Calm Parenting Podcast - My Son Pushes My Buttons On Purpose.

Episode Date: April 13, 2021

My Son Pushes My Buttons On Purpose.Your child actively seeks to annoy you or push your buttons. And you react. It’s a vicious cycle that you have the power to stop. Kirk shows you how. GET THE CONFIDENCE YOU NEED TO LEAD YOUR KIDS.Email [e-mail]. Tell us your family situation and we’ll put together a custom package to meet your specific needs within your budget or take advantage of our Big Spring Sale this week!  Big Spring Sale: Get the Calm Parenting Package for only $179 (Reg. $475)Digital downloads are included with all orders: Listen directly on your iPhone, Android, or Tablet. Get 100+ tools to replace your child's shame with confidence.Click here to learn more about our Big Spring Sale. Email [e-mail] for the most helpful service on the planet or to customize your bundle!  NOW SCHEDULING LIVE EVENTS & ZOOM CONFERENCES. We can provide high-energy, customized presentations for your PTA, Adoption/Foster Care Conference, church parenting conference, and Teacher Professional Development training both via Zoom and in person!  BONUS: When you schedule a TEACHER TRAINING, we will provide a Parenting Event for FREE. Take one action step today:  Email [e-mail] with the name of your school, city, and state. We will show you how easy it is to train your parents and teachers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I'm founder of Celebrate Calm. You can find us at Celebrate Calm. If you need anything, talk to our strong-willed son who is, was, and probably always will be amazing at pushing people's buttons. I could see that look in his eyes, what he was getting out of that, right? And it was infuriating. But you can contact him now and guess what? He's going to help you. He's not going to push your buttons, probably. He's going to help you. He's going to to push your buttons, probably. He's going to help you. He's going to ask you about your family. What are you struggling with? We will offer tips and strategies and ideas.

If you're interested, we'll put together a custom package of our resources for you within your budget. Or just take advantage of the big spring sale we've got going on. Get everything we have or get the Calm Parenting Package. Anything you want, we're here to help. So let's talk about this. So we're at a live workshop, which is awesome because we're starting to do that again. And we love being out with real people live. It's fun. There's so much insight because you're feeding off of the audience. And usually it's an hour and a half to two hours, but it flies by because I talk really fast and we cover a lot of ground. And I do a Q&A before the workshop

so we can find out what are people struggling with? What do you want me to address? And then I can work that into it and we can hit specific things. So again, reach out to Casey if you're interested in setting that up at your school, your church. They are awesome events. Everybody loves them, and I love them even more. So we get this question, which is this, my son purposefully pushes my buttons all day long. For example, he will pee without flushing the toilet. Why does he have to be so difficult? So this is my answer. It's a little bit tough, maybe a little bit irreverent, but it's an honest answer to a really good mom. So I've got 10 points.

Number one, yes, it's annoying. You should feel frustrated and irritated by it. No doubt. feel frustrated and irritated by it, no doubt, but it still doesn't justify you reacting to it, right? See, those two things are different. Of course, I'm going to be frustrated. Look, every day of my life, there's going to be some kind of disappointment, something frustrating, irritating that I don't like, and if all I'm ever going to do is go through life reacting all the time, I'll feel like the most justified person in the world. But I'll be angry and I won't problem solve and people probably won't like me. Number two, what's the need being met? Mom, what's the need that's being met? See, we have to get to the root of the issue because in the way that we teach things, typically what

we do as parents, as adults, as just humans, is we react to the outward behavior. Oh, my son is being defiant. He's being disrespectful. He's doing that. Well, sure, that's the outward behavior, but what's happening inside that's driving that? As we've said many times, many of your kids struggle with anxiety. Anxiety will come out as defiance and disrespect. I'm not going. You can't make me. Right? It'll come out as kids shutting down. Same with being overwhelmed. Right? So you can't just react to the outward behavior. So what we try to uncover are the needs that are being met by a child who argues, pushes buttons, procrastinates, fidgets. All of those things have a common root. It's because your kids' brains need stimulation. Many of your kids' brains are

physiologically understimulated because they don't get enough blood flow or dopamine. And so their brains actually physically crave stimulation. But you know what kids' brains also crave? Intensity. But what trap do we fall into as parents and teachers often? We only give our intensity, our emotional intensity, the voice, our intensity in our voice, in our body posture. When do we feed that to our kids? Well, when they do something wrong or they irritate us.

And so we give them all of that then. And what happens to their brains? Their brains quickly learn, well, I crave stimulation and intensity. And what I've learned very quickly is if I want to get that from my parents or teachers, I just do something wrong. And unfortunately, we're feeding our kids the wrong thing, right? We get all wound up about, and we're all into healthy nutrition. We're all into that as a family.

