Calm Parenting Podcast - Kids Not Living Up to Potential?

Episode Date: September 26, 2021

Kids Not Living Up to Potential?Your child does the bare minimum to get by, resists you, or isn't living up to his potential. Your lectures and anxiety cause the exact opposite result you're looking for. So how can you motivate this child and build a closer relationship? NEW!! Parent BootCamps in Washington, DC, Dallas, TX, & Kansas City, KS. Click here to learn more:https://celebratecalm.com/bootcamp/  Can't make it to a live BootCamp? Schedule a Phone Consultation or go through NO B.S Program. Let us know what YOU are struggling with and we’ll give you an honest recommendation. Email [e-mail] and he'll help you out!  Featured Sale: Our Most Popular 4 Programs for $99 (Reg. $397) Become that confident parent your kids need, equipped with 100 practical strategies to finally stop the defiance, yelling, and power struggles that 750,000 other parents like you have used. Think of everything else you’ve spent $99 or more on. This will actually change your home and relationships, now and forever. This week only–all 4 programs (reg. $99 each) for only $99 total. Click here to learn more. Email [e-mail] for the most helpful service on the planet or to customize your bundle!  Want to book a LIVE EVENT in 2021/2022?! We are now booking IN PERSON and Zoom events for schools, PTAs, churches, synagogues, corporations, and agencies! Simply email Casey@CelebrateCalm with LIVE in the subject line and he'll share a one-page proposal within hours. It's EASY!  Questions? Need help deciding on the best tools for your family? Email [e-mail] and Casey will help you personally! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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listening to the Calm Parenting Podcast. So on this episode, we're going to address that issue and try to get you, you know, try to really help you be free from that, right? And all of this lecturing and all of this micromanaging, because look, if that worked, you wouldn't be listening. And if micromanaging your kids worked, you wouldn't have all of these struggles, right? But they're never going to wake up and say, mom, dad, I didn't really want to do what you wanted me to do. But after you lectured me for the 15th time, just kept going on and on, all of a sudden the light bulb went off

and all of a sudden I see your wisdom and want you to do, want to do what you want me to do. But you know what part of the real issue is? They're not doing things the way you want it done. And that's your own control issues and your own anxiety because you're afraid of and scared about their future. And I will tell you, I've done this for 20 years. I've been through this myself, struggled with the same exact things. It is your anxiety that is the issue. It will cause you to project out into the future. It will cause you to micromanage. And the reason I don't do blame or guilt, not at all. I want you to be free from these things so that one, you can just enjoy life. Two,

you can enjoy your strong willed child. Three, so you don't keep creating power struggles that don't need to exist with your child. Fourthly, because it doesn't work, right? Anxiety causes the exact opposite response that you want from your kids, right? When you say, hey, go on, move, move, get to the car, get to the car. Instead of running more quickly, your kids move more slowly. Why? Because they know that when you're in that anxious mode, nothing they do will please you. Right? Your anxiety cannot be satisfied because no matter how well your child does something,

you'll always say, hey, nice job, but, and you always want more. And always say your kids know what mood you're in before you do in the morning. They can hear the anxiety in your voice because when you wake them up in the morning, they've got to get out of bed because we're going to get to school. We're going to get to school. You're already anticipating the fight and the battle and it ends up your anxiety and your lecturing makes it worse instead of making it better, right? When you lecture your kids constantly, it backfires. They ignore you. They discount what you say. One of our great phrases is, the more words you use, the less valuable they become. When you get on your kids about every little thing, they don't thank you for being so conscientious and micromanaging them.

They fight you. And when you react to them pushing your buttons, they are now in control of you. And the truth is that you and I create so many power struggles over issues that don't matter, all because of your own anxiety. And the other reason I want you to be free from this is it will absolutely destroy your relationship with this child and destroy any trust and they will not come to you and they will stop listening to you. And the good news is that's all within your control. So look, I'm going to share a couple things with you, but if you need help, reach out to our son Casey, C-A-S-E-Y at CelebrateCalm.com. He was our strong-willed child

who I never, ever thought he was going to live up to his potential because I just didn't see it. He wasn't doing it my way. And the more that I pushed, the more he resisted. When I learned to step back, when I learned to step back from micromanaging, from lecturing, from being on him, from pointing out the negatives all the time. And I gave him some space to step up. He did. Now, he just didn't do it the way I would want him to do it. And he didn't do it in my timing. And your kids aren't going to. And that's an unrealistic expectation of yourself and of your kids. And again, it will create so many fights and it'll cause your kids to shut down. And you know something else that happens that's kind of insidious? I've seen this happen with a

