Calm Parenting Podcast - “I Boil With Anger When My Son Does This…”

Episode Date: September 28, 2020

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.  We go through all of this with 25 specific action steps, an actual game plan, that will build your child's confidence, make them feel capable, and rebuild trust with you-perhaps for the first time in the No B.S. Program. We've reduced the price of the No B.S. program from $300 to $99 this week only so go to www.CelebrateCalm.com and hit the NO BS tab, and begin making these changes literally overnight. Email [e-mail] for the most helpful service on the planet.  Casey's Student Assemblies Looking for an assembly this year? Check out a sneak preview of Casey's new virtual Student Assembly here! https://celebratecalm.com/cc-student-assemblies/  ZOOM CONFERENCES We can provide high-energy, customized presentations for your PTA, Adoption/Foster Care Conference, church parenting conference, and Teacher Professional Development training. You get the same practical, insightful strategies at a fraction of the cost PLUS Kirk can answer specific questions through the Q&A Chat Room. Email [e-mail] and Casey will personally help you schedule your conference.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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no multiple step protocols, just simple scientifically validated solutions. The secret is One Skin's proprietary OS1 peptide. It's the first ingredient proven to switch off the aging cells that cause lines, wrinkles, and thinning skin. OneSkin is the world's first skin longevity company. By focusing on the cellular aspects of aging, OneSkin keeps your skin looking and acting younger for longer. Get started today with 15% off using code Kirk at OneSkin.co. That's 15% off at OneSkin.co with code K-I-R-K. After you purchase, they'll ask where you heard about them. So please support our podcast and tell them we sent you. So how do you respond when your kids are disrespectful, right? You ask them a question and they've got tone and they've got attitude. What do you do when that happens? Or what do you

do when your kids aren't even motivated by things? Or when you're just like boiling with anger at them? How do you handle that in a way that's constructive? That's what we're going to talk about today on the Calm Parenting Podcast. So we're glad you're here. This is Kirk Martin, founder of Celebrate Calm. You can find us at CelebrateCalm.com. If you need help with anything, email our son Casey, C-A-S-E-Y, at CelebrateCalm.com, and he'll help you out. By the way, we just got an email last night from a guy. It's like 1030 at night. Casey's visiting. It was cool. We got back from dinner. Well, we weren't out that late because I'm getting older, but we got back from dinner, and we're sitting around talking. We get an from dinner. Well, we weren't out that late because I'm getting older, but we

got back from dinner and we're sitting around talking. We get an email from a gentleman. He's like, hey, it's my birthday and I really want to change. And I found that I'm not really good at handling my emotions. And so I'm not teaching my four kids how to do that. And I was wondering, could I want to get everything you have? We have a package called the Get Everything Package. But I was wondering, could you give me a birthday discount? And I want you to know, like here, our initial reaction to that isn't like, oh, great, he's trying to save money. It's like, no, I love that. I like assertive people.

I like, like this guy was open and honest and vulnerable about the issues. And he just said, hey, can I get a birthday discount? And we're like all over that. And so we're emailing back and forth and I'm gonna commit to helping this guy because he's literally changing the entire course of his kids' lives. He's going to impact their,

when they become a husband and a dad themselves or become a wife and a mom to their kids, this dad, by having the courage to change and learn things, right? Like I didn't learn this stuff till I was like 38 and 40, and this dad is like having to wrestle with all this stuff, and he's realizing it's not just my kids issue, it's me, it's my own stuff I brought from my childhood, and my generational patterns, and I'm going to have the courage to change now. He literally changes the lives of his kids and so many other people, not just his own family. He is going to totally change his entire life because that's what has happened to me. And it's awesome. So if we can ever help you with anything, email us, Reach out to us and tell us about your family. We'll put together

the best resources for you. So first email is this. This is a cool one. So this was November 19th, 2017. I get this email. Hey, I understand I'm supposed to help my tween son learn how to manage, deal with his emotions, but sometimes I get so mad at him because I'm trying so hard to keep calm and not yell or say something inappropriate that I can't even help my son with his angry feelings because I'm so angry. And all I can do is walk away and do something else to calm down, right? Because I can feel that anger boiling inside of me. And so here was my response. And the theme today, we're going to hit on several different things, but this is because the theme today is kind of no BS because I've been doing this 20 years and I know people are really comfortable with black and white stuff. Well, you just tell your child the