We get so, so into feeding our kids the right thing. But sometimes we don't feed their brains and their emotions the right thing. And that has even far worse consequences. So this is what I told the mom. And this is what part of the fun part of doing live workshops is you get that interaction. She knows I was just being a little bit of a, having fun with her. But it was also very true, which was, I told her, if I were your child, I would purposefully, throughout the day, not flush the toilet and make sure that you knew about it. I would. Now, is that because I'm a jerk? Well, I can be, but it's no. Look, for your kid,

it's because you've trained your son to seek intensity and stimulation by doing negative things. So mom, number four, stop being your child's toy. See, inadvertently, by reacting so easily, right, and I'm asking you to be honest, there's no blame or guilt in any of this, none of this, but I'm asking you to be honest with yourself. We react so quickly and easily, I can't believe that you would do that, that we actually damage our kids' brains in a sense, right? We're causing them to be weak and soft, right? Because your kids, this child doesn't even have to try anymore. All he has to do is do natural business and not flush the toilet. And now mom or dad's getting really upset and it's causing all kinds

of drama and they're having the lecture again and I don't believe it, right? It's instant brain candy. It's like crack cocaine, right? It's addictive. And so you, mom and dad, have become a little play toy and your child just tinkers with your brain all day long. And you will rightly say, number five, but I, I'm the authority figure. And my honest response is exactly. So start acting like it. This is going to hurt a little bit, but it's true. Stop blaming your child because you can't control yourself. Stop blaming your child simply because you can't control yourself. I know, but I'm the authority figure. He needs to treat me with respect. Of course he does. But he is not going to give you respect as long as you keep reacting to him. Because what you're, look, you're not acting in a respectful way. Because your child does something simple and then you

start getting all upset. Well, of course he's not going to respect you then. Right? So it's not all about what the child's doing. You're going to see by the end of this, this has very little to do with your child and everything to do with you. Because the quickest way to change your child's behavior is to first control your own. And this will only change when you begin to lead by example. But right now, you're not leading. No, you're not. You're following your child. He does something. You react. You're a chess piece. You're following him. You're no longer the leader.

So he doesn't respect you because this little kid, whether he's four or six or eight or nine or 11 or 14, is in complete control of you. And you're playing this game and choosing, how do you like that, to be his puppet. Number six, here's a good question. How does this serve you? How is this serving you? Emotionally, mentally, some other way.

Because when I do phone consultations, and I love phone consultations, because we get into deep stuff very quickly. Or if you go through, we've got a program called 30 Days to Calm. And many of you need to go through that again and again and again. I'm going to ask you this question. How does this serve you? What are you getting out of this? Do you escalate things because in a way you kind of like the drama? Did this come from your mom and dad, right? Is it a distraction from your own struggles with self-control, right? So I used to do that. I would purposefully escalate things in the home because I couldn't control myself and I wanted Casey to do something way worse than I had done to justify my response.

See how that works. It's really interesting. So you have to look and see, how is this serving you somehow, right? Does it make you feel like you're actually doing something, right? Because we do that all the time as parents. Well, at least I yelled at him. I sent him to his room. Well, did it work or change anything?

No, but at least I did something. Okay, but I want to do some things that work, okay? And so I will tell you, I promise you this, if you learn how to control yourself, power struggles will be cut in half overnight. They will. So let's move on to what can we do. Number seven, apologize. Apologize. Now, it can sound a lot of different ways. I'll give you a couple options. Hey, son, I need to apologize to you because for the first four, seven, 10, 13, 17 years

of your life, however old your child is, I've led you to believe that you're in charge of my emotions. I've actually trained your brain to get intensity by doing inappropriate things instead of making good choices. And I apologize because this is the message that I've sent. I need you to behave and do what I say so that I can behave and not lose it.

I like, I don't grovel to kids. There's no need to grovel, but I'm honest and I apologize. Why? Because I'm modeling what I want them to do, which is to own their own choices. And you have kids who don't own their stuff, right? They make excuses for everything. They will make up things and they don't take ownership. And a lot of that is because one, they have a lot of shame and two, they don't feel like they don't have tools and they feel hopeless to change and the third reason is sometimes because we don't take ownership ourselves and we make excuses I'm not making excuses I've led you to believe that you're in total control of

my emotions because I react every time you do something that's an honest statement there's nothing wrong with that. It's actually great. Number eight, I encourage you, thank your child. Thank your child. Now, you don't have to physically, verbally say this to your child, but it's the right attitude to take. And I was being kind of tough with this mom, and I said, you need to thank your child because this son that you have is helping you grow up and be more mature. Why? Because he's pushing your buttons. And what he's revealing is that you have a lot of control issues. And you may even have some anger and resentment toward this child inside of you, and that's coming out. And this child is actually helping purge you of that because he's

