Calm Parenting Podcast - “I Don’t Want Your Help!” How to Help Without the Fights.

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey moms and dads, you know that our goal is to raise curious kids who love to learn, and iXL makes that so much easier. iXL is an online learning program that enriches your homeschool curriculum from K-12. iXL encourages students to be curious and empowers them to choose how to learn. No matter your child's learning style or knowledge level, IXL has video tutorials and learning games to guide your child in the way your kids learn best while meeting them at their level. On IXL, kids can explore any topic in any grade level. They're not forced into a single learning path. Kids love IXL's positive feedback and parents love knowing specific skills that need work.

Starting point is 00:00:48 Make an impact on your child's learning. Get IXL now. 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 k Kirk to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price. So you know we are very purposeful about how we manage our emotions and take care of our bodies because we only have one body and one skin. That's why we love OneSkin. Their products make it easy to keep your skin healthy while looking and feeling your best. We use the face topical supplement and love that there's no complicated routine,

Starting point is 00:01:32 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. You know what's really frustrating? You're watching your kids struggle with something, right? And they've said, man, I really want to do this well. And you can see what they're doing

Starting point is 00:02:33 wrong. And you try to help them and they reject your help. And it just turns into a big mess. That happens all the time. So how do you deal with this in a different way so that it becomes constructive instead of destructive? That's what we're going to talk about today on the Calm Parenting Podcast. So welcome. This is Kirk Martin, founder of Celebrate Calm. You can find us at CelebrateCalm.com. If you need help, reach out to our son Casey. It's C-A-S-E-Y at CelebrateCalm.com. Just about every story I tell, even if it's about other parents, is really about my experiences with Casey because we are you, right? And so I hope you can relate to that and hope you know all of this is very, very personal to us. And we've just seen it kind of play out. We had 1,500 kids come into our home.

Starting point is 00:03:33 So I experienced this with not only Casey, but with your kids as well. So if you need some help, reach out to Casey because he's awesome and he will help you. It is my, our greatest joy is every day we get emails. Hey, just started listening to the podcast. You're describing our home, describing our son. We need some help. What resources do you recommend? And then we recommend the right resources within your budget. And we're here to help you out.

Starting point is 00:04:00 So really quickly, a couple of big sales. We're reintroducing the bag it's something we used to sell a lot it's called the bag which is four of our top CD programs and you can get it as digital download but initially it was it came in a got calm bag because you can carry that around and remind you reminds you not to freak out on your kids all the time. But it's hugely popular because it's very customized. We can customize it for your family. We've got the bag for little kids, younger kids, for teenagers, for everything in between. But we haven't really talked about that

Starting point is 00:04:39 in many, many, many months. So we decided to bring that back because it's a really cool option. So anyway, you'll find that on the website at CelebrateCalm.com. But if you want more, you can do the Calm Parenting Package. You can do the Get Everything Special, which is everything we've created, or do the School Boot Camp Mentoring with me. Anyway, it's all there. Reach out to us. We don't bite. So here's the story. This is where I want to go with this. So there are at least, I don't know, a couple dozen things our kids do that are very misunderstood. And these misunderstandings cause us to make wrong assumptions. We assume the wrong things about our kids all the time. If you want to know the truth, we do it with our spouses. We do it with people of

Starting point is 00:05:25 opposite political perspective. We do it with everyone around us, right? Because we always project our own thing onto other people. And what usually happens with our kids is it will trigger a negative response from our kids. And then that triggers something in us. And then it just spirals into these emotional battles. Because you've been there. You were probably there this morning or maybe last night. And you look back and you're like, what just happened? Because we were trying to help or we just said one thing and then all of a sudden we had like World War III on our hands. And the whole night is ruined and you can't sleep.

Starting point is 00:06:07 No one ever wins. Everyone loses. And by the way, I despise, I hate that paradigm thing of like, well, we're just letting our child win. Isn't he winning? And it feels like we're losing. Look, I'm not in a competition with another human being, right? There's not like, well, I'm just, he competition with another human being, right? There's not like, well, I'm just, he's winning. It's not a good way to look at the world, right? So let's look at it in a different way. So here's one of my favorite stories. It came from, I believe it was a really good family in Indianapolis.

