Calm Parenting Podcast - Old School Parenting Outdated? Not In These 2 Ways.

Episode Date: November 18, 2021

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parenting. You know what I like best about old school parenting? Respect. Now you're going to go to like, yeah, that's right. Back then kids respected their parents. But I want to put a twist on this. The reason I like old school parenting is because the parents actually respected their kids. Hmm, something to think about. So that's what we're going to talk about today on this episode of the Calm Parenting Podcast. What I want to do is show how we can take the best of both worlds, a little bit of old school, a little bit of new school, and we can do that without ruining our relationship with our child or getting walked on and raising entitled kids. So how do you do that? That's what we're going to discuss. This is Kirk Martin, founder of Celebrate Calm. You can find us at CelebrateCalm.com

if you need help with your strong-willed child so that you don't get walked on or so that you don't end up dumping all of your anxiety on your child or using fear and intimidation, ruining the relationship, well, email Casey, C-A-S-E-Y, celebratecalm.com.

Tell us about your family. What are you struggling with? We will reply personally. You are going to talk directly with Casey who gets it because he is the strong-willed child. By the way, quick side note.

You know in these podcasts, I talk a lot about how Casey was difficult as a child. But I want to point out how this works. He was difficult as a kid. He didn't always push through when things were hard. He didn't always have great persistence unless he cared about something. Well, we've been struggling with something. We have all these programs that come as,

you know, you get them as physical CDs, but also audio downloads. But it hasn't been optimal, right? So when people download them on a computer or the phone, sometimes it's just a little bit tougher. And many people are like me, a little bit old school, I'm not that great with technology. It hasn't been the best experience.

So I've been kind of, I've been challenging Casey, like you gotta find a different platform. He's like, Dad, it's hard. I'm like, hey, anything that's hard in life is worth doing. So figure it out. And see, that's a little old school. Not like, oh, I know it's so hard, but I believe you can. No, of course it's hard. But I want you to dig in. And to his credit, Casey has gone through literally dozens of different apps and he found one that works beautifully with our programs. And you know how I know it works? Because he sent me a link. So here's what happens. I went on and ordered our products last night. So I get this link. I go, I click on it. I download this app. And beautifully, wonderfully, all of the programs, all of the audio files come down on this app. So I can listen on the app.

I can stream it. I don't even have to be online. And I can listen at the speed that I want to, in the order that I want to. It is so easy. And so kudos to Casey, this time, for pushing through and making this easy. So just let us know if we can help you. It's perfect timing. Look, he was determined. He's like, hey, we're going to have the holidays are coming up. People are going to be buying these things for Black Friday, for Christmas, for themselves, for friends, whatever, for their kids. And so I want to have this app

done. And he got it done done and it's beautiful. So if you get the downloads, which is perfect time because of the holiday sale, it's going to be awesome. So here's what I want to talk about. So here are, and this is not going to be comprehensive, but I have two main ideas that I want to give you that you can work on and start to begin to work on this coming week. So what I don't like about the old school parenting, especially practice say by my dad was the fear and intimidation, the yelling and screaming. Fear and intimidation is a good way to get your kids to behave, but it's not a great way to build a relationship. And it's not a great way for your

kids to actually own their own behavior. Because in a sense, when you're controlling your child's behavior, your child's not being responsible for it, right? And my dad couldn't really control himself, so he needed to control us. We had to walk on eggshells around my dad, never knowing when he was going to blow up. Well, guess who grew up and did the same thing to his young family? Well, that would be me until I learned how to control myself. That old school thing of like, well, kids are supposed to be seen and not heard. Well, that's awfully convenient, but why have kids? That said, our parents did, many of them had very good boundaries, proper boundaries between the parent and the child. And I'll do that on a different podcast. I have an awesome example for you. So here's two things I wanted to get to.

One is this. Old school parenting demonstrated an extraordinary amount of respect for their kids, for us. And here's why. Watch what we tend to do as modern day parents. We are so involved and so engaged with our kids and we're involved in every single thing that they do. And so what happens is we micromanage our kids and we know every decision they're going to make. And we talk to them about every single thing that they do and we monitor their homework and we monitor through different apps what they're doing in school, and we're always, always, always on them. And what that's demonstrating to our kids is, I don't really respect you enough to believe that you're capable of being successful unless I'm micromanaging you, unless I'm controlling

everything, unless I'm talking to you about everything. See, what our parents said was, I know you're going to figure your life out. You're going to make some mistakes and you're going to do some things. You're going to make some bad mistakes and you're going to learn from it. But you're going to figure out your life without all my anxiety, without me micromanaging you, without me adding to your anxiety and drama. Part of the reason kids have so much anxiety today is because we, as the parents, are dumping our anxiety on them, right? Our parents didn't pressure us to have life figured out at age 14. Because we have all the school pressure of like, you have to take honors classes,

you have to start thinking about your college application when you're 12 or 10. And it's ridiculous. And you have kids walking around in their teenage years filled with anxiety over, well, I'm not sure what I want to do with my life because I'm not measuring up academically. It's like, who's putting all this pressure on kids? We're robbing them of their childhood. Our parents didn't do that in this particular way. They didn't. They allowed us to be kids. They allowed us to even be mischievous. It wasn't always the kids, you know what, I need to lecture you, make good choices. Do I want my kids to make good choices? Absolutely, but I also

want them to make some bad ones. Our parents gave us space to make some bad choices and allowed us to learn from those mistakes because sometimes touching the hot stove is absolutely not necessary. It's a good thing and a helpful thing. And especially with a strong willed child, they need to do it. And our parents gave us some space to enjoy childhood. Look, one of the favorite shows, Leave it to Beaver. What was it about? It was about a little kid who every single day got into trouble, made bad decisions, did something wrong, and then he learned from it. And sometimes he learned the hard way. And to be honest, that was a pretty good show for the 50s because the dad wasn't like fear and intimidation. Ward Cleaver would meet with the