way it is. If he doesn't like it, then give him a consequence. You show him who's boss. Well, that's awesome. Except it doesn't work for strong willed kids because they don't care about consequences. And the moment you start going all tough with them, you lose control of yourself, right? So I came up with this program because people had said like, we need an instruction manual. So I created one, the no BS instruction manual in which I could deal with things head on, things that you don't always want to hear, but will save you a lot of power struggles and trouble. Like the fact that your strong willed kids probably aren't going to pick up all their Legos when they're little, and they're not going to clean up after themselves when they cook for you. And you're going to get all frustrated about the fact that most of your

kids are not going to do their chores really well, but they will be awesome for other people. Just knowing that going in, you will save literally years of power struggles and staying late at night talking to your spouse, like, what are we going going to do because our child doesn't want to do his chores? If he's not responsible for us, how is he going to be responsible for anybody else? So we've got to fight him and then it's not fair to the other siblings. And you go through all that stuff and everybody's miserable. And instead, what I was able to do was put together a program with 25 action steps and to be able to tell people, no,

you're not, don't worry about that. You're worrying about the wrong thing that I understand why you're upset. I understand why you're anxious, but don't be worried about that. That's not something to be worried about because your kids probably won't be that awesome for you, but they will be amazing for other people. And that's what you ultimately want in life. And part of the reason I want to do no BS is because this stuff is not black and white. The next example, I'm going to show you why. It's hard stuff. And just anyway. So what I replied back to the mom, I just said, I'm going to go with my gut instinct. I think you're taking his behavior too personally. You're too wrapped up in his success and his behavior that it's making you mad. And so in reality, look, there's no blame or no guilt. Please understand we don't do blame or guilt. This has nothing to do with your son, but it has

everything to do with you, which is good because you're the only one that you can control. And so you have complete control over this situation not by controlling your child but by controlling yourself. It's really cool how that works. So I asked her like why does his behavior make you so mad? When he does do something wrong what can you begin doing differently? I'd spend time getting to the root of your own reactions to him so that you don't take it personally. Well, I didn't hear back from that mom until the other day. And here's what she said. Hey, Kirk, I wanted to thank you almost three years later for answering my question. You are right. I did

take everything my son did personally. And I would encourage you moms and dads, don't take it personally. If you want number one lesson for today's podcast, don't take things personally. It's not about you. It's about helping your child. You're the grown adult, right? I knew that on some level, but to hear you say that was a hard pill to swallow. Things are much better between me and my son, and I'm a much calmer parent now. Kudos, mom. Well done. This stuff takes time, and time is your friend. Space. The other thing I'd write down, in fact, I'm going to make notes on this right now, is the first thing we talked about is don't take it personally, because I'll turn this into the newsletter that goes with this podcast, and you can sign up for that at Celebr calm.com or contact Casey for it don't take it personally

what I try to do is encapsulate it in a few bullet points so you get quick written because some people like to hear it but they also like to see things written down like when we give you a script in the newsletter it's all free I try to write out the script so you have it. And some people keep a calm folder. And then when they're going through something, they pull it up and they can be like, oh, here's that script that I need to use. Time is your friend, right? Let your kids grow into themselves. Let you grow into yourself, right? So a cool little thing with Casey that happened. 10 years ago, he was 17, but when he was about 16, he started doing school assemblies all across the country. And what was really novel about it was it wasn't just like

some kind of adult that acted cool coming in and doing the school assemblies, trying to act cool for the kids so they'd relate to him. No, it was an actual kid doing it. So he was only a few years older than them. And he was actually very good for an early age, but I would be on stage with him. And so one of the things we've always tried to do is practice what we preach. And actually it's usually different. It's actually, we actually do it first and then we teach it, right? So all of this is very, very personal for us. It's all things we've been through. So one of our key principles is when you step back, writing that down, it gives kids space to step up. When you step back from lecturing, micromanaging, fixing everything for your kids, taking things too personally, when you step back from that, it actually gives kids space so that

they can step up and own it themselves. So one day, this was in Long Island, we pull up to the school, and I said, Case, guess what? I'm not going in today. He's like, Dad, come on, look, Dad, look, I need you there. And I was like, I don't think you need me there. I think you're perfectly capable of doing this yourself. But Dad, would you just come in and be there in case I stumble? He's like, nope, you're on your own. So I could tell he's upset at me and he's already anxious going in, right? So he could never eat that the morning before an assembly. I used to love that because I suffered from that for decades, really for years. And so he went in and I sat out in the car. I remember I sat out in the car in front of the school underneath a tree. Don't remember why,