making it very clear. This stuff, look, how many of us were like, oh, I'm never going to yell like my parents yelled. Well, how long did that last? Right? This child is a gift to you. And that's not a euphemism of like, oh, they're spirited and wonderful. No, they're very, very challenging kids. But the reason I finally grew up is because of my son. Because he showed me and he didn't do it out of a good heart. But I realized all the junk inside of me and my anxiety and my control issues, my lack of self-control and everything else came out because of him. And because of that, I grew up and became more mature and it changed my entire life. Not just me as a dad or a husband,

it changed my entire life. Now we get to transition. Let's number nine, teach your child what's really going on. Look, I know what you're trying to do here. And this is just an easy way to stimulate your brain. What that tells me is you're probably bored or you want my intensity. But all that happens is I get upset, I yell, and you lose all your screens. So I'm not going to do that anymore.

Look, I've been over this before, but it's a really, you're teaching your child. Look, I used to do it to Casey when he'd come with that look in his eyes, I'd say, I know it's about to happen. You've got that little look in your eyes. And I can tell it's usually when you're bored or you really want some intensity from me. But the way you've always done it is negative, is in a negative way, and you lose your stuff. I'm not going to play that game anymore. But I know that you need it. So here's what I'd rather focus on. And that's when we transition. Number 10, to spark your child's internal motivation. Now there are a ton of ways to do that. I'm not going to do it in this podcast because it's already getting too long, but watch. We're going from the other. If you want to follow

this through, look son, I apologize because the last 432 times you've tried to push my buttons, I reacted to you and I gave you all my power and I made you believe that you're in control and I fed your brain in the wrong way so that you've learned the only way that you can get intensity from me is do something irritating, but that always causes you to lose your stuff.

So I know what's going on. You just want your brain. You just want some intensity. You want some stimulation. So we can go down that path if you want, but you're just going to lose your stuff. So I'm not interested in that. But I know you've got a big heart.

You love money. And you don't like having anyone tell you what to do. Those are awesome traits used in the right way. So why don't we put that same energy that you're using now into creating your own business, maybe doing a service project, making money by doing an adult job for me, because you're not great at little kid jobs, but you're awesome at adult jobs. Or maybe you can help Mr. Henderson down the street. And I can go and I can give the child a challenge of some kind. If your kids are into physical

things, I can give them a challenge, but I'm stimulating the brain and I'm giving them intensity by saying, oh, you're really awesome at this. I heard from your teacher. I heard from the neighbor down the street that you're awesome at this, or I've seen you doing this. Why don't we go and do that instead? See, what's happened is I'm taking ownership of my own choices.

I want you to take ownership of your choices. You have a choice in this, right? You have a lot of power here. And now you model self-control and you identify the root of the issue for your child. You're actually teaching him. Watch, instead of, I don't know why you always push our buttons.

You're a bad kid. Well, how do you recover from that? Right? Okay, I'm a bad kid. Okay, why don you recover from that? Right? What? Okay. I'm a bad kid. Okay. Why don't you just take away all my stuff? No, I'm saying, I know there's something going on in your brain. And unfortunately I didn't teach you earlier. And you've learned at school and at home, here's what you do to get our intensity. You may call it attention. I call it intensity. And I didn't teach you the right thing. But now I'm teaching. Remember,

discipline means to teach. It doesn't mean to punish. Everybody always, well, what's the consequence for pushing my buttons? The consequence is stop reacting, start teaching. There's no consequence needed. The only consequence is the one I need to give you. So no, now I'm problem solving. I'm teaching my child how his brain works. This is more important than you can possibly know because many of you have kids who do need that brain intensity. And if you don't teach them this, they will seek it by doing risky things. Sometimes getting into things they shouldn't be getting into, maybe drugs, maybe alcohol, whatever it is, or joining the wrong crowd because they're just driven by these brains that never get satisfied. But now I'm showing him there's nothing wrong with your brain,

it just needs some intensity. So here are 10 different ways to get that intensity that will satisfy your brain, but also be meaningful to you. And instead of losing your screens and freedom, instead you will earn money. You will earn the satisfaction of helping other people, of working, volunteering at that animal shelter, doing something that you love for kids who have cancer, whatever it is. See, and you do that, that gives you power and that will change your home. And if you want to learn how to do that, I encourage you, go through the Calm Parenting Package. We teach you how to do this or get everything, including the no BS thing, but it doesn't matter to me. If you need help with this, email Casey, C-A-S-E-Y at CelebrateCalm.com. Tell us about your family. Tell me about the best power struggle that you face in your home. Okay. And then we'll problem

solve with it, show you a different way. And if we can help put together resources within your budget, we're happy, thrilled to do that. That's what we love doing because we want these power struggles to stop. So thank you for listening to the Calm Parenting Podcast. Please share this with others. And if we can help you in any way, please reach out. Love you all. Bye-bye.