Calm Parenting Podcast - Morning Madness: 10 Ways to Get Kids Up Without Fights

Episode Date: December 12, 2017

Morning Madness: 10 Ways to Get Kids Up Without Fights Tired of morning routine battles? Kirk provides 10 practical, concrete (and even very funny!) strategies to get kids off to school without the yelling and fights. You can try these tomorrow morning! Email [e-mail] with the word MORNING in the subject line or call 888-506-1871 to book Kirk at your school/church or get help with our resources. 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. Hello, everyone. This is Kirk Martin, founder of Celebrate Calm, and you know, I want to dedicate this podcast to Jen the dog walker. I got this email a few weeks ago from this great mom, and she's like, I've got this strong-willed child, and everybody just thinks I'm crazy, but I'll go walk my dog, and I'll listen to your podcast. And I find myself like talking to myself saying like, yeah, yeah, you're right.

I'm not crazy after all. So Jen, if you're listening to this, you're a great mom. And all the moms out there and dads who put all their time into trying to help these kids who are so challenging. We appreciate how hard it is and we appreciate you listening. So thank you.

Anyway, I wanted to go over this today, morning routine, some different ideas for morning routine. And, you know, one of our key principles is the quickest way to change your child's behavior is to first control your own. And even with morning routine, that is so, so true. Tomorrow morning, the way your kids wake up is so dependent oftentimes on how you wake them up. Because listen, I promise if you rush in tomorrow morning, guys, come on, we got to go to school. Come on, let's go. Let's go. Let's do all your stuff. Come on, we got to

go. You may as well just go drink because it's not going to work. So I want you to kind of change your tone in the morning. And I want to run through a bunch of different ideas. And I'll try to remember to post these on our Facebook page, some of these ideas. It's Celebrate Calm. You can find all our stuff on CelebrateCalm.com. We've got all kinds of stuff there, Facebook page, all of that. So let me go through a few different ideas for you. So sometimes your kids don't want to go to school because they have a lot of anxiety. And so some of your kids have social anxiety, they have anxiety about taking

tests, they have anxiety about all kinds of new experiences, and they just maybe don't like school. So one of the most powerful things you can do is have another adult at school, whether it's a teacher, an assistant principal, a school counselor, someone, give your child a job to do. So when you wake them up in the morning, or before you put them to bed the prior night, and say, oh, you know, Ms. Henderson said she really needs your help, because you're really good with electronics, and she said she needs you there like five minutes early every morning, because she really relies on you. How many of your kids love helping other people and they love feeling needed? So when you wake them up in the morning, it's not about mommy or daddy wanting them to go to school or making them go. They're

motivated because they like helping other people and they feel needed. I had this bus driver. I had this kid who didn't want to go to school because every time he got on the school bus, he would hear the other kids laughing in the back of the school bus and he thought they were laughing about him. And they weren't, but many of your kids think that. And so it's tough. So I went and talked to this bus driver and here's what she told this kid. Listen, dude, I need your help. I need, I have to keep track of all the kids who get on and off my bus. And I've got to add all that stuff up in my head. And I'm not very good at math. But I know that you're really good at doing that. And so would you do me a favor, I really need you on the bus

every day. Because I'm going to give you a notepad. And you're going to sit up front, you're going to keep track on that piece of paper. Now the cool thing was this kid was pretty good at math. And he was a little bit OCD. so this job was perfect for him. So funny story the mom told me a few weeks later was he woke up one morning, and he was sick, legitimately sick. He wasn't just faking it because many of our kids fake being sick, and then some of your kids don't. They just have stomach aches all the time, and the stomach being upset is all about anxiety.

