Calm Parenting Podcast - Stop Sibling Fights & Lying, and Build A Confident Kid

Episode Date: December 2, 2019

Stop Sibling Fights & Lying, and Build A Confident Kid Learn how to get your kids to control themselves so you don’t have to be the referee. Building confidence will eliminate more behavior issues than consequences will. There are some surprising insights here to repair relationships.  We have a massive Christmas Sale at www.CelebrateCalm.com to help you be the parent your kids need you to be. Start 2020 calm and confident.Need help or want to bring Kirk to your town? Email [e-mail] for the friendliest customer service on the planet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So you know we are very purposeful about how we manage our emotions and take care of our bodies because we only have one body and one skin. That's why we love OneSkin. Their products make it easy to keep your skin healthy while looking and feeling your best. We use the face topical supplement and love that there's no complicated routine, no multiple step protocols, just simple scientifically validated solutions. The secret is OneSkin's proprietary OS1 peptide. It's the first ingredient proven to switch off the aging cells that cause lines, wrinkles, and thinning skin.

OneSkin is the world's first skin longevity company. By focusing on the cellular aspects of aging, One Skin keeps your skin looking and acting younger for longer. Get started today with 15% off using code KIRK at oneskin.co. That's 15% off at oneskin.co with code KIRK. After you purchase, they'll ask where you heard about them, so please support our podcast and tell them we sent you. Hey moms and dads, you know that our goal is to raise curious kids who love to learn, and IXL makes that so much easier. IXL is an online learning program that enriches your homeschool curriculum from K to 12.

IXL encourages students to be curious and empowers them to choose how to learn. No matter your child's learning style or knowledge level, IXL has video tutorials and learning games to guide your child in the way your kids learn best while meeting them at their level. On IXL, kids can explore any topic in any grade level. They're not forced into a single learning path. Kids love IXL's positive feedback, and parents love knowing specific skills that need work. Make an impact on your child's learning. Get IXL now.

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 everybody, this is Kirk Martin, founder of Celebrate Calm. I'm glad you're here because I'm psyched. I've wanted to do this podcast for a long time. You know why? Because nothing screams holidays and Christmas time like kids fighting. So here's what I want to get into. You know, sibling fights tend to come from one of two places. The first place comes from this. If you have a strong-willed child who tends to be in trouble a lot,

and then you also have a child who's more of the supposed good kid, the strong-willed child is going to feel resentful toward the good child that everybody loves, right? He's going to pick on that child because he doesn't feel good about himself. That's his oldest time. That's Cain and Abel. That's what happens. And everybody's always like, oh, I have a sibling fight issue. Not really. You know what you have is a confidence issue. Look, I want you to go deeper with this stuff. Everybody's always like, oh, what consequence do we give to change this behavior? Consequences don't really work for most of your kids. In that case, it's not a sibling issue. It's a confidence issue. Look, you're kids who lie all the time. That's about confidence. When a child feels good about himself, his confidence, his confidence has a purpose and vision for his life. He doesn't feel the need

to pick on his siblings, to lie, to steal, to do all these other things. So if you get to the root of it, a lot of these negative behaviors will just go away because you tackled the root of it. And we can show you how to do that. I'll try to do that on another podcast. Look, that's all about what we do. And I encourage you, here's my brief little sponsorship thing. We're sponsored today by Celebrate Calm. That's me. Because we have a Christmas special going on. If you go to our website, CelebrateCalm.com, there's a Christmas tab there, Christmas special.

We have never, ever, ever sold our CDs, our entire library of programs. We've never done it for this price ever. You go back for 15 years and look, and you'll never see us do the complete package for this price. Why? Because as a family, we decided, let's do this. Let's draw a line. People are hurting, suffering. You're struggling. And I don't give stuff away for free.

But, man, this is a special. I guarantee there are a ton of people listening. They're like, we paid a lot more for our CDs and your downloads and you're selling them for. And it was worth it for whatever you paid for it. I know it is. But we want to do a Christmas special. So go there and look. It is 10, 11, 12 programs.

I don't even know anymore. We have a lot of stuff out there on motivating kids, disciplining kids, getting kids to listen, understanding your strong will kids, ADHD. It's everything we've ever put together. Stop defiance, disrespect, and meltdowns. There's CDs for moms. There's one for dads. The most popular one is my son Casey recorded straight talk for kids.

It's my son. It's a kid talking to other kids about how to control their own emotions and impulses. There's one on sibling fights. You get it as downloads. So you can download this to multiple devices, your computer, your iPhone, your phone, your iPad. You can share it with your parents, with your spouse. I want your kids listening. Share it with teachers. It will change your family. And these issues will go away when you do this. We've helped 750,000 families with this. We know what we're doing. Our stuff is practical and it works. So take advantage of that because I guarantee you I'm not going to offer this again. It may not be until Christmas time of 2020, but this is fantastic. So anyway,

you get the deal. Go to Christmas sale. So here's where the other sibling fight thing comes from. We're going to talk about sibling fights, but we're also going to get into controlling yourself because the quickest way to change your child's behavior is not to control them, is to control your own behavior. So set this scene. This is how I'm going to set it up. Let's say you've got a boy and a girl, because it makes it easier in the story. And they're in the living room, and they start squabbling. And what happens is your child, let's say your boy child, I'm just going to pick on him. Say he gets bored, so he starts picking on his sister.

