Calm Parenting Podcast - Stop Power Struggles with Toddlers, Teens & In-Between

Episode Date: December 18, 2024

Stop Power Struggles with Toddlers, Teens & In-Between If you have a strong-willed child, you WILL have power struggles (no matter their age!). You’ll likely second-guess yourself, feel frustrated, and disagree with your spouse. So what are appropriate expectations at various stages of kids’ development? What should you focus on and what should you let go, from the toddler through the teenage years? Kirk gives you specifics that will help stop these power struggles. Take advantage of our Christmas Sale. Visit https://celebratecalm.com/calm-christmas/ to purchase the Get Everything Package at the lowest prices of the year. Get practical strategies that really work with your strong-willed kids. AG1 AG1 is offering new subscribers a FREE $76 gift when you sign up. You’ll get a Welcome Kit, a bottle of D3 & K2 AND 5 free travel packs in your first box. So make sure to check out https://drinkag1.com/calm to see what gift you can get this week! HAPPY MAMMOTH It's time to feel like yourself again, Moms! For a limited time, you can get 15% off on your entire first order at https://store.happymammoth.com/ with the code CALM at checkout. OneSkin OneSkin is the world’s first skin longevity company. Get started today with 15% off using code KIRK at https://oneskin.co.  MeUndies Kids To get 20% off your first order of MeUndies Kids, plus free shipping, go to https://www.meundies.com/calmpod and enter promo code calmpod. MeUndies—comfort from the outside in.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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is going to happen they will resist you you will try to change them in their nature and you're going to likely second-guess yourself about what are proper expectations that they expectations at the various stages of their development and what should you really focus on and what should you let go at every age. That is what we're going to focus on on today's episode of the Calm Parenting Podcast. So welcome, this is Kirk Martin. You can find us at CelebrateCalm.com.

You can also find our Christmas sale there and Casey is putting together a really cool podcast directory that'll give you, if you go to the podcast section tab there's a directory there. So if you're looking for things on sibling fights or on motivating teens or on toddlers or for dads you'll see that there. So I could spend 35 hours giving you tips and tools for kids of all ages. So I asked myself, in most homes, what would be the top three things I would work on with each age group?

So I hope this helps you prioritize and set proper expectations so you don't beat yourself up over this and so you don't beat your kids up over this as well. So because I want you to enjoy these kids. So let's say toddlers and kids under the age of seven. Again these are arbitrary ages but in general. So look I was working with his family and his dad was like well when's my toddler gonna learn how to be successful? When's my seven-year-old gonna learn to be responsible?" And I was like,

Dad, chill a little bit. Do me a favor. I want you to write a job description for your child. Like if you were hiring a four-year-old or six-year-old, what would be their job description? And here's what it is. To be curious, to explore, to get into things, to make messes, and to ruin your agenda as a parent.

You know that checklist you have every morning of all the things you need to get done? Yeah, that's not gonna happen with little kids. Look, little kids are not supposed to be productive or efficient. So stop projecting your 35 or 40 year old expectations onto a little kid or a teenager. Your house should be a mess when you have little kids running around. So you kind of have two options. You can fight this. You can fight their nature, but it won't work. You'll have a strained relationship with this child, you'll stop enjoying them, your house will still be messy, and you still won't get everything done on your checklist because likely that will make the meltdowns even bigger and longer. Or you can plan for it and know this is

what it's supposed to be like. And instead of having that long checklist, you prioritize and you focus on the right things. And you build time into your schedule for stuff to go wrong, because that's what's supposed to happen, no matter how good a parent you are. And stop following those people on Instagram and having friends with moms who have it all together and they have three kids and she does everything

and it's all perfect. That's not reality. Or maybe that parent has like compliant, easy kids because they weren't capable of handling a more difficult child, who knows? But stop comparing yourself even to your own childhood and being judged by your own mother or father over things.

Build time into your schedule instead of trying to force it. You will begin to enjoy your strong willed child. Now you still won't get everything done, but you'll get the important things done and your house is still going to be a mess. Just let that go. Look, it would be weird if you had a little kid who listened all the time or the first time. They are supposed to be up in their imaginations picturing things and and exploring things and they're supposed to be impulsive. That's when you want them to

be impulsive, not when they're 35. So you will get the call from the preschool. You are, if you have a strong-willed preschool or toddler, when they first go into an organized setting, they're not gonna sit still and follow the directions all the time and don't freak out, oh well your child can't sit still in circle time. Oh, what are we going to do? Why can't our child do that? Because it's unnatural. And circle time is stupid.