And so mom's like, honey, listen, you're sick. Do you want to say you can stay home today? You should really stay home. And her son says, mom, school bus driver isn't very smart. She needs my help. I need to go ride the bus. So think about that, giving them jobs to do at school. Very, very helpful. They'll often find that motivating. One of my favorite things to do with kids is to draw them in and take kind of a soft approach, a relational approach to it. So, you know, tomorrow morning, walk in and instead of rushing your child around, rushing, rushing to get up, get up, get up. And I know some of you have three, four, five, six kids, so you don't have long, but this only takes 20 seconds. Wake your child up with a compliment tomorrow,

right? So you've got, you know, who knows, 12, 20 hours to think of something they have actually done well, but find something they've done, right? Or a quality that you really admire in them, right? Like the fact that they're different and they don't mind being different. The fact that they apparently don't care about hygiene. I'm kidding. You could say, listen, Jacob, you know what was really cool? After dinner last night, you brought your fork back from the table to the sink. Maybe next week you'll bring a spoon and in a few months you'll bring all of your dishes back from the table to the sink. You know, I'm kidding, but we always praise for progress, not perfection. But compliment them. I'll give you a challenge. Take one of the qualities that irritates you most about your kids,

let's say it's pig-headed obstinance, and flip it around and tomorrow morning say, you know what I love about you? Your persistence. Because when you care about something, you know how to get it and you go for it. And I love that quality. And that's all you have to do.

Don't make a big deal out of it. I remember when Casey was about 11 or 12, 10, 11, 12, something like that. Of course, he didn't want to get up and go to middle school, and so he was really into blues music, right, which is insightful because many of your kids are like old souls. Why would a kid be into blues music, but it's kind of old soul music. So I remember I would go in and say, Case, listen, look, this is a long, straggly haired, hoodie, sweatshirt kid who slept in his hoodie and wore it all the time, didn't really change his clothes. And he never woke up with like, father, it's wonderful to see you this morning. The sun is shining. It's a day filled with opportunity, right? My son's not that kid.

He never was. Now, you give him enough coffee now, he's kind of like that. But he's 24. So I woke him up, and I was like, hey, so listen. I downloaded this new John Lee Hooker song I found. Old bootleg cut of it. Really cool. Listen, if you get up, get your shower, get ready to get downstairs while we're fixing breakfast together,

we can listen to a little bit of John Lee Hooker. See, there was a reason for him to get out of bed. It wasn't me yelling at him to get out of bed. Now think about this. Look, this is what we're really saying to many of our kids. Hey, come on, it's really early in the morning and I know you didn't sleep well last night, but get up because you need to go to that place where you're always on red on the behavior chart and you get in trouble a lot. And listen, in a place where you don't always have a lot of friends and you get in trouble, come on, don't you want to hurry and do

the five things you least want to do in the morning, which is get a shower and eat something and brush your teeth and brush your hair and pack your stuff and get off to school? Aren't you excited? Right? And they're like, no like no they're not and so I try to draw them in now let's say for this discussion that the carpool leaves or the school bus league picks up the child up at 7 22 a.m well I'm going to create a buffer zone because I know that many of our kids dawdle and they're just going to be late at times. And so I want to build a buffer. And I say, here's the deal. We're leaving where school bus comes at 7.16 a.m. I like interesting time limits.

So here's the deal. Every morning, I'm going to get up a little bit early. I'm going to get ready for work. I'm going to have all my stuff done. Everything is going to be done by 7.09. I will be sitting at the kitchen table or I'll be sitting on the living room floor. Whoever is up and who is completely ready by 7.09, and I mean completely, everything's done. Your shoes are on. You're not waiting for that last moment to just go do the couple of things that you forgot to do. Nope, we're not doing that. If everything is done, your backpack is by the front door at 7.09. We will have seven minutes, and I will give you seven minutes of

undivided attention, not rushing you around, and I will do whatever you want to do. If you want to play a little game, let's play a game. You want to play Uno? I'm all in. If you want to read a book, I'll read a book with you. You know those YouTube videos that you love more than anything in the world, and I despise and hate more than anything in the world? I'll watch seven minutes of YouTube videos with you and I'll actually act interested if you are ready by 7.09. Now, by the way, that was sarcasm in there, so don't say those parts that you hate the YouTube videos.

