Calm Parenting Podcast - Stop Power Struggles With Strong-Willed Kids

Episode Date: December 17, 2018

Stop Power Struggles With Strong-Willed Kids Do you need your children to behave, precisely because you cannot control yourself if they don’t? If your child is in a bad mood, does this change your mood? In this short podcast, Kirk shows you how to control yourself instead of controlling your child. Get more information about our DVD & Workbook with 40 strategies to stop the power struggles: http://www.celebratecalm.com/cpu-99-fb/ Need help? Contact [e-mail] or call 888-506-1871. We help everyone who asks. 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. Hey everyone, this is Kirk Martin, founder of Celebrate Calm. Hey, I wanted to go back to basics today. So I got this great email from a really sweet couple and it was about controlling yourself. And it's a core foundational philosophy of Celebrate Calm, which is the quickest way to change your child's behavior is to first control your own, right? Changing your tone of voice, changing your body posture has a huge impact on strong-willed kids. And so this couple

is going through, we've got this program, it's called Calm Parenting University. It's four DVDs and each DVD is an hour. There's one on controlling yourself, one on discipline, one on motivating kids, one on stopping defiance, disrespect, and power struggles. So one of the beautiful things about the program is you watch as a family, you let your kids watch it by themselves, but there's a written workbook with it. And people like sometimes the written workbook, but here's where they got, here's where the question comes from. After each DVD, there's a little discussion guide. And the dad especially wrote in and said, what really nailed me was the second question, which is this. Do you need your children to behave precisely because you cannot behave if they don't? And how does this result in power struggles in your home?

So let's dig into that a little bit. This is what I realized as a dad when my son was young. The reason that I wanted him and actually needed him to behave well is precisely because I couldn't control myself if he didn't do exactly what I told him to do, how I told him to do it. Right. And nothing he did was ever good enough for me. And when little things went wrong, it really messed me up. And so what I ended up realizing is that I had to control myself first. And when I controlled myself, and I could give you a hundred examples of this, but I guarantee you almost every power struggle you have with your strong-willed child comes back to your own control issues.

Because you have too many control issues. You need to be in control of everything. You've got perfectionism issues. You need things to be done a certain way. Guarantee for all the engineering dads out there, when you come home from work and there are Legos all over the floor, things aren't the way they're supposed to be, it messes with your internal sense of order. And so you start trying to control your kids instead of controlling yourself. And that never works in life. It doesn't work with your spouse. It doesn't work with coworkers. It doesn't work with anyone. You have to learn how to control yourself.

And what I realized was I was so needy, emotionally needy. I needed my son to toe the line and do things the right way, have the right attitude, or else I would lose it. And so what that ultimately did was put him in complete control of the situation because he knew he could push my buttons at any time. And what I want us to get to is where we can be the rock and where we can look at the child and say, look, your behavior does not determine or change my behavior. You can throw a tantrum if you want. I'm fine with your tantrums, but here's what's going to happen. I'm going to sit down and I'm going to watch you throw your tantrum because I have two rules in my home. The first thing is this, your mood, your behavior does not control my behavior. You're allowed to

throw a tantrum. I'm fine with it. I just want you to know it's not going to work. And the second rule is we do everything with excellence in our home. So if you want to throw a tantrum, have a tantrum. I'm fine with it. Wear yourself out. But it's never going to change me and my decision because your mood does not determine or change my mood. Now look, when you get to that place, a lot of these power struggles will go away. It really doesn't have that much to do with your kids. It has everything to do with you. And you're the only person in life that you can control. So this can be a very, very powerful thing. Let me give you a couple quick examples, couple quick examples, how this worked out in, um, when I was talking to this mom, she's

got an eight year old and she had told me, she's like, Oh, I just play off my son's moods and he plays off of mine. And so, you know, she, she initially, uh, contacted me and said, well, how can you get my son to change his moods? And I was like, I can't always change that. Now, we have a lot of tools to do that. We're leading kids to calm. Motion changes emotions. Some of you that have our CDs have heard all of that.

Good. So do all those things. But at the end of the day, the quickest way to change this situation is to first work on yourself, to not talk so much. I guarantee you, many of you out there, you just talk way too much. You can't stop. You lecture endlessly and that's provoking a child. It just is and you've got to own that.

Fewer words, right? Change your tone of voice. Have a dispassionate kind of tone of voice. Be very even and matter of fact. And I guarantee you what I told this mom was, look, your child's not rejecting you. They're rejecting your anxiety. And because you're so intense over everything, your child's not coming to you anymore. And he's just feeding off of you, right? When you wake your kids up in the morning, guys, come on, got to get it. Let's

go. Let's go. School, got to go, got to go. Or when we start to get this kind of tone, we're starting to lecture and we're starting to get on our kids, it immediately causes them to reject us. And they're not rejecting you. They're rejecting your own control issues. They're rejecting your anxiety because they know they can never please you. So I'll give you one more example. Talk to a mom. This is an older kid. And this mom has a daughter who's, I don't know, I think she was like, she's 18. She's going to college. And mom said like, hey, she does pretty well like Monday through Thursday.

