Calm Parenting Podcast - Kids Irritating You & Each Other

Episode Date: April 7, 2020

Kids Irritating You & Each Other         Your kids are doing something annoying that irritates you or their siblings. Your first instinct is to tell them to stop and it escalates. But what if you could actually turn what usually irritates you into a bonding experience that both stops the behavior AND leads you closer to your child. This is pretty cool! Find more information at https://www.celebratecalm.com/curiositycamp. Email [e-mail] for help. 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. I bet that you and your kids are irritating each other. I bet you are. So welcome to the Calm Parenting Podcast. This is Kirk Martin, founder of Celebrate Calm. I know there's a lot of pain out there. I know there's a lot of anxiety. I know there is a lot of suffering. And I also know, because you're going to hear that from everybody else, and I'm not ignoring it, but you probably hear enough of that. I want to focus on the good things that are happening because we're going to hear that from everybody else, and I'm not ignoring it, but you probably hear enough of that.

I want to focus on the good things that are happening because we're hearing a lot of really good things from families that are being very purposeful. I'd sent out a note on April 1st to say, hey, this is the first day of the month. We're pretty much all together in this on lockdown for the entire month of April. So I want to use this time wisely. You know what,

it's a horrible time, but in some ways it's also a gift because during the regular part of the school year, it is rush, rush, rush all the time, all the time, all the time, and you're just barely surviving. Now there's different kinds of survival that we're doing now, but we've got the time right now. And so I want you to think forward to the end of the month. How can your family be different? What did you learn about yourself? What did you change about yourself?

What negative pattern did you break? Is it the reacting, the yelling, the lecturing? What new habit did you create? Start doing the opposite of the negative habit, and you'll probably form a good one. What did you learn about your child by listening, by just simply observing your child while things are slowed down? How does his brain work best? How does she communicate most effectively? How does she like to communicate? What are their unique talents that you've overlooked? What really motivates your child? What's one destructive habit you can break in

your marriage? What's a new relationship skill you can learn? I know you're like, I don't want to do this. I just want to get through this month. That's fine too. You can do that, but I'd rather have us be purposeful. And at the end of the month or three years, five years, 10 years, look back and say, you know what? We started going for family walks every day. We started going for walks after dinner every night. I stopped lecturing during that time. I started noticing what my kids are good at doing and affirming that. I followed my child's curiosity during that time.

And that really changed us as a family. See, now you can turn it into something that's positive that you look back on, even though it was a struggle, because most struggle produces, right? It's either going to crush you or, right? We said that before. You're either going to crush you or, right? We said that before, you're either going to grow apart or you're going to grow up. So here's what I want to talk about, the irritating kid. Now, there's a lot of different ways we could take this, but here's my focus on this podcast. And you're going to learn this as you work through our programs. We talk a lot

about one of my favorite things in life is to turn what is negative into positive, to take a situation that usually irritates you and not only get it to not irritate you, but turn it completely around so it's actually a bonding moment, right? So you actually take a moment during the day that usually would cause you to pull apart from your child, that would cause an escalation. And instead it brings you back together. I've done plenty of podcasts on turning emotional moments into bonding moments, right? Of like when you're usually yelling at your kid and instead you find yourself playing catch or cooking together or sitting on the floor building with Legos. I've done plenty of that. Let's just talk about not meltdowns, but just your kids do stuff that irritates you, right? Like breathing. And so just know you're as irritating to your kids as they are to you. So if you're walking around,

oh, I can't wait till this is done. So my kids are out of the house. Guess what? They're probably thinking the same thing. And so is your spouse. And if you're honest, you're probably annoying to yourself. I'm annoying to myself. The most annoying person in the world to me is myself. It's my own thoughts. It's my own negativity. It's my own catastrophizing. It's my own anxiety, my own control issues. I'm irritating.