Your kids already know that. But what they will respect is the fact that you're doing something you don't like because it's important to them and they got ready on time. Now, what happens if your kids don't get ready on time and they're late? So I always like kind of a carrot and stick approach in the sense of a soft approach, relational approach, and then a kind of a tougher approach, which by the way is also relational because in good discipline, it will always draw your child closer to you and build more trust. So let me demonstrate. So my son was a toddler and there was a period of time he had to go to a lot of different schools because he got kicked out of different schools. And so we had

to experiment with him and try different things until I really got celebrate calm going and kind of knew what I was doing and could kind of help his teachers out with him. So there was a period of time where I had to drive him to school, and he would be late. Well, what does he care? So instead of getting him to respect me, because one of our core principles in controlling yourself and not other people is I can't demand respect from other people, but I can always demonstrate self-respect. And one of the reasons, by the way, that many of your kids don't respect your time is because you don't respect your time because all

you ever do is stuff for them. You don't do anything for yourself. You revolve your life around your kids and that's not healthy. It seems sweet. It's not. You need to do some things for yourself to demonstrate that your time is important. So I got tired of yelling at my son. So I said, Case, here's the deal. My time is really important to me. I respect my time. We leave every morning at 716. For every minute that you are late and that you cause me to be late, for every minute of my time that you take from me, you will forfeit 15 minutes of your free time, your screen time tonight. Try me. So first morning, he gets up, comes in, gets in the car because here's what I did. I got ready. I got myself ready. I didn't badger him. I gave him some space. I went and sat in my car,

and I would always go and sit in my car, and of course, my dad was career military, so I always liked to be early, plus I have a lot of anxiety. So I'm in the car early, and I learned to take a book so that I could read, because I like reading, and then I wasn't like laying on the horn,

waking up all of the neighbors and screaming at my son to come. So I'm in there at 7.16. There's no Casey. 7.17. Nope. 7.18. Finally, he rolls into the car, happy as a clam at 7.19. I just hold up my phone showing 7.19. And he's like, seriously, dad, three, three minutes, you're going to get on me for being three minutes late? And I said, all I want you to know is that that three minutes that you just took from me is going to cost you 45 minutes of your screen time tonight. Now, what did he say? Father, thank you for being consistent and following through. It makes me feel safe as a child. No, he didn't say that. He had a big meltdown. He had a big tantrum. I can't believe

that you do that three minutes late. It's not a big deal. And what I was communicating is, in fact, it is a big deal. It's a big deal to me because my time's important. But you can see how I'm doing it. I'm not yelling at him. I'm not like, you know what? One day you're going to have to be responsible in life. And if you can't learn to be responsible with your time now, all those lectures are just, in all honesty, one, they don't work. Two, they end up becoming very personal. And they end up demeaning your kids. You're never going to be successful because what you're doing at age 7 or 14 or 16 means you're never going to be able to do it.

And that's just not true. Right? It's just our own frustration. So when I discipline, it's very low key. There's no drama. I'm just letting them know, hey, three minutes cost you 45 minutes, and I don't need you to be happy. In fact, I expect you to be really upset.

And what I know is you're not upset at me. You're upset at yourself because you know that you messed up. So tonight when you get home, 45 minutes of lost screen time. So the drive to school, needless to say, was pretty brutal and it was ugly and he was upset. So he got out of the car and I said, hey, have a good day. And what did he do? He slammed the door. Now you can discipline for that, but the truth is I knew he was upset at himself because he had messed up and he knows that I'm a person of integrity and that when I tell him something, I mean it. So anyway, pick him up from school, get home, right, to school

work. He goes to play his video games and I popped in his room and I said, hey, just wanted to remind you, you've got 15 minutes of play time, screen time tonight because you lost 45. Seriously? You know what? You're supposed to be a parenting speaker this is the dumbest thing i've right so he's got his big tantrum again listen there's no need to lecture in it i just said you know make your 15 minutes count so i'll see you tomorrow morning 7 16 in the car so you know along the way i would say occasionally like hey if you want some help i know morning routine's not all that fun if you need some help i'll give you some tools help you out teach how to be there but i trust that you're capable of being ready at 7.16 because that's when I'm going to leave.