She holds it together. She's doing pretty well in school. But on Thursday or Friday night, she wants to go out and she's starting to party a little bit with her friends. And watch how this works. Because what happens is the mom's getting anxious, scared. And honestly, she's getting really P.O.ed because her daughter's going out and drinking with some friends and kind of partying a little bit. But watch what happens. Do I want to just accept and encourage her daughter to drink?

No. I'm not all into like the fun dad and fun mom, like, oh, just come here and we'll get high with you. Not into that. But watch what happens. The more that mom gets anxious and po'd and scared the more every conversation throughout the week becomes tinged with a little bit of that anxiety and trying to control what her daughter's going to do over the weekend by the way no problem at all with saying look if you're going to come home drunk on the weekends if you're going to you know you're not going to drive that way right we're not

going to support your college we're not going to support you if you continue to do these things, right? But in this case, that's not what's happening, right? The daughter is a normal college kid who's going out with some friends and drinking a little bit, but she's not staying out all night. She's not coming home hammered. She's not driving and drinking. It's just that it's a way for her to escape and relax right now. But watch what's happening. Mom's getting on her so much, it's actually driving her daughter away from her and into the hands of her friends more. So instead of changing the child, why don't we change our response?

Because this is just poisoning the relationship. So here's what I ask the mom to do. Go to this daughter and say, honey, I need to apologize because I think I've misjudged your motives. And all I'm doing is focus on the negatives. Actually, you're doing really great. Like Monday through Thursday, you're going to school every day. You're getting good grades. You're being really responsible. And so look, I get it. Sometimes you need a little bit of release. And so I get that. You want to be out with your friends. And so, you know what I think I've misjudged your motives on?

Is I think you're out with these friends. You're just drinking. They're all losers. But the truth is, you're connecting with these other kids, right? And look, I'll tell you this on the side. She's probably connecting with other kids who feel judged like she's always felt judged, right? And they're getting together. And I guarantee a lot of these kids, I know it's going to scare you, but they get together and they have

really deep talks. So what if the mom went to her daughter and said, you know what, honey, I'm glad you're there to support your friends. Because I know that when you're together with your friends, you guys have interesting conversations. Look, you know, I'm kind of old. I'm out of touch. I'm curious. What are kids your age struggling with these days? Because it was very different when I was growing up. And I really want to learn. And I want to know, but I want to let you know how proud I am of you, that you're being really responsible. And I'm proud of you because I know that when you're with your friends, you're giving them good advice and you're supporting them because they probably feel left out at times. And I appreciate that. Look, I want you to know, if you ever want to invite your friends over to the house, I'd love to talk to them.

I'd love to listen to them actually, because I want to learn from them. So look, I'm not going to, I'm not going to be the party mom. You're not going to come in here and get wasted. But if the kids want to come over one night, I'll cook them dinner. Look, we can have, if you guys want to have a glass of wine with them, it's fine. They're college kids. And we'll sit around and I'll ask them questions because I want to learn. But I want to let you know that I'm really proud of how you're handling life. And look, if you're able to handle, do that with your kids, they will begin coming to you. And I guarantee you what will happen in this situation is see I want my teenage child I want my seven-year-old right? I want my kids coming to me asking me for advice

But if I'm always hounding them and lecturing them and nothing's ever good enough and there's this anxiety Watch because our anxiety sends this message. I I don't trust you to make good decisions So I need to lecture you and micromanage you and be over on you all the time And what happens is it drives our kids away from us. And I want your kids coming to you. I want this teenage daughter. I want the eight-year-old kid coming to the mom and dad and saying, I'm really struggling. Can you help me with this? And they'll only do that if they know that they can trust you and you're not going to freak out on them. And if you're not going to be on them all the time. So I want you to work on this over, I want you to work on this over the holidays on really learning

how to control yourself. One of the best ways to do that, I would encourage you go onto our website, celebrate calm.com. You can email my son Casey, C-A-S-E at CelebrateCalm.com. You can see we've got that Calm Parenting University program. That thing is usually, program is usually 400 bucks. You know why? It's not, I'm doing a sale. It's usually 400 bucks because there are four DVDs. And it's, I usually, honestly, I charge 100 bucks a session. You know why?

Because if I can teach you how to discipline your kids so that they actually get things, do things the first time, if I can help motivate your kids discipline your kids so that they actually do things the first time, if I can help motivate your kids and get your kids to stop the defiance and get you to control yourself and break generational patterns, it's worth it. We're doing a special now because it's Christmas. It's just one week.

So we're not gonna ship this next week. Just this week, we're gonna ship it for 99 bucks and we're even gonna pick up the cost of shipping. So if you want that, email us, go to our website. You can find it there. But thank you for working on yourself. Thank you for being this parent that your kids can really trust. And I hope everybody is enjoying, whether you celebrate Hanukkah or Christmas, whatever it is, hope you're enjoying some family time together. Take care. Love you all. Bye-bye.