Calm Parenting Podcast - Motivating Kids in Sports, Music, & Extracurriculars

Episode Date: February 17, 2022

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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. So I'll just say this bluntly and save you a lot of time, money, and frustration. Most of you have strong will kids who will not practice at their chosen sport or with their chosen musical instrument. They're not going to practice. They're not going to try their hardest. They're not going to do their best. They're not going to be ultra competitive like maybe you and I were. And it's going to be frustrating. So I don't want you wasting a lot of energy, time,

and money on these things. But here's what you can do. And that's what we're going to discuss today on this episode of the Calm Parenting Podcast. So welcome. This is Kirk Martin, founder of Celebrate Calm. I was an intensely competitive athlete when I was a kid. So when Casey came along, which by the way, if you need help with anything, you reach out to Casey. C-A-S-E-Y at CelebrateCalm.com, and he'll help your family out. We'll all help you out. Email us. Tell us about your family, what you're struggling with. We get together as a family. We discuss it. We reply back to you. If you need help with any of our resources, let us know. We'll customize a package. We'll do it within your financial budget. Anyway, so I'm intensely competitive. Casey comes along and I'm like, great, got a son.

I'm going to make him into a competitive athlete like I was. It doesn't always work like that. And so I wanted to do this podcast at the request of several moms who were like, please, please get through to my husband. So here's what I want you to know. And here are a couple questions I get all the time. Well, I have trouble because how do I coach my child's sports team without ruining our relationship?

And my answer is, well, if you can't do that, then don't coach. It's not worth it. But I love that you're involved with your child. So here's the way I do it. And you probably already know this. I coached Casey's hockey team one year. And the arrangement we had was I had another one of the coaches directly talk to direct discipline Casey during the game. And I did the same for the other coach's son. The only thing I was allowed to do was walk by, tap Casey's helmet in an affirming way and say, hey, good job out there. That's it. Otherwise, it doesn't work because there's too much pressure on

you, too much pressure on your son. By the way, here's a weird little insight that might save you a lot of meltdowns. Some of your kids don't want to be watched while they're playing sports, while they're riding in a horse jumping competition. Honor that from them. Do it because otherwise many of these kids under that pressure, they can feel all of your anxiety and sometimes it's better if you don't watch or if you stay kind of far away. Maybe you send up a drone and watch that way, but it's really, really important. I mean that. So here's another one.

I can't keep from yelling at my son when he plays sports. Well, that's BS. You can, you're just choosing not to, right? You don't want to stop. And I know because I yelled at Casey for years when he played ice hockey. I was a freak parent. So four quick points.

Number one, your son and daughter are not going to be professional athletes or Olympians. They're just not. Okay, there's very few that are. These are just kids who for a period of time play a game. Number two, buy duct tape. You are not allowed to say anything during the game. Nothing. Yelling doesn't help. By the way, your kids can't even hear because it's a muddled sound of all these parents yelling and screaming different things. It doesn't help. And it just makes us, especially me, look like idiots.

So save your energy. Number three, after the game, here are the only things that you can say. Did you have fun out there? Hey, you know what? You did A, B, and C really well out there. Proud of you. That's it. Keep all of your criticisms to yourself. You would hate your boss if he criticized you at the end of every workday and just pointed out all the things that you didn't do well and the stuff that you did wrong. Number four, sometime well after the game,

you may say the following, hey, if you want to come play catch or talk sometime, I'll practice anything you want help with, and then walk away. Leave it, right? You want your child coming to you. You can always say, hey, I've got some ideas for you. If you want to come grab me sometime, I've got some pointers that might really help you out there. And then you walk away. You're not forcing it on them. You're not being overbearing. You're not bringing all of your anxiety, right? Because I want your child coming to you saying, hey, dad, I really need some help learning how to catch fly balls.

Will you hit me a few? Bingo. Now you've got it. And my son will tell you that when I was overbearing, when I got on him and yelled at him and talked to him after the game about the things he did wrong, it just made him want to quit because he felt like he couldn't do anything right. So what was the point of even playing anymore, right?

And so sometimes when Casey would get off the ice, knowing he played a really good game, and instead of acknowledging that, that he had had an assist and scored a goal, I would bring up three missed opportunities, right? Because that's the way I was. But when I started complimenting Casey, Casey got more comfortable coming to me and asking me for feedback like the next day, a couple days later, right? And in that way, what I was helping teach him was constructive, and he actually respected it. And here's the other thing I want you to know, and this is a tough thing. This is right from the No BS program. You've got to accept who your child is on a deep, deep level. Now,

look, I was so competitive and I used to watch Casey play hockey and there's a lot tied up in this, right? Like our own thing, like I was competitive. You need to be competitive. And I'm paying a lot of money for this. And I put a lot of time in. I'm getting up at 6 a.m. to come to a cold ice rink. Like all that stuff is there. But you can't hold that over their head. You volunteered to do that, right? It's like, anyway, I won't go there. But you can't use those things.