Starting point is 00:06:38 So we're at a live workshop. And by the way, we're starting to travel again because schools are opening up and we're super excited about getting out in person again. So if you want us to speak at your school, reach out to us. We'll come or we'll do a Zoom conference. We're doing one, doing a few this week. So it's awesome. So I talked to this mom and she's a great mom. She comes up and says, my son doesn't ever listen to me and he doesn't like to be told what to do. And inside I'm like, neither do I, right? So I saw her son begin to object naturally. So I asked for an example. So the mom's like, well, we golf together. And when I see my son making a mistake, I try to show him what he needs to do differently, and I'm just trying to help.

Starting point is 00:07:26 And I'm thinking, that's awesome. That's a good mom. That's what you're supposed to do. But because I'm very much like our kids, I knew this wasn't the real issue. So I turned to this pre-adolescent boy and I gave him the floor for clarification. Now, he's a very analytical, direct kid, like some of your kids. And he said, Mom, I want you to point out my mistake, but I want to figure out how to fix it. Ah, now there's some insight that changes everything. See, listen to this again.

Starting point is 00:08:09 I want you to point out my mistake, but I want to figure it out. I want to figure out how to fix it. I don't want you to tell me how to do it. And I can hear in every parent like, but if you would just do it the way I said to do it, it would be so much easier. It would be, you get it done more quickly. I get that. I'm a parent. I get that. But I also get it from the kid's point of view because I like to wrestle with things. I don't want you to tell me how to do it. I want to figure it out. I want to do it the hard way. I want to touch the hot stove.

Starting point is 00:08:47 I want to wrestle with it. I want to struggle a little bit because then the satisfaction that I get comes from the fact that I figured out how to fix it. And in the end, it's a really good thing. But if you don't understand your child, here's how that discussion on the golf course or wherever it is that you're doing this in your home, here's how that discussion on the golf course or wherever it is that you're

Starting point is 00:09:05 doing this in your home, wherever it goes. Mom will say, hey, Daniel, listen, your hips and shoulders aren't parallel. It's causing you to slice. Okay, got it, mom. No, no, no. I don't think you do because you keep slicing. Thanks, mom. I'll work on it. No, here, Daniel. Let me show you how. Mom! Now, here's where we cue the 10-minute parent lecture. You know what, Daniel? I pay a lot of money and give up a lot of my time to come out here with you, and this is all I get. Why won't you listen to me? Do you know how long I've been playing? I just want you to be, to help you be the best golfer you can be. Mom, stop, please. You know, Daniel, a little bit of gratitude would be nice. And that's when Daniel walks off. Forget it. I'm done today. Daniel, I will not let you

Starting point is 00:10:01 quit. If you walk away, you are going to lose it, whatever. Right? And then mom's like, you will not let you quit. If you walk away, you are going to lose it, whatever, right? And then mom's like, you will not talk to me like that, young man. And the whole thing escalates right in the middle of everybody. And now, whether it's in the grocery store, at swim practice, pick your sport, pick your musical instrument, pick whatever it is. That's what happens. And here's the thing that's difficult. Mom's intentions are good. This mom's intentions are good. Her son has said he wants to make the golf team and she's trying to help him. So why does it end up feeling so awful? Why do we end up feeling resentful after all we do and I think it usually oftentimes comes back to two common culprits number one anxiety anxiety your anxiety my anxiety is our greatest enemy as a parent there's no greater enemy it's not your kids kids. It's not your spouse. It's not the government. It's not this. It's not that. It's not the politician. It is you. It is me. And it is

Starting point is 00:11:09 our anxiety. There's no blame. There's no guilt. We don't do that. But your anxiety is causing, in this situation, her anxiety is causing this mom to lecture, to press too much. Watch this one. To be responsible for her son's actions, it is causing her to feel pressure to make sure her son is successful, right? Because she's taking ownership of his success. And you can't do that to anyone, right? Because we want them to be responsible for their own success. And when that, when he is not grateful for it, when he does not reciprocate with like, mom, thanks so much. You have so much wisdom. She then becomes resentful. She then reacts. She makes threats. And now she caused that power struggle. Now I get it. If your kids were easier, this wouldn't be so difficult. But the truth is, we're difficult too. And that is our anxiety that caused

Starting point is 00:12:14 that power struggle on that golf course. See how easy it is to fall into those traps? And again, your intentions are good. You're not doing anything wrong, but it doesn't work, and it backfires on you. See, we begin the day with a nice outing, and by the end, we're driving home in silence, fuming, separated emotionally from our child, and then it continues when we get home, and then we make snippy little comments about how they never listened to us. And they'd be much better if that had happened. And it just keeps going. And I want you to know, you are not responsible for your child's happiness or their success. You're not. You're responsible for yourself to model that for them. And that is ultimately very, very liberating and freeing to know I am not responsible for any other human's happiness or response or their success.