but I had the windows down. I was thinking the whole time I hope he's doing well I really want my son to do well and so he comes walking out I was kind of cringing I didn't know and he goes dad opens the car door he's like dad best school assembly ever I gave him a little fist bump and it was because he wasn't held back by me and he had to pull on all of his resources inside. So I just encourage you, step back so your kids can step up. Allow them to fail at times. That's a really good lesson. And by the way, it's 10 years later. You know what he did? So we can't do school assemblies live right now because you can't assemble. And so school's been asking, like, can we get your stuff? So Casey went out, recorded like five, six different sessions on screens,

controlling your emotions, impulse control, focus and attention, all those things in different settings. So he put together a really cool video, right? So it moves, it goes in short little segments. So kids will listen, right? And it's awesome on all the major stuff. And he did a really awesome job with it.

So here's what's cool. Schools are using that now in a couple of ways. One, they can show it to their entire student body. They can show it just to first grade, just to second grade, just to middle school, however you wanna use it. And individual teachers are actually using the videos. They'll take like a little five minute segment

on focus and attention and say, okay, so this young guy's talking about using multisensory stimulation or doing different things to focus better or impulse control. How do you guys want to use it? So it's really, really cool how that's happening. So if you're interested, just go to the website, look under school assemblies, and you'll see a brief promo video Casey put together. You can forward that to your school, to the PTA. And if you have questions, just email Casey, CelebrateCalm.com,

but give your kids some space. Third thing we're going to talk about. This is a good example. So this mom finds her son's shirt covered in paint. To her credit, she was not mad, but she went and said, hey, your shirt's covered in paint. To her credit, she was not mad, but she went and said, hey, your shirt's covered in paint. Do you want to keep it? Well, he grumbled at her. Well, of course, she took that personally. Of course, makes sense. And heard it as disrespectful. And she replied, she's like, but honey, it's, you know, it's so soft. It's one of your favorites. And the son replied back, I said, no. Now that's disrespectful. That's not the kind of tone that you use with your mom or your dad because he's treating her like she's some annoying you-know-what.

And mom doesn't want to take that because her anxiety kicks in and she starts to fear he'll be like that with the boss one day. So she marches in to talk to him about his tone. Well, here's what I know from doing this for 20 years. When in the history of the world has it ever worked when someone said, we need to talk about your tone right now, young man, your young woman. Does that ever work? No. Look, if you're going to do this, just cut to the chase and say this instead.

Hey, we're going to talk about your attitude and here's what's going to happen. You're going to get worse attitude and I'm going to react to it every time. And then I'm going to have a bad attitude. We're both going to have a bad attitude and we're going to yell at each other and say things that we don't mean. And we're both going to pull apart from each other, feel bad about what we just did. Nothing will get resolved. Only we'll both be guilty of being disrespectful and rude to each other. You ready? Because that's what happens every single time, right? So he reacted, she pushed and pushed her away. She reacted and then escalated, right? So here's the hard question. Here's kind of the no BS part of this. Was the child wrong? Yes, he was wrong. He was disrespectful. Was the mom wrong to talk to him about her attitude, his attitude? No,

she wasn't wrong at all, right? And so here's where the no BS comes in. The truth is, the no BS answer is the mom did handle it in the wrong way. And I'm going to show you why in a second, because I don't want these things to continue to escalate. But the kid was wrong, yes. And so your nice black and white answer is, well, if the kid would have just answered respectfully, like, no, ma'am, or yes, ma'am, we wouldn't be having this discussion. And I get that. I'm with you on that. But the truth is, he did answer her honestly, and she didn't listen to him, she was as disrespectful to him as he was to her, and possibly even more so. And here's why. And this is not about blame or guilt. This is just

about how to communicate and resolve these issues so you're not always fighting all the time. So when she said, like, honey, a shirt has paint on it. Do you want the shirt? He's like, no, I don't want it. Well, the truth is he was embarrassed. I guarantee you, he just, he didn't want to talk about it. You know why? Because he was anticipating the lecture that he'd gotten the past 342 times. You know, I've told you when you paint, you never use this good shirt. You always put an old shirt. When you paint, I want you to paint outside. And when you do, because that's what we do. We just talk and talk and talk and lecture a million times. And then when they do it wrong, we just keep going and keep going, keep going. And we reinforce the shame.