So the good news is I can't control everybody else, but I can change myself and how I react to other people and myself. So let me give you, let's go with five ideas. So here's a cool one that's also very relevant because it just happened this week. So we get this email from this family like, hey, we downloaded your programs. We're working through it. We probably cut our power struggles in half. We haven't been yelling and we've been doing really, really well. Like this is working. And so, but we're still struggling with this issue. And here's what it is. They've got a son, typical strong willed child, and he makes a lot of noise with stuff with his hands, right? Now, some of you have kids who want to do that stuff like with their mouths, right?

Like they never stop like clicking. They're always doing stuff with their mouths and noises and that's irritating and I get it. In this particular case, it's their son is just, he's very sensory kid and he likes playing with things with his hands. And so set the scene, you're sitting around your living room or at the kitchen table, wherever it is, and you're trying to read or watch TV or do anything, and you keep hearing these discordant sounds, these irritating noises, and it is, it's irritating, right? And your son's not doing anything morally wrong. He's not doing anything mean, but what he's doing is irritating. So your typical response is going to be, hey, Jacob, stop. Hey, could you cut that out? Hey,

listen, that is irritating. Cut it out. And it just escalates. You know what? If you can't, you know what, just, you know what, if you can't be polite, just leave the room, just, right? And it kind of escalates and we take it personally. And I get it. It's irritating. But here's kind of how I worked with this family to work through this. And I do encourage you, as you listen to our materials, as you work through the programs, if you get stuck on something or you need clarification or help, email me and I'll be glad to help you out. It's one of the promises I made because we're all stuck at home for the next month, is if you will really take advantage of this time and dig into this stuff,

you will change your family. And I have time right now, because we're not traveling. I will work through this with you. And we, just so you know, we have slash prices on everything so that you can get the help that you need. We've already had,

we've had a really good response. And if you need help financially or in any other way, just email our son Casey, the strong-willed one, C-A-S-E-Y at CelebrateCalm.com, and he'll help you pick the right programs. Right now we have a special, and you just get everything we've ever created at the lowest price we've ever done

because we just want to use this time. We want these changes to happen. It's really cool because we're getting a lot of good testimonials from people like, hey, it's changing. We didn't have time before to work through everything, because we're rushing, rushing, rushing. But now we're really being purposeful during this time. So here's what I advise the family to do.

If you've listened to our stuff, you know that I love the phrase, I'm curious. So here's what the dad did. It's cool. I love this. Instead of just barking out things, dad goes and sits down on the floor next to his son and says, hey, I'm curious. It looks like it's something really interesting that you're playing with, with your hands. And I'm curious, what does that feel like? What do you get out of that? And so the son hands this thing that he was

playing with to his dad, and his dad starts playing with it too and making noises with it. Well, now the rest of the family's getting irritated because now we've got like dad and son being irritating. But watch what the dad did. He got up out of his chair. He sat down next to his son, and he said, I'm curious. And he entered into this instead of being irritated and said, I'm curious. Okay, now I kind of get why you would want to play with that. And so he starts cycling through the things that we talk about of playing to your kid's strengths. He knows his son is a very good kind of engineering brain. He's a little builder with Legos and taking things apart.

And so dad says, hey, I've got an idea. Why don't we go out to the garage? I've got an idea for some things that we could make. And so what this father and son ended up doing over the past few days is they're creating some things in different parts of the house, in the basement, in the garage, outside, sensory stuff that this kid can do because he likes, he's a very physical kid and he likes twisting stuff and he likes climbing things. So they created this little, it's kind of like a climbing wall outside on the lower part of the house where it's brick and the Sun is now starting to climb up that wall they have things out on the tree trees they

created a little obstacle course in the basement they're starting to create some some different activities some things where the Sun can get his sensory needs met and what's even better is the dad's starting to do some of this stuff with him. So they're actually bonding with it. So they're taking something that would have driven them apart and now it's bringing them together and they're learning about each other. Now they have this physical activity and you've got to have some physical stuff to burn off some of this energy from being inside all the time. See how that works? We just took something that would have been irritating,

we would have got on the child, and we would have made judgments about him. You're just being rude. Why do you always have to be annoying? And this is a kid who's used to being in trouble and who will just keep internalizing, there must be something wrong with me. Nobody likes me. And all he was doing was something that his body is craving. And instead, we said, I'm curious. We got down on the floor. And now we're giving him positive ways to get the same needs met so that he's not always

