grown-up, right? Let's start acting like it, right? Like don't get so, well, I can't believe that my teenager would talk to me like, why? Why can you not believe that? In the history of teenagers, isn't that what they tend to do, right? Stop being so shocked about everything. I can't believe after all I do. Well, stop doing everything for them. That's your issue, right? Remember, we've talked about that. Part of the reason you do everything for your kids is because it's manipulation.

Because I've done so much for you, you owe me to behave. See how that works? There's no blame and guilt in there. Just don't up to it and stop doing that, right? So look, they're not mad at you. They're mad at themselves. And see, if we weren't so busy protecting ourselves and being all upset and offended by our kids, we could be calm enough, right, to look outward and see that the root of it is shame inside of them. And instead of, watch how insidious this is. We take it personally. I can't believe that you would talk to me like that. What kind of child does that? What's going to happen when you grow up? They already had enough shame and now we jumped, dumped even more on them rather than being able to look out

and say oh something's going on inside of my child and I want to help them with that right so in the moment don't take it personally just know that it's shame think of the times when you've been ashamed did you want to like run out and just tell everybody about it and have everybody like look in your eyes during your time of shame? No, right? Because you're ashamed. Your child, when you can help them overcome their shame, a lot of these things will start to go away. Number four, your kids often give up when things get tough. Why? Well, one, it's human nature. Almost nobody's like, oh, I just relish. When things get really hard and I have to dig in, I just relish the challenge.

Not many people really think that way. We all put off things that are difficult. Do we not? Do we not put off that doctor's appointment we don't want to go to? We put off sometimes exercise. We put off that difficult discussion that we've needed to have for years with our spouse. Why? Because it's hard. And human nature says we usually take the easy way out. But your kids, on top of that, give up when things get tough because they feel incapable of getting over that hump. And that's why separate podcasts, but this is why we talk about giving kids tools and jump-starting your child's brain, right? So that child who's struggling and doesn't want to do that

project, that writing assignment, because it's multiple steps and your kids often are not great sequential learners, right? And so doing multiple steps kind of overwhelms them. So they just shut down and put it off, right? And now they have trouble getting thoughts from the head to paper. So we have to give them tools so they learn how to, sorry, but vomit the thoughts out of their head onto paper and have it be messy at first. That's a tool that we give them. And then also, we jumpstart the brain by getting some exercise, by doing some sensory physical things first, by using music. And we start to give them all these tools and help them jumpstart their brains so that they feel capable. And instead of saying things like, you know, this assignment isn't that hard.

See, as soon as you say that and your child feels like, well, it is hard. Well, that must mean I'm stupid because if it's not hard, but it's hard for me, that must mean that I'm dumb. Well, I'm going to shut down for that, too. Right. So when we start to jumpstart the brain and teach them how to do it, it changes everything. And so instead of saying like, oh, it's not that hard or why are you putting it off? If you would just focus, you'd be done in 45 minutes instead of it taking three hours. Instead, I say, of course, it's hard.

That's great language. You're normalizing. Of course, it's difficult. Of course, you don't want to do the hard work. But if I give you some tools want to do the hard work. But if I give you some tools and we do it a little differently, I believe that you're capable of doing this really well. You're going to struggle at first, but you're going to get it done.

Man, it's going to feel good when you get that done. See, that's a whole different feel than the normal way we do it. Number five, your kids feel teamed up on. Now, I know what you're thinking. Of course they feel teamed up on. We wouldn't have to team up on this child if he just listened to us the first time. And I get that. But it's really helpful to understand your child's state of mind. Even acknowledging to your child, this is very powerful,

does it ever feel like everybody's against you? You know, that can be really settling to a child, especially an older child who feels that. Now you're legitimizing that because for most of your kids, it does feel like society, teachers, parents, everybody's against me because I feel different. My assumption is this. You've got a child who's been in trouble and struggled probably since birth. Always falling short. Always difficult. More emotional and sensitive than the siblings. Just kind of difficult. And your child's likely internalized that parents and teachers don't like him or her. So school's a struggle. Social skills are a struggle. He's familiar with failure and consequences,

and he's likely begun to internalize, I'm a bad kid. See, that's shame. And for many of you, beyond discipline, beyond motivation, all these other things we want from our kids, this is the most important immediate step. So I challenge you, spend the next week, maybe the next two weeks, actively creating successes by giving your kids tools to succeed rather than just threatening consequences. Show them how to make good choices. You've heard me talk about giving kids specific jobs in class, refill my water bottle, hold up a talk ticket instead of blurting out. So you go to teachers and say, look, I know my child struggles with X, Y, and Z in class. Consequences, that red on the behavior chart thing, that's clearly not working. So could you give my child specific tools

for him to use for the next two weeks and some specific jobs? And then notice every time my child makes a good choice or makes progress, see that will begin to change behavior and that creates a confident mindset and that will replace the shame. Because when your child struggles, right, what happens? We tend to focus on the 12 times he did something wrong, but we miss out on the seven times that he did it well, right? So instead of just focusing on the negative all the time, focus on the times your kids make a good choice and do well. Relentlessly affirm your child for the next week or two. Let's see what happens, and then we're going to do it like for the rest of his life. But it's helpful. So many parents have told me, and this is not a warning, but it kind of is.

So many parents of older kids have told me their kids come to them as teenagers and say, Mom, Dad, why did you always notice what I didn't do or what I did wrong? But you never really noticed when I did something well. And that will break your heart if you hear that. I don't want you to hear that. So let's change that now and not make the same mistake. And if we need to, apologize to your child. Hey, does it ever feel like we're teaming up on you? Does it ever feel like no matter what I ask you, I'm never really happy with that? Does it ever feel like I only notice when you're not doing things well and your child that will, that will really stick inside of them and that will resonate with

them. And then you can say, you know what? I apologize for that from, because there's so many good things about you. And from now on, I'm going to start noticing what you do well, because I'm really proud of you. So moms, dads, teachers, let's do this. For the next week, this is our goal. You need help with it? Reach out. Casey, C-A-S-E-Y, CelebrateCalm.com. We will help you. It's what we live to do. We exist to do this. It's not a business. It's not a company. This is our family's passion, and we take it seriously, and we're very conscientious about helping everybody who reaches out to us. So we do have a big sale going on. Just look at it, celebratecalm.com. It's a big spring sale. And if we can help you in any way, please let us know.

But let's get rid of that shame this week and let's get rid of your shame as well. You're good moms and dads.