And you know what happened over time? He got ready and he was there at 7.16. Now, here's the cool part where we began to work in different things is I would begin and say, listen, if you get in the car a little bit early, because I don't mind being early. In fact, I mind being early, in fact, I love being early, we can listen to some music that you love, right? I'll listen to the stuff that you love. I'll listen to your new albums. In fact, I'll pull up every time you get in, I'll pull up some John Lee Hooker, or I'll pull up something. We'll try to stump each other with the music. And you know what happened? And this is a big principle we teach is you can take

things that are usually really irritating and turn them into a bonding experience so that instead of the child's whole childhood being fighting and screaming yelling over morning getting you out of the door in fact instead it became a bonding experience for us and listen you've got multiple kids it's still the same principle there's usually one kid or two that are kind of a little bit more difficult like that, but the same principle applies with that. So a couple more things here. And by the way, I love doing these at live events because then I can get questions from people, right? We can really do this with, we do a workshop sometimes, a live event, which is fantastic because what we go through is kind of calm 24-7. We go through like morning routine, getting out the door, right?

Then we get home from school and we cover homework and we cover music lessons and sibling fights and then we do dinner and we do bedtime and we do all the different power struggles in a 24-hour day. So if you want us to do that live, it's really, really powerful. Here's the cool thing. We can train your parents, teachers, and we can actually do student training all on the same day. We're the only organization

that does that, so it's pretty cool. So email my son, Casey, C-A-S-E-Y, at celebratecalm.com, or call 888-506-1871. Email us, and you can find all of our contact information at Celebrate Calm. All of our sales, everything's at Celebrate Calm. Email us with the name of your school, your organization, your church, and the city and state, and we will come. And it's a really, really cool, it's just fantastic training because it's very practical like this stuff with a lot of energy. Plus, it can be kind of funny at times. So, let me do two more funny at times. So let me do two more examples for you. I'm making things a challenge. I like to make things a challenge for

younger kids. Sometimes I'll wake up and say, hey, bet you can't get dressed in the closet. Bet you can't get dressed in the backyard. Bet you can't get dressed underneath your bed, in a closet, wherever. Make it something more difficult. Music sometimes is very effective for younger kids. I put on music and I wake them up to music or I get them dressed, get them doing, hey, bet you can't get your shoes on before your favorite Bob the Builder song is over, right? Here's a great one too. Getting them moving in the morning. Hey, I hid your favorite Lego fire engine in the backyard or in the basement. Bet you can't find it before breakfast is ready. So what I've done is instead of barking orders, I gave them a challenge, something they're good at doing. I got their brains focused on doing something very specific and concrete, something they're good at doing,

finding that Lego fire engine in the backyard. I got them out of bed. They had to get dressed to go out to look for something in the backyard or better yet, just throw their clothes out in the backyard and let them get dressed out there because many of your kids would love doing that. It doesn't matter to me. By the way, let your kids eat breakfast outside. Who cares? You don't have to have every meal together. How many of you out there don't like, you know, other people's voices in the morning, right? You don't have to have every meal together. How many of you out there don't like, you know, other people's voices in the morning, right? You don't like to hear your spouse's voice in the morning. How many of you don't like to hear it at night either?

Just kidding. But, look, here's the thing. So if they eat outside, some of your kids, it would be nice for them to have space from each other. So one eats outside while he's playing with the birds and the chipmunks, and it's peaceful, and that's fine. Nothing wrong with that. But when I get him completing his chore outside, not his chore, but his challenge of finding the treasure hunt, that's a cool thing. Now his brain's moving and he's doing things and it's a better way to do it. Here's a little variation. Tell your child this, hey, if you get up, you get ready by 7.09, you can hide something in the backyard or in a basement