being irritating in the living room. And now it's a sign when the parents are hearing that, dad, mom, sister, they all are now starting to get a little bit more physical and especially dad and son. I love that. Here's another one. So this is from a little while ago, but I love the example. And you may not be able to use all of the strategies right now, but after the lockdown is over and things go back to normal at some point, you can use some of these and you can do some of it now. So I was with this family and the daughter likes to bake, but here's the problem with your kids who like to bake. They're not going to follow directions and they're always going to

leave a mess, right? And the parents, you know, one is an engineer and the other one is a perfectionist, so they can't stand the mess. So instead of appreciating their daughter cooking for them, all they ever notice is the mess she makes. And I hope that hits you in the gut a little bit, because that's what we do. Human nature, right? All we ever noticed in our kids is what they do wrong. Hey, nice job with the meal, but, right? And they're like, why would I even try anything? So here's where you turn it into a positive and you turn it around, right? Instead of creating a negative around it, we say, what if that mom or dad asked the daughter to bake something for a special event at the office so that now they have an

opportunity to praise her, right? Like what if one day she could get out of school, this is when school goes back, and caters a staff birthday party? You know, how cool would that be if at your company you now said, hey, I've got this daughter who's actually really good at cooking, just not cleaning up. She's really good. Could I have her cater this? We wouldn't have to pay as much for it because it's child labor. And I think she'd do a good job with it. And now your daughter, look at the project we're creating. And look, you can use this right now because you have the time. Honey, the world is shut down now for a couple months, but one day it's going to start back.

There are companies that do catering. There are parents who do birthday parties for their kids, and they semi-cater those. What if you set up a business where, because you're good at cooking, you came up with a catering business menu, a birthday party menu, and you came up with ideas and a price list and we could start advertising that. Now we could start during this time, we could start playing around with different recipes and we could start learning how much does it cost to create 30, to make 30 birthday, birthday, what am I talking, little muffins,

little birthday, what the heck, not just cakes, can't make 30 cakes, that would, cupcakes, thank you brain. So how much would it cost to create 30 cupcakes? What about the balloons? What about all the other things? If I had you come in and I have a staff of 10 people and I wanted you to cater a staff meeting, how much would that cost? What would you make for us? How long would that take you to make? How many of those things could you bake the night before?

Can any of it be done and put in the freezer now and then taken out before then? Really work through it. Work through the math. By the way, it's a fantastic way to teach your kids all the things they're supposed to be learning in school is through being able to look all the math that goes into all the ingredients that need to be done. How are you going to do that? What are the ingredients, right? Listing that out, writing down, making plans, right? Writing out the menu. How about working on a little website that you can build? You can go right on to, there's all kinds of services right now. I just

actually created a new one by myself because we're going to do, I'm just going to tease services right now. I just actually created a new one by myself because we're going to do, I'm just going to tease it right now. We're going to do this family camp thing where we're going to teach families how to run a business like this. And it's a family camp that we're going to do. And I just created my own website the other day. It took me four hours to do. Now, it doesn't look that hot yet, but I did it by myself and it cost me $12. So why can't your son or daughter, in this case, your daughter, begin building a website that costs $12, right? Don't give her the money, make her work for it around the house and earn the 12 bucks to go on and create this little website for her catering business. And in the course of doing this, she learns a ton by learning how to navigate this,

this whole, this new website. She has to research which are the best websites to use, which ones shouldn't use, how to use the graphics. Now she's got to write because she has to write marketing language for this little business of hers. And so look, there's all kinds of ways you can use this. And then maybe she pays her brother or sister who is OCD to clean up after her and to have a sous chef. Now you have a way that you turn something that was just negative into building a business, and who cares back when fall time comes if she gets out of school one day to come and cater the party or the business meeting at the office? Would she not be learning a lot more by having to get all the ingredients, get everything together, get it over there to your office and get it set up, and how to interact professionally with grown adults and see what the business environment is like. And for her to be praised by 10 of your colleagues