Starting point is 00:13:13 I am responsible for mine, right? But if you don't know how to deal with this, if your anxiety keeps creeping in and sabotaging it, you'll sabotage all your relationships. And you've seen how that works. So you've got to get control of your anxiety. And that's one thing we go through in every, if you get the bag, any of our products that you get, the one thing that is always constant is you will always receive a program called 30 Days to Calm. Because in that, I personally walk you through how I calm down and change myself from the inside out and what we do is we identify your triggers. What are your triggers? What irritates you? And then we walk through

Starting point is 00:13:54 how do you change yourself so that you no longer allow those things to trigger you, right? So that you take back ownership of yourself and you can control yourself and you can control yourself and you can turn these into opportunities. Because I'm going to show you in a second, this common situation is a huge opportunity to build a closer relationship with your child and get them to be successful. But the reason, the second reason we kind of sabotage things is we don't understand our kids, right? Because we think our kids are lazy when sometimes they just need some tools to complete an assignment in a different way.

Starting point is 00:14:33 They need to hang upside down. They need to do their homework, schoolwork, sitting in a car by themselves. It's what we're going through in the school boot camp. All these odd, weird, different ways for your kids to be motivated. See, we think we're, they're defiant when it's really just anxiety and fear, right? Those times where you're like, hey, we need to go to the new taekwondo class and your child starts screaming, I hate you. You're stupid. You're an idiot. And we, it sounds like defiance because they won't go. And in reality, it's just anxiety. And if we knew it was anxiety, we could deal with the anxiety. But instead, what we hear is the negative. It's defiant. They're lazy, right? Sometimes we think our kids are undisciplined. And it's no doubt your kids are undisciplined. Part of being a child is being undisciplined, right? But sometimes

Starting point is 00:15:26 it's just a lack of purpose or motivation. So this mom's assumption is that her son doesn't like to be told what to do, and it carries a negative connotation. But my response would be, be thankful you have a child who wants to problem solve, who isn't just a follower, who can think independently. Is that not what we want as parents? Is that not what we want for our kids to grow up and become? It's just that we don't want them being like that when they're in our home, right? Because what we're really saying is, I don't really care about your independent thinking. I just want you to do what I told you to do right now, because we're really saying is, I don't really care about your independent thinking. I just want you to do what I told you to do right now. Because we're really busy and I don't have time for all

Starting point is 00:16:09 your independence and all your stuff to do what I told you to freaking do. Right? And this is a kid who wants to figure it out on his own. He wants ownership. And I really, really want you to learn the idea of ownership. We don't give strong willwilled kids control of our home or our classroom, but I will give them ownership every day, all day, because that's what we want. Because this is a kid who wants to be responsible for his own golf swing. Isn't that what we really want? And the answer is yes, but our anxiety wants to jump in and we end up becoming responsible for his golf swing. But watch how differently,

Starting point is 00:16:56 watch how this sounds when we control our anxiety and understand our kids. Hey Daniel, this I've noticed, your hips and shoulders aren't parallel. It's causing you to slice and, okay, got it mom. Listen, I'm going to go practice my short game while you work on that. Call me if you need me. Mom walks away and controls herself, enjoying some downtime. Maybe she works on her own putting and chip shots, or maybe she goes to the clubhouse and has a drink or two. Just kidding. But a little while later, Daniel calls her over.

Starting point is 00:17:30 Mom, come here. I want to show you something. And now Daniel hits a good shot with proper form. And mom can now respond, wow, very nice. And then Daniel explains in great detail, of course, how he fixed the problem. And here's the hard part. It isn't the way his mom or dad would have done it, but it works. And that's a huge insight that I want you to internalize. It isn't the way that you want your kids to do it, but it works.