lot of boys and their dads specifically, but it can be any of the gender mom or dad. But it happens with boys where dad's always kind of not pleased. Son can never live up to his expectations. And sometimes that son will sabotage his own success and mess up. And you know what he's saying? You know what, dad, you've never been happy with me. I've never really pleased you. And you always thought I was going to be a failure. So guess what? Look what I am right now. And they'll do it in this self-destructive way that destroys them as a way, immature of course, of getting back at their dad and of saying, look, see what you wanted. It just came true. And so I want to release us from that

so that we can actually enjoy these kids and we can actually motivate them. So if you need help, reach out to Casey, C-A-S-E-Y, celebratecalm.com. Tell us about your family, ages, your kids, what you're struggling with. We will reply personally and we'll give you ideas and strategies and tips and insight that you need. And if you're interested in any of our programs, Casey can put together a custom package within your budget. We've got sales going on on the Get the Bag special, which is a particular one where we focus a lot on 30 Days to Calm about breaking these generational patterns. So it cost me about $3,000 in therapy over a long period of time to do this, but I figured out how to break the generational pattern that I got from my dad so that I could finally control my

own emotions, control my own perfectionism, control issues, and anxiety so I could see clearly to actually motivate and discipline in ways that worked. And so I boiled that down into a really cool program that if you work through it, it will change you inside. Not just as a parent, it will just change your entire life because you carry so much anxiety over everything while you're driving a car, while you're at the post office, and you're always, oh, oh, oh, oh, and you can feel it inside. It feels so good to be free from that. We can help you with that. So anyway, let us know. So here's the deal. Your kids aren't living up to their potential, and you get nervous about their future because you project out, and you think, oh, if my four-year-old can't do simple things like put his shoes on or listen to me, or my eight-year-old won't follow simple directions.

If my 14-year-old isn't doing his homework and he's not really applying himself and trying too hard, how is he ever going to be successful? Who is going to marry him? Who would possibly hire him? This child's going to be living in my basement. And all this anxiety and fear of like, oh, does that mean I'm going to fail as a parent? What do my own parents say? And what do other people say?

Because all their kids are perfect and taking honors classes, and here's my child. And I need you to not listen to all of that. All those voices, you can't listen to those. That is fear. And I don't want that because what happens is you constantly lecture. Even though science is very clear that kids learn from their own experiences by doing things themselves, not from being told. And especially strong will kids, they are stove touchers. They have to touch the hot stove. So this anxiety will drain you emotionally, physically, and it ruins relationships.

And besides that, it doesn't work. Just be honest with yourself. I work with a lot of dads. We do a lot of phone consultations. Dad's like, well, you know, when I was a kid, he just needs to get with the program. And I was like, I know, but you've been doing it this way for four years, for 12 years. If your approach were going to work, I think you would have seen that already, right? Like when you're in a work world and you have a certain strategy, business

strategy, if it's not working and you're not getting measurable positive results, you figure out maybe the strategy isn't right, right? And then you adjust, right? You come up with a different way of doing it. And a lot of this, look, so here's the thing. Here are the messages that we send to our kids when we micromanage and when we lecture like that. First message, I don't trust you to make a good decision, so I'm going to keep badgering you. Little aside, there's good reason for you not to trust some of your kids because they don't always make good decisions, but that's part of the process because they have to learn from it and they have to own it. Okay, but it starts to send a message of, I don't trust you to make a good decision, so I need to keep badgering you. You can't actually do it on your own. After all, what would I do if I didn't have to be responsible for you? See, this isn't

really about you, son or daughter. It's about me. And that is a very hard message to deliver to you, but I want you to look inside and see if that's not true, that sometimes what we're doing for our children isn't really for them. It is to satisfy something inside of you because you like to feel like you're doing something because that feels like you have some control and you're also trying to satisfy your anxiety, but you're taking it out on your kids. Second message this sends, I don't actually believe that you can be successful, son or daughter of mine. So I spend 95% of my energy trying to fix what I think is wrong with you instead of spending that time cultivating your natural gifts, talents, and passions.