And he was embarrassed that he got paint on it. It was his favorite shirt. So he said no and wanted to drop it. Mom though, didn't listen to him because she kept going and you know she's trying too hard right because the truth is mom didn't want to get rid the truth is mom didn't want to get rid of the shirt why because it's so soft and lovely right but he didn't want it and so she started talking too much and trying to convince him to keep it even after he said, no, I don't want it. That's equally disrespectful. And it's annoying when your parents don't listen to you and keep going on and on. That is not teaching. That's annoying. And that's disrespectful. And if you're going to ask your child what they think, then listen to them and don't try to convince them that they're wrong.

So again, no blame and no guilt. She didn't really do anything wrong, but she didn't handle it the right way. So what do you do the next time? You ask, you listen, and you respect the answer, even if you don't like it. And that negative, disrespectful tone, ignore it. Be the grown-up. In our curriculum, you'll hear we talk about ignore initial bluster, right? Because if you're just going to react to it every time, then again, just wake your child

up and say, hey, at some point today, you're going to be upset, frustrated, or embarrassed by something and use a disrespectful tone. And I'm going to get really upset about it. We're going to have a big, long talk about it and go on too long. And then we're going to end up hating each other because that's kind of what happens, right? So I ignore a little bit of that, right? Is that the right thing to do? I don't know, but I think it is. And that's my no BS answer to it because otherwise you're just going to fight their entire childhood. Keep building on the positives, deescalate it, ignore it, swallow it. And I told this mom, I was like, next time, just text me that little text me, tell me what a little jerky is. I don't care. Get it off your chest to me,

but not to him, but don't react because here's what mom could have done. She could have said later, after giving him some space, texted him, or just said by walking by his room, hey, just wanted to double check before I threw away your shirt. I left it on your bed, and you can either keep it or just throw it on the floor by the trash can, and I'll come grab it later. Just let me know. Right? So I'm not making a big deal of it because now I'm giving the child space to change his mind because maybe he does want to keep it. And once you deescalate it, here's what you're probably going to hear. Hey mom, you know what the truth is? That was one of my favorite shirts and I'm embarrassed because I didn't listen to you. And I painted in that shirt and then I got paint on it and I was

really angry at myself. I was really angry and I was beating myself up because I ruined my favorite shirt and I was embarrassed and I'd be embarrassed to keep it because it's just an ongoing sign of my failure and I already feel like I'm dumb and stupid sometimes. So I just want to be done with it and I didn't want to talk about it. And so I'm sorry that I yelled at you. It's just that I was embarrassed. When you de-escalate and you calm things down and you don't respond to that initial bluster, see if this makes sense. I'm going to make a note on this. See, what happens is we reply to the initial bluster, right? We just

fly off the handle and then we never get into anything good because now we just sent the child to his room because he can't talk to you the right way and you're angry at him. But when we deescalate, then we get to the humility. Then we get to the contrition. But you've got to get to that place. And that takes time and that takes space. Does that make sense? I hope it makes sense. Because I may just, let me see where we are.

We're 18 minutes in. I think I'm going to end on that because I like that one. I want to give you a challenge this week. When your child responds disrespectfully, I want you to like walk away. I want you to come back later and use the I'm curious tone. And I want to see if you can lead them to a calmer place. Lead them to a place of humility. We talk about that a lot. I'm going

to put that in my notes as well. Lead to a place of humility because then you can get to a problem solving place. I guarantee with your kids being home and all the different kinds of weird COVID schooling stuff, because we're going through that in the school bootcamp stuff, it's just different for every family and every school district's a little different. They are going to be frustrated and they're not going to do all of their work and they're going to cut corners and they're not going to push through and all those things. But if you just react to it, it's just going to make it worse every time. So let's, this week, let's work on that, not reacting in that moment, creating some space and then humbly leading them to a space where they say things like,

I'm just frustrated because I'm already behind in school, and I feel like once I'm behind, I can't catch up. Let's see if we can get there this week. If we can help you do that, reach out to Casey, C-A-S-E-Y, celebratecalm.com. We will help you. If you are in that place where you've got older kids and the relationship is really kind of ruined, I would look at the No BS Instruction Manual. It's right on the website. No BS. It's $99. If you want everything we have, emails. Tell us about your family. We'll tell you if you need that or if we give you the Calm Parenting Package. Everything's on sale right now. If you need help with the schooling stuff, do the boot camp. And by all means, check out the

school assembly page because it would be a great gift to give to your school to be able to let them know that there's something out there. There's a kid talking to other kids. That's really powerful. It's on their school assembly. So if we can help you, let us know. We love you all. Thank you for being a good parent. Talk to you soon.

Bye-bye.