Because after you're five or seven, for the rest of your life, you never have to sit still in a circle. Right? Nobody at your corporate office is going to be like, hey Frank, Mary, three o'clock in the conference room, circle time. So don't freak out about those things, it's normal. By the way, no screens for little kids.

There's no judgment in this because some of you have really tough situations and sometimes you need some help with that. But as long as you can delay, delay. Expect tantrums. Little kids are supposed to throw tantrums. Tantrums are not meltdowns. Meltdowns are emotional. Kids are completely out of control. I've been through this a million times on the

podcast and the programs how to deal with meltdowns. Tantrums are rational. I want something you won't give it to me so now I'm going to throw myself on the floor especially in public to embarrass you and I'm going to yell and scream so loudly that you finally give in and give me what I want. Instead I just want you to sit in the midst of the tantrum and I really mean that. Sit, smile, don't give in. Look the sooner your kids learn that tantrums don't work the sooner they will stop because remember your behavior does not change my behavior your mood does not determine my mood. Use earplugs, moms, for Christmas. Ask for noise-canceling headphones. And I mean that.

And I just got this question right before I did the podcast from two parents of like they said, oh my husband's upset that when he comes home the house is a mess. And I have three responses and I hope this one does not offend you. I talk to them very bluntly. say, hey, if this bothers you so much, why don't you freaking pitch in and help me out? Be concise and direct. You don't have to use the F word. But I like to talk to men like men talk to men.

Because that's how we talk to each other and we tend to respect that. So don't be afraid to do that. Second option, next time your husband starts complaining about the mess in the home you could say, you know I was just wondering why it's taking you so long to get a promotion because you know if you worked harder do you think you get a raise? It's so hard living on the same paycheck for the past six months. Now that will ignite World War III so you could do it the nice way and say honey I don't think you realize this,

but when you come home and you complain about the house not being clean or about meals, you're denigrating my work, work that I take seriously. It hurts and it's not motivating. It would be like me asking you every day when you come home why you didn't get a promotion or how long is it going to you didn't get a promotion or how long is it going to be before you get a raise. You'd be hurt and you'd get angry.

Now the third option is just hire a cleaner and if your spouse balks then give them a choice. Hey either we pay for this or you pitch in or the house is just going to be a mess. But don't worry about that stuff right now. It's not important. I know your mom and other people may judge you, but I'm not going to judge you and your kids don't care. Enjoy your kids. Now some things for toddlers I'm going to cover now when we get to like elementary school age and we'll just call this roughly ages 8 to 12. You can use some of this for your toddlers because if you have a strong will toddler, they're like four going on 24. So why not?

So I mentioned this before Uh young kids, they're supposed to be impulsive. They're supposed to get in trouble That's what they do It's the time of life when you learn by doing things and pushing the limits and they're gonna lie sometimes and they're gonna steal things And they're gonna misbehave And it's just part of the process how it's supposed to work. Number one thing for this age, give these kids tools to succeed rather than just punishing them for failure. What we tend to do is we react to the misbehavior. Oh if you keep doing that you're going to lose X. And we never take the time to teach and show them

how to do it differently. So rather than just reacting to misbehavior, I'd rather be proactive and give them tools to succeed. And I want to give a lot more energy to affirming for good choices. So this next week, let's just do this. Create successes. Put your child in a position to be successful, to complete missions that they're actually good at, and then put a lot more energy into, hey fist bump, hey nice job, really good job with that. So what are some missions, some specific jobs to do that your child will succeed in doing? Hey Tony, I could really use your help doing X. I give them challenges. Do treasure hunts. Say, bet you can't do X and then have them complete missions that in an area of their strength. Many of your kids are really

good at doing missions. I'm not talking about doing chores, but a mission. Hey this is hard because it stimulates their brain and they want to do it in a different way. So find a lot of things to say yes to within your boundaries. Whenever you say no to something inappropriate, say yes to something appropriate. When I say no, it's like, hey, that's not happening in my home, but I really love your energy. Do you think you could go outside? I don't know if

you're strong enough to do this, but do you think you're strong enough to move a couple bags of mulch to the other side of the yard? Could you do give them missions and then come out and say, dude, I didn't know you could do that. Well done. Fist bump. And that's number two, affirm and give positive intensity to the good choices. Do that in a purposeful way for the next two weeks. Catch your kids making good choices. Give fist bumps. Well done. That shows me you're growing up. Remember when we praise strong will kids, even matter of fact short and sweet. Because if you say, oh honey you did such a good job, it sounds like this to them. We never thought you'd actually make a good choice and