who say, hey, that was the best meal we've ever had catered. It was actually fairly healthy, tasted good. Man, you've got a future in this. And now eight or 10 other people are praising her instead of at school, her being picked on because she can't sit still and she just wants what she wants to do. And now she's earning money and now she's reinvesting it in her business or she's buying the stuff that she wants and she's got to dress the right way because she's got to impress her new clients, right? When she's catering that birthday party, it turns out that she's actually really good with kids as well. And you start discovering all these things that, right? Just think how beautiful that is that she is now, you're now discovering all of her gifts and talents that

you didn't even know existed. And when she comes into your office, she's greeting people, looking them in the eye and say, hi, my name's Kaylee. This is my Kaylee's catering service. And by the way, I also do birthday parties because I know all of you have kids. And so here's my business card. And so if you like my meal and how I did this, I'm actually really great with kids. And I'll turn it into a great birthday party. I'll actually come up with activities because your kids probably have sensory issues like I do. And look, she begins building a mini empire doing this. And now at school, she has a reason to do school well because she's got a vision for her life of what she's going to do one day with this catering business.

Does that make sense? And now you can use her big heart and say, why don't we make some food for that older couple down the street? And we'll make sure it's all sanitary and we'll leave it out for them and we'll ring their doorbell, but we'll keep six feet of distance from them. And we'll say, Hey, we just wanted to be a blessing to you in our neighborhood. And we just want you to know that we appreciate you. And we just want to do something nice. And I made this. And by the way, you could also do this. Look, this is awesome. I didn't plan on this, but this is cool. And so I encourage you. I don't know when we're going to drop this podcast. We may have the family camp up by then.

So look for it at CelebrateCalm.com because it would be an awesome thing to do with your family. I'm loving this. I started out not planning to do this, but this is the dynamism that comes from really engaging with your kids and being curious about them and seeing where it leads. Because now you can take a meal down to that older couple and say, hey, I'd really like your feedback. I left your food out on the porch, on the front porch, and I'd like you to taste it. Here's my email address, and I'd like to get your feedback. What did you enjoy? What didn't you like?

What would be better? What would go with that? How did you like that? And then when times go back to normal and you can visit a retirement center or you can go and feed the homeless, why can't you start going and feeding the homeless and getting feedback from homeless people? I am telling telling you there are a lot of homeless people who are

very very bright people who are just down on their luck or have had some different issues go on when we lived in Nashville we went every Friday night fed the homeless in downtown Nashville under this bridge and it was one of the best experiences not because we were just giving the people who were needy which is awesome we got a lot out of it from them. Casey had homeless guys teaching him because we were in Nashville. So they all moved there to make it music. And then, you know, it doesn't really work out for most of them. So there are all these people who were teaching him how to play guitar. And so you enter into this. It's a cool thing, but now we turned it into a bonding opportunity

instead of just one more power struggle. Does that make sense? I'm going to stop there. I had a bunch of other examples, but I want to keep it a little bit short, and I really like that example. So how are you going to use that? How are you going to use that? What irritates you about your kids? Enter into it. Be curious about it. See where it leads, right? Start bonding and building the relationship because when you build the relationship and that mom and that dad are now spending time and entering in and bonding over something, now you've got a relationship and relationships change behavior. Connection builds compliance. It's a really cool thing. So if you want help with anything,

email Casey, C-A-S-E-Y, celebratecalm.com. Look up the family camp thing. I'm going to try to get that up on the website really, really quickly. And if you have not gotten our programs, get them now because it's the lowest price we've ever done. If you need help financially, emails will help you out, but love your kids, enjoy your kids. We love you. And we're here to help you out. Let's make April a time where we did something really cool and changed our family. So years from now, when we look back to that weird time during that COVID-19 pandemic, we can say that was the time we put down the marker in our family. We changed and we changed for the better. It was a really brutal, horrible, awful time of life for people. And we were stuck in the house, but we changed our family. Now we remember

that. It's awesome. Love you all. Talk to you soon. Bye-bye.