See, that's a form of manipulation. Because I paid for this, you have to do it the way I said. Now, look, you have every right. Like if you your kids just start to play music, don't go and buy like a new instrument and sign them up for like a year's worth of lessons because they're probably not going to practice like that. They will do it on their own, but they may not do it that way. And so by all means, you don't have to sign up for travel sports if your kids aren't really

committed to it. What we ended up playing was house hockey, right? The house league. You can play a lower league. You can play rec league, right? So you're not obligated to pay all this money, but you also can't reverse use it to try to control that, right? And so I remember exactly where I was.

I can feel it. It is probably now 15 years ago when it hit me that I had to accept Casey as he was. He was playing ice hockey in Ashburn, Virginia. And I remember I was on the south end of the rink, and I had tried lecturing, encouraging, cajoling, bribing him into being that competitive kid. And I was walking toward the center of the rink when an opposing player skated around my son, who was on defense, and scored a goal. And my son told the kid, hey, nice goal. I wanted Casey to put that kid's head into the glass, right?

I want him to like, you don't tell him it's a good goal. Next time, you just smash that kid. And that's the day it finally sank in. My son just doesn't have that killer instinct that I had for ice hockey, for sports. It's not who he is. It's not who he would ever be in that sport. And when I just started to relax with him and enjoy him, he started asking me for pointers, for help. And then what eventually happened? He stopped playing ice hockey, travel hockey,

and he started reffing hockey games. Guess what? He was a phenomenal ice hockey ref. You put your kids in positions to succeed according to their temperament, according to their natural gifts, talents, and passions. My son was decisive. He's very strong-willed. He was a great ice hockey referee. He got to wear a striped shirt, blow a whistle, and put other kids in the penalty box, which is where he was used to living, so to speak. And he was fantastic at it. He didn't get intimidated by coaches or fans yelling at him. He was oppositional. He liked it. He was phenomenal. And he started earning money from the time he was 12 and he invested it, most of it in Apple stock. And he did really well with that. Right? So, so here's what I want you to know though, on the back end of this, I'm visiting Casey right now. He is 28. Do you know what my son who, when he was a kid,

was lazy, didn't try his hardest, was never going to be successful. You know what he does every morning? He gets up at 6 o'clock in the morning and he does ski mountaineering. You know what he does? He hikes up mountains out in the Tetons. He hikes up large mountains on his skis through the snow in zero degree temperatures, right? And then he skis back down and he does that before I'm even up in the morning out there. He is highly motivated by it. He's extremely good

at it. He's a phenomenal skier, but he's also a good thinker and he knows how to read the snowpack and he knows how to maneuver, do all these things that I have no idea about. And it's interesting, isn't it, that he chose something that I wasn't good at to be really into. And I think there's something there, because for many of us who are either type A, maybe you're a professional of some kind, or highly educated, and your kids know they're never going to live up to your standards. So they choose something else. Just watch that. It's a really good insight. So he chooses skiing. Guess what? I'm not a great skier. I was a fantastic athlete as a kid, but we never learned how to ski. So learning how to ski in your 50s isn't that much fun.

So he is teaching me. He is now in the role of teaching me. And guess how he's doing it? Slowly, patiently. It is a beautiful thing. Yesterday, we went up. It was the two of us. It was on a Tuesday. There weren't many people up there. And he stayed. And I kept saying, Casey, I'll do a few runs by myself. Go, just go do the hard runs. Go do the stuff you want to do. No, dad, I'm really enjoying this. I want to teach you. And he goes down the mountain slowly with me, left, right. And he's teaching me and encouraging me. And I fall and guess what? He comes up and tenderly, sweetly helps me up. Dad, you can do it. Put your thing over here. Exactly how I didn't do it when he was a little kid.

He is doing it better than I did. And we had a phenomenal day out on the slopes. I finally kind of almost got it. Like I actually almost enjoyed it because I did it well. But what was most meaningful was watching how much time he took with me, how patient he was with me, teaching me. And see, now that's in the No BS program as well. It is one of the best ways to bond with your kids, especially a strong, well kid, is let them teach you something, right? That way you're not all your anxiety and all overbearing and always picking out what they're doing wrong.

It gives them a chance to show their competence and show what they can do. It is a beautiful, beautiful thing. So moms, dads, enjoy your kids. Final thing I would say is this. For the next week, stop picking out everything that they're doing wrong or everything they're not doing that you want them to do and begin just affirming what they're already doing right now really well. They will respond to that. It will build trust. It will build your relationship and everybody will be happier, but you've got to

learn to control yourself. If we can help you with that, you reach out to Casey and email him and say, thanks for being so, thank you. Good job being so patient with your dad. Like he wasn't with you, but it's Casey C-A-S-E-Y at celebrate calm.com. Uh, if we can help you with anything, just let us know. All of our programs are there. If you struggle with this, I would just get the Get Everything package. It is a step-by-step process to teach you how to enjoy your strong-willed child and stop all these power struggles so your kids actually listen to you. Hey, love you all. Enjoy these strong-willed kids.

Talk to you soon. Bye-bye.