in his den and they'd have a talk about it. But he didn't fix everything, right? Our parents didn't go around fixing everything and make sure everything was okay. They gave us some space because they respected, and think about this, they respected us to know we would ultimately figure it out. We would experience some pain, some discomfort. They let us struggle, but they didn't fix it all. Our parents let us roughhouse in the backyard. My mom lets roughhouse in the house, right? We played games, look, for hours at a time in our neighborhood. We played a game in our backyard, in our front yard, because we were kind of a place where everybody came. We played a game called kill the guy with the ball and it involved your friends pounding you and jumping on you. And we fought with, you know, I had three brothers,

so we fought sometimes. And we did all these things and our parents didn't walk around like, honey, you know, you need to get along better with your brother. I'm not discounting teaching and modeling and showing, but we take it to an extreme and we don't allow our kids to roughhouse. By the way, roughhousing is extremely important for the human brain. Your child needs to roughhouse. It is important. I can maybe do that in a different podcast. It is critically important for the development of their brain. And our parents knew this and it didn't freak them out that we did this. So I wanted to leave you with that thought. I'm going to do one more thing. I believe we owe it to our kids to afford them the same amount of respect and space that our parents gave us. Because your kids, everything they do,

we're micromanaging. Here's how you do that. Here's how you do that. We can't allow them to get a bad grade without us being there to lecture or to try to fix it or do their homework for them. Give your kids tools by all means. We talk about that, but giving them tools isn't the same as micromanaging and controlling in our anxiety. Second thought, think about this. Our parents did not allow our disappointment and our unhappiness in the moment. Side note, I'm not talking about depression. Our parents missed, ignored, did know about, dismissed depression, severe anxiety,

a lot of mental health and other issues they did miss. And there are reasons for that, but it's not worth going into on this podcast. So I want you to be aware, but here's the difference. The everyday life of being disappointed and unhappy with a decision, our parents didn't get moved by that. I asked my mom before she passed this past May, mom, we would go out all day and come back home and you weren't like, well guys, what did you do? Did you have fun? And she's like, I knew you're going to have fun. Because when we were kids and

we went out, we figured stuff out. Our parents didn't play with us or make up games for us. We made up our own games. So we figured you guys, if you were bored, you would solve your own boredom. See, there's a lot, there's respect in there. I respect you enough to if you were bored, you would solve your own boredom. See, there's a respect in there. I respect you enough to know you're going to figure out your own boredom. And that if you're disappointed, if you're bored, well, that's your issue. And that's not mine to figure out, right? They weren't overly concerned and moved by our disappointment and making sure we were happy all the time. Have you noticed that by focusing so much on it, we have created so much anxiety, so much unhappiness in our kids, and it's coming from

us a lot of times. I would rather you normalize it. Of course you're bored. Part of life is being bored, but I believe you're capable of using that great brain of yours, that creativity to overcome your own boredom, but I'm not owning it. I am not your circus clown and I'm not your entertainer. You fix it, right? Our parents didn't fix everything for us, right? So one of the old school phrases you will hear in our curriculum is, hey, listen, you can throw that tantrum if you want. I'm okay with your tantrum. Just want you to know I have two rules in my home. First one is we do everything with excellence. If you're going to throw a tantrum, I want it done well. But the second rule is your tantrums will accomplish nothing. And here's the principle. Your behavior does not dictate, determine, or change my behavior. Your mood does not determine my mood. You

can be bored, you can be disappointed, you can be unhappy with me. Teenage daughter, you may talk disrespectfully to me but it's not going to end well for you and it's not going to ruin my day. I'm not taking it personally. It is your issue because your behavior determines it. your behavior affects your life not mine I'm not going to own your mood right now so if you want to be in a bad mood fine be in a bad mood it's not going to change my day if you want to talk now here's where the new school we will then invite which is perfectly fine I'm okay with you being disappointed I'm okay with you being disappointed. I'm okay with you being in a bad mood. In fact, I'm going to often make decisions that are going to disappoint you and I'm okay

with that because I don't need your approval and I don't need your acceptance. Now, if you want to talk, if you want to go for a walk with me, if you want to help me while I am cooking dinner, I'd be glad to listen to you. I'd be glad to problem solve with you, but I'm not going to fix everything for you. And a lot of times we fix things. We say we're fixing it for our kids, but we're really fixing it for ourselves because we can't deal with it when they're unhappy or they're disappointed. Does that make sense? That is a huge, huge boundary issue that we violate all the time to the detriment of ourselves and to the detriment of our kids learning how to be responsible for themselves. So if you go through our program, you will hear, I believe, the best

of the old school approach. I respect you enough to know you're going to figure it out. A new part of it, I'll walk beside you and give you some tools to do that. I believe that you can solve your own boredom. I believe that you can handle this situation, but I'm happy to listen to you. I'm happy to provide context, to provide some ideas, but ultimately it's up to you to own that choice, right? So we get the best of both worlds without ruining the relationship and without getting walked all over and raising entitled kids. That's what I'm after, and I'm going to do a few more in this series of old school versus new school and how we can blend both, but this week let's work on starting to respect your kids, and you're going to have to control your own anxiety. So if you want anything over the holiday season is work on your own anxiety and control issues so that your kids

can learn to be responsible for themselves. If you need anything, email kccasey at celebrate calm.com and we will be glad to help you. Love you all. Hope you share the podcast and appreciate you. See you soon. Bye-bye.