Watch this. Because of my anxiety over your future, I am going to harp on you over and over again. So no, I don't trust that you have what it takes. And I'm more worried about my own legacy because if you don't turn out well, then I will have been a failure and I can't live with that. That is a very subtle message that lives underneath that. Third message, this problem isn't really yours, it's mine. See, I have this vision of how life was supposed to be and how life is supposed to be. I have this vision of how you're supposed to do everything. And I even have a timeline attached to it. And when anything comes against or messes

up my agenda, it throws me off. And then I feel like I have to pounce and try to control and change it. I also feel compelled to make our family life perfect. Because some of you have grown up with a really false expectation of what family life is supposed to be. Or you had a really horrible childhood and you're trying to create this perfect family life. And in the course of doing it, you make everybody, including yourself, miserable, right? Because I can't. So I'm going to try to make all these little insignificant things just so, because that will give me the illusion that things are actually okay. So if any one of those three things resonate with you, let's change it.

Don't feel guilty. I don't do guilt and blame. I don't want you to feel guilty. I just want you to own your own stuff like I want to own my own stuff, right? And I had a guy on a phone consultation last week admit this, which I loved. He said, I realize it's my negative energy that gets the kids wound up at night, right? My kids feed off of my energy. And so here's the really cool thing about this. The only person in life you can truly control is yourself. And many of us have a problem with that, right? But if that's true, and if the only person in life you can truly control is yourself, and if the quickest way

to change your child's response and your child's behavior is to first control your own tone of voice, your own words, your own actions, then you have complete power to completely change your family life very quickly because you only have to control yourself. But if you're intent on trying to go through life trying to control your spouse, your kids, the weather, traffic, politicians, other people who disagree with you, you will be frustrated and you will make other people frustrated and it simply won't work and it will simply destroy relationships. So my challenge to you, or I can say my encouragement, but I'd rather make it a challenge. I'm in a mood to make a challenge, is let's break the generational patterns.

I haven't talked about that a lot lately, but that's what we're after. My dad was career military. My way or the highway approach, fear and intimidation with his kids. So guess what the four of us, the four boys, my dad's four boys grew up doing? Same thing with our own kids until we learned, no, I get to break those generational patterns. I get to do it differently, not just for myself, but I get to

do it so that my kids don't grow up repeating the same patterns. Some of you are resentful, right? After all I do for you, because that's what your mom said to you, because it was a manipulative way of her saying, because I've done so much for you, you owe me to behave, right? Mine was a little bit more fear-based, which is, son, you need to do exactly what I tell you to do because if you don't do that, I'm not sure I can behave and you don't want to see me angry. See, it's both manipulative and it's immature. And I want to break those patterns. And that's what I'll highlight on this one. The 30 days to

calm is learning how to dig in and do that and do the opposite. It's one of your clues. Start doing the opposite of what you normally do and you'll start to get the opposite result and that's a good thing. So look, that's what I want to focus on on this podcast is let's work on breaking that anxiety and the lecturing

and I want you to dig in there a little bit. If you go through these programs, I'll make you a promise, if you go through them and you email me and say, hey going through this 30 days to calm thing, here's one of my triggers but I'm really stuck on it. I will reply personally to you. This is one of the things I most love doing is saying, oh let's work on that. I like, here's another one. I like turning moments that irritate you, those triggers, into bonding opportunities with your kids. Because I believe the very thing that irritates you most, we have the power to turn that around and instead makes that a time of day, a situation in which we actually bond with our kids. And I'd like to do that with you.

So either go to the website. You can get the bag. It's a smaller package of things, a little bit less expensive for those who need that, but still very packed, packed with strategies. Or if you just want to get everything, that'd be smart. There's a much better deal and you just get everything. Or the Calm Parenting Package. Doesn't matter to me. Just let us know what you need and reach out to Casey. But focus on that this week. If we can help you, let us know. Casey at CelebrateCalm.com. By the way, we're on the road. We will be in Florida and Texas this coming a couple weeks later in October. Arlington, Virginia. Indianapolis. A couple places in Indiana, actually. And then off to Kansas City. And then, yeah, we've got some other

places coming up. So if you're interested in bringing us to your town, we love the live events. Reach out to Casey for that. Anyway, thank you all very much for joining us. Love you all. Talk to you soon. Bye-bye.