you just did, so we're gonna have a party for you. No, just expect it. Even matter of fact, boom. Not a lot of attention. Walk out of the room. Number three, look for opportunities for your kids to get good sensory pressure and exercise. That means climbing, crawling, lifting, pulling, pushing things appropriately, right? Get your kids a lot of sensory pressure, rock climbing, gymnastics, martial arts can be extremely helpful. Having an obstacle course in the backyard or in the basement to go through can be really helpful to work on as well.

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I know it's going to irritate you, but it's an opportunity to work on your own control issues and your own anxiety and that will liberate you. That will stop most of the power struggles. Am I saying power struggles are your fault? Yes, I'm kidding. I am and I'm not. You know I don't do blame or guilt, but I promise you when you start working on your own issues, so many of these power struggles go away and you just have to grit your teeth and say not the way I would do it but they did it and they got it done but they use their own brains in a creative way to get it done or they waited till the last minute and that just bugged you. Work on your own stuff. Number four, look

your own childhood issues are going to come up during this process and what you're going to find is by treating your kids this way by being patient and understanding but also by being firm right you know we don't let kids get away with things I just do firm even matter-of-fact discipline you will heal your own childhood issues in many ways by treating your own kids the way you always wanted to be treated. And after the new year, I'm going to do a couple podcasts on this because many of you, you didn't, you weren't allowed to have a voice as a kid and you've struggled with that your whole life. And now you're allowing your kids to have that voice and it's a really beautiful healing thing

for your child, but also for kind of like that inner child inside of you. And here's a really beautiful healing thing for your child But also for kind of like that inner child inside of you and here's another one I don't have time to deal with it right now. I've done it before but just know during this age you're probably going to feel like the referee between siblings and Sometimes between a spouse and your strong-willed child and I know that's exhausting and we've covered that before Because I want you to give your kids space to work out issues on their own and I want you to be more direct with your spouse to say this isn't working but know that that's a reality. Okay when we get to the teen and tween years a few expectations expect to dislike how they, especially if they play ice hockey like our son.

Expect to dislike how they spend their time. They are, look, I'll just be honest, if you have a middle school age boy in particular, you're going to look at this child and say, what do they actually do in life? They're just like in this hibernation phase and you're going to be tempted at times with these kids to look at them and say, oh, if you would just apply yourself, you're capable of so much more. And it won't work with these kids.

They will shut down. They know they can't please you anyway. Relax a little bit. Does that mean you let them get away with things and not do anything? No. It just means that this is very, very normal for kids to be unmotivated at that age. And some of these kids are going to sit in a hoodie sweatshirt for 17 straight days just looking at their screens. So we'll get to how to handle that in a minute, but know that that is pretty normal. Here's one of the tough parts is your teens kids get a little bit older. You're going to be confused because you

see them in these like adult bodies. They're gonna be like towering over you sometimes, but they still have a prefrontal cortex that is very underdeveloped. It's not fully developed until they're like 27. So you're seeing like these big kids, right? And these voices are changing and they want all this independence, but they're thoroughly unequipped to handle it. They're very, very impulsive and awkward. Normalize that for them. This is a really awkward time of life. Let them know that. Expect them to be moody. Expect

them to not want to do things with you as a family. And don't take it personally. This is where we have to transition from being mommy and daddy to being mom and dad. They're trying to figure out their independence and it's scary and they're not going to do it the right way. You know why? Because this is the first time that they're actually doing this in life and it's the first time you're likely handling this in life. So you're going to mess up a lot. So be it's almost you almost need to be more patient with tweens and teens than with little kids in some ways. So a few things. One, control your own anxiety about their future. Create a vision of who they can be. Stop the lecturing and projecting

your anxiety about their future onto them because it'll just shut down. And I promise if you start speaking with some wisdom and say, hey I know it's tough right now, I know it's awkward, I know you're not motivated right now, but I see these great traits in you and I know that one day when you get a vision for your life you're gonna crush it and then you walk out of the room and you you give them a vision of who they can be and who they will be not who they are right now except that this is their path and that it's going to be very different than your path I encourage you if you don't this would be my one commercial go

through our programs and if you have a teenager the first program to go through is the no BS program because it'll get right to the point and give You 25 action steps to help rebuild your relationship in a vision for your these kids number two release your kids from your unrealistic expectations of Them because that will free them when you release your kids it actually Liberates them to step up and be responsible for the themselves without you standing over them number three You've heard me say this be the no drama person in their lives Discipline needs to be even matter of fact short and sweet if they change the passwords on all of their devices