because you may be dressed for work. Hide in a basement. I'll see if I can find it in seven minutes that we have. See if you can stump me. Again, I'm giving them a reason to get out of bed. It's very purposeful. I've got a cool one here. It's a funny one, and very few of you will do it, but I guarantee you,

you will get a strong-willed little boy out of bed tomorrow morning if you say this. Hey, guess where you get to eat your breakfast this morning? You're going to eat it outside, out of the dog's dish, and I'm not even going to clean the dog's dish out. Now, little boys largely are very nasty little kids, and they love anything that's gross. And I guarantee you, many of your kids are going to get out, and they're going to go outside, and they'll get on all fours and sit and eat their breakfast out of the dog's dish. And by the way, you can clean it out first. But your kids will have much more street cred if they get to go to school and say,

guess where I ate my oatmeal this morning out of the dog's dish and my mom didn't even clean it out. And they'll be cool for about five seconds. Anyway, change up, change it up. Ownership. Ownership is really cool in the morning. I like to give kids ownership. And my basic approach is this. Listen, school bus comes 7-16. I don't care. Listen, I've got one goal for you in the morning. I don't care what you look like. I don't care what you smell like.

I don't care what's in your stomach. I just want you on that school bus 7-16. Listen, if you want to sleep in the clothes that you're going to wear to school the next day, that's awesome. By the way, let your kids do that. If you don't like that, that's your own issue and you have control issues and you need to let go of your embarrassment, right? Because if your kids, they're just going to wear the same thing every day, so just let them sleep in it. And here's why I say, listen, you can sleep in until 7.15. Roll out of bed because I know you hide food underneath your bed and hoard it there. Grab a Pop-Tart under the bed, run,

jump on the back of the school bus, and at the end of the day, I'm going to say, nice job making the bus on time. Now, the problem is, I don't like the way they make the bus because I want them to get up early because I want them to get exercise, and I want them to eat blueberries and avocado because it's good healthy fat and antioxidants in the blueberries so they're ready to learn. I want all of that, but none of your kids are going to get up just from you lecturing them about how important it is to have a nutritious breakfast. They're not. So give them some ownership. So here's a really cool email I got from this great mom in Texas. So she's got a six-year-old and a five-year-old son. And this is ownership. And I'll kind of close up with this. This morning, I told them I was confident that they knew the morning routine,

and I challenged them to do their morning checklist. You like that? That's a good mom there with her checklist, a little bit of OCD herself, and be out the door by 7.15 as usual without mom's assistance, and that's huge. So the kids squealed with excitement and ran around busily doing whatever they wanted and in whatever order they wanted it was very she underlined that very uncomfortable for me and i had to grit my teeth but guess what without one reminder or nudge they did everything they needed to do and cheerfully left at 7.15 for school. Oh, the milk carton in their pajamas needed to be picked up. But I think I'd happily do those small things rather than have the drama in the mornings. So

that giving kids ownership and some space to do a morning routine differently than you would do it, I love that idea. It gives them a little bit of space in the morning. Anyway, try some of these things. Listen, if you want more help, if you want us to come speak, email us. We have specials on our CDs because we have ideas. Like in this idea, I think I gave probably about 10 or 12 ideas just for morning routine, just in the podcast. On the audio CDs, we go through, we give you scripts to use with kids. We have literally hundreds of strategies and they really work because they're practical. So if you're interested, go to our website and get stuff off our website. We have specials. The better thing to do, honestly, is email my son Casey at Casey, C-A-S-E-Y at CelebrateCalm.com

and tell him you need some help picking out our resources. And if you need help, listen, and he'll help you pick out the right CDs for your family. And listen, if you need help financially, just be assertive and say, listen, we need help financially. What can you do? My son's awesome at helping people, and he's got a really big heart. So email him or call him at 888-506-1871, and we'll be glad to help you out. So thank you.

Tomorrow morning, better do it differently, because if you don't, you may as well just quit and drink. And we don't want you to do that. So do it differently and experiment with your kids, and then email me and let me know which of the strategies is working for you. But thanks so much for caring about your kids. We'll talk to you soon. Bye-bye.