Starting point is 00:18:07 And you have to let go of making your kids do things the way that you want them done. I want you to have high expectations. I want you to expect things of your kids. I want them to have good outcomes and be successful. But they're just not ever going to do things the way you want them done. And that's going to frustrate you, and it's going to irritate you, and that's going to cause you to react. And that is your issue, because it's not always about you, and your way is not the only right way. And I'll say this forcefully, that has nothing to do with, well, I'm the

Starting point is 00:18:45 authority figure in the home. They should do things the way I tell them to do. Where'd you get that idea of an authority figure? That's a dictator, right? That's not an authority figure. And a good authority figure, a really good authority figure is a good leader. It is someone that you want to follow. It is someone that you trust because you know that he has your best interests at heart and because he models it for you and he gives you space to learn and make mistakes without being there and pointing out every single thing that you did wrong. Any person that you respect and want to follow, they're a leader. And you want to follow a leader because they're leading, they're not dictating. See how that's different. I want your

Starting point is 00:19:33 kids to do what you want them to do, but not always the way you want it done, right? So now mom is able to say, you know what? I'm really proud of you for being persistent and coming up with that solution. Want to play nine? And then smart aleck kid gets a, yeah, ready to lose mom, right? This whole situation didn't change because the child changed. It changed because the parent changed and understood what was really going on. And that's really good news. Look, all of this is good news. There's no blame, no guilt. It's because you can't control your kid's behavior. That's not

Starting point is 00:20:12 the goal of being a parent. The goal is to learn to control yourself so that you give your kids ownership over their own behavior so that you model it so that they follow you. And you can't always control what your kids do, but you can always control what you do. And that will change situations. Look, I'll close up with this. Your success as a parent, your enjoyment as a human being will largely rest on your answer to these questions. Do you and your spouse understand your kids inside and out, or do they leave you feeling confused and frustrated? Because if you don't really understand them, you'll assume the worst. They're just lazy, undisciplined, they're defiant. Can you control your own anxiety, or does it compel you to lecture, have power struggles,

Starting point is 00:21:07 and put this constant pressure on your kids? Do you have control issues? Do you need it done your way? Can you stop talking? Because I just had a mom in our school boot camp thing. She emailed and she's like, man, the phrase that goes through, you don't say it like this. But she said, what I always hear is just shut up and wait a little while. Just shut up and wait.

Starting point is 00:21:34 And I said, I don't tell you to shut up because that's rude. I'm rude in other ways, but not that way. And she's like, no, I say it to myself because I need to listen to that, that when I'm patient and I just stop talking and I listen and I give it some space and time, things usually work out better. But can you do that? Right? Do you feel resentful towards your kids?

Starting point is 00:21:57 Do you feel resentful towards your spouse? Guarantee you do if you've been married for a little while, right? Then let's get control of that. Let's do that. Let's get a roadmap. I'll give you a roadmap to your kids' brains, to their behaviors, to all these strategies. That's what we do. We give you scripts. We give you a roadmap to do this, to show you how to do it. So let's dig into this. Let's get this done. Let's change ourselves. We're here to help you. Reach out to us. Look on the website, celebratecalm.com. We slashed the bag product in half. We just put it in half, right? Sliced it in half so that

Starting point is 00:22:32 everybody can afford it. If you want more than that, get the Calm Parenting Package that's 60% off. And then the Get Everything Package, which is everything, is like 70% off, right? The more stuff you invest in, the bigger the discount, right? You know how that works. If you need help financially, reach out to us. Email Casey, C-A-S-E-Y, at CelebrateColumn.com. Call us at 888-506-1871. Let us know what you're struggling with.

Starting point is 00:22:57 We'll try to address it on the podcast, and we'll try to help you out. One final thought is I want to encourage you, we're having, we have always had a lot, but we're noticing this a lot. We're having families use the downloads, the CDs as curriculum at home because there are a lot of people kind of homeschooling now and they're actually playing this because you have a lot of extra time playing Casey's CDs or playing some of the Strong Will Child CDs for the kids and having the kids write something on it or say like, hey, tell us, write down, what are two or three things

Starting point is 00:23:29 we can begin doing differently as a family? And it's really cool because it's a great learning opportunity right now to teach your kids what's really important, teach them how to control themselves as you learn how to do it. It's a really cool process. But anyway, let us know how we can help you.

Starting point is 00:23:44 It's what we exist to do. Talk to you soon. Love you all. Bye-bye.

Calm Parenting Podcast - “I Don’t Want Your Help!” How to Help Without the Fights.

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