You don't make a big deal of it you just walk and say hey i just expect the passwords to be set back to normal by 6 p.m tonight i keep it very simple and short i don't react be the steady person in their life like you've seen this before like you've done this before you've been through teenage years before they haven't be the one person the one thing in their lives That is not filled with drama because the rest of their life is filled with drama and when you become that person You will become the trusted person that they go to and it'll be really cool You have really deep good talks, especially late at night number four four, affirm what they're already doing well. Trust me on this one.

I know you want to correct them and give them long lectures, but that just breeds a lot of anger. And if you will just simply walk in the room occasionally and affirm them for what they're already doing well, just recognize it. Simple, short and sweet. It will help immensely bond over things that bug you. Stay close to these kids. Look for opportunities to connect.

Even take an interest in their horrible music. Just do it. Number five, mission and mentor. Mentor, you have to discover what they care about. They're not going to listen to you as the parent. Very few teenagers do at the very beginning and it's not about what you care about. You have to discover what they care about and the mission of mentor is we have to find a mission for them doing what they're

naturally good at doing with a mentor accountable to another adult because other adults can speak into your child's life and and hold your kids accountable and encourage your kids in ways that you can't. And I've done these examples before of helping an elderly neighbor is awesome. Working a job, volunteering down at the vet's office because the veterinarian is going to be like, hey, you know what? You've got a gift with these animals. Look, I want you working in my office, but if I hear from your parents that you're mouthing

off that you're not keeping a B average, not doing your chores, you're not working with my animals. And I do that with all kinds of things. And see, to another adult, they will listen to them because I really like working at that vet's office because I do have a gift with animals. Get your kids working, volunteering and working jobs where there are younger kids because many of your kids are awesome at younger, with younger kids. We had this kid who was really good at computer stuff and so he was really struggling and I said hey do you know any adult like a group of adults and they're like oh we have a seniors group at our church and I was like awesome have this seniors group say hey we struggle with like

getting on Facebook and keeping up with social media with our kids. Could you come in and teach us how to do this? Well, this teenage boy walks into this room with all of these seniors and starts helping them get on their iPads and connecting all these things. And guess what? He got to hear from like eight different seniors. Man, you have a gift in this area.

Have you ever thought about doing IT? Because you're really good at that. You can make a lot of money. And it's motivating because he was good at it. Some other people recognized it and it wasn't his parents lecturing him about the need to do his homework and go to college. It was some other adults. And what happened in this case is he actually made some money because some of these seniors invited this kid to their home to say, hey, could you set up all of our electronics in the home so it's easier to work? See, that's what I'm after for our teenagers. Let me go through five other notes. If I could do it all over again, what would I really focus on? I want you to learn to raise the child you've been given, not the one you wanted or hoped for. Raise them according to the

way they are made. Stop trying to fight or change their nature. Work with their nature. Work with them. Stop fighting and trying to do it how society wants or how your parents want you to do it or how you want them to be. Work with their nature. Spend most of your time cultivating their natural gifts, talents and passions. The weaknesses will take care of themselves over time and we can work on those a little, but don't get sucked into spending all of your time trying to fix everything you think

is wrong for your child. 80% of your time should be spent cultivating their strengths, their their passions, their talents. Don't get too wrapped up in the little things. Know that it's perfectly normal for strong will kids to lie, to steal, to cheat at times. They're supposed to be impulsive when they're young. So teach them self-control. At the end of the day, it's the relationship that is most important. If you live your life out authentically and honestly with humility

in front of your kids, they will see you as a person they can trust. They will listen to you more. And you're raising them to be successful in the real world as adults, not to be successful as kids. Moms and dads, I know this is hard stuff. I know it is. So I appreciate how hard you're wrestling with all these different ideas. I hope you find this helpful. If we can help you in any way, reach out to us. We have our big Christmas sale on. I would go through that over the holidays. Do let your kids listen to this. I would like your toddlers listen to the programs because they're gonna be like, yes, that's how I'm made. It will promote really good conversations

with your older kids as well. Or just let them listen to the podcast, those are free. Okay, thank you all for working so hard. Thanks for sharing the podcast. Love you all, bye-bye.