And all he has to do to get a reaction from his sister is look at her or almost poke her. So what happens? Mom comes into the room because she hears all the bickering, and she's frustrated, rightfully so. You know what? After all I do for you, I buy you guys toys. I buy you guys all these video games. You can't even play well together for 20 minutes. You know what?

One day, you're going to love each other and be best friends and all these mommy lectures that don't work. And you know what just happened? Mom just came in and added her own drama to the drama that the kids have going on. Because moms, you get sucked into this thing of being the referee in the home. You have to referee between the siblings. And then when your spouse comes home, you often have to referee between your husband and the kids. And I want to relieve you of that so you don't do that anymore. That's partly on the Straight Talk for Stressed Out Mom CD to show you how to do that. So you take control of your inner life. So you stop being the referee and you teach your kids how to control themselves. Because if you don't, you're going to be exhausted and worn down, have adrenal fatigue, right? And so mom

starts adding her drama to the drama. Now what else happens? As soon as mom gets upset, dad gets upset because you know what men can't handle? Their wives upset because we barely know what to do with you when everything's okay. But when you're upset, we get freaked out. So dad comes in, starts yelling at child, Jacob, leave your sister alone. Go to your room. So watch what just happened. One child, by looking at his sister, by saying one word, by almost poking her, got his sister upset, his mom upset, and his dad upset. Three people. He's controlling the whole family by just doing one little thing. And here's the horrible part and kind of the tough part of this that happened.

The son who just did that, the reason he's irritating his sister is because he needs his brain stimulated. Many of your kids don't get enough dopamine or blood flow to the brain. Their brains are physiologically understimulated. That's why they pick fights with you. It's why they argue. It's why they tap pencils, bounce their legs. It's why they fidget. It's why they procrastinate. It's why they do a lot of things in life because they're looking for brain stimulation. So what he's learned in life is, if I get bored, I'll just pick on my sister because she will react. And that gives me control of another human being, which is very stimulating. And you know what inadvertently, which we just

taught that child by coming in and reacting to him, we just gave him our intensity. And I want you to know that your kids don't want your attention. They want your intensity. The human brain is drawn to intensity and wherever it gets gets intensity the quickest and easiest, it will seek it. So when mom and dad come in the room, Jacob, leave your sister alone. Go to your room. You know what we just taught that child? If you want intensity and brain stimulation, just do something wrong. And that is an insidious thing that begins to change the physical structure of

your child's brain so that his brain begins to seek stimulation and intensity by doing negative things. Because the only time we give our kids intensity is when? When they do something wrong. No dad ever walks in a room and says, Jacob, look at me, look at me. You know what? You just made a good choice. I'm proud of you. Nobody ever does that. We should do that. Give the intensity to the times when your kids are making positive choices. So what just happened in this situation? We reacted to our child's behavior, which is never good. We reinforced to our son, if you want brain intensity and you want to stimulate your brain, do something negative because three people in the home will get all wound up. And we just gave him control of our home. That is not his issue. That is your issue

for reacting to it. You're the grown adult. Stop taking everything personally and start acting like the grownup. I know that's a little bit tough, but if you want to change, you've got to own your own stuff, right? You know what we also did by coming into the room like that? We just reinforced to our daughter that she doesn't have any other choices in life, right? Because what we're basically saying is, honey, you know what? Your childhood's going to be miserable because your brother's really difficult and irritating. Until he goes off to college or jail, you're going to be miserable. Sorry. And we just reinforced that she's kind of a victim of that. So let's rewind the situation. Quickest way to change a child's behavior, first control your own. You're going to laugh at this.

You're not going to want to do it. You're going to think that it's stupid and I don't care. You know why? Because it works. I want you to walk into that living room next time and sit on the floor, lie down on the floor. Mom, start reading a book because you haven't sat down since you had kids. And I know it will feel dumb and stupid, but I guarantee you when you go in and sit in the middle of the living room floor, those two kids will stop all of their drama and they're going to look over at you like, what's my mother doing laying down in the middle of the living room floor? And they will stop and you will have their full undivided attention. And now you can teach. Discipline literally means to teach. Most of us as parents do very little teaching and very little discipline. What we do a lot of is talking and lecturing and yelling and screaming.

Go to your room. Stop that. How many times do I have to tell you? That's not discipline. That's frustration. And that's you out of control. And you're not doing anything positive. Discipline means to teach. It doesn't mean to punish or yell or take things away. So now that I'm sitting down and my kids look at me like, what are you doing?

I can teach. I can teach from a place of calm leadership, from a place of authority. We've messed this up. And look, I hate to say this, but in a lot of religious homes especially, this whole thing, well, I'm the authority figure. I get to boss people around. So what an authority figure does, where did we get that idea? I used to have that idea too, right?

My job is to be chief disciplinarian in the home and walk around and yell at people and boss them around because I'm the authority figure. That has nothing to do with being an authority figure. A good authority figure leads, and he leads from a place of calm, authoritative confidence. See, when you're just spouting stuff off, you're not in control of anything. Your kids are in control of you because if they just push your buttons or don't listen to you, you're going to lose it and they're going to be in complete control of you. This is really good stuff. I love this stuff because it reorients. Look, I've been doing this for a long time. I still get excited about this because it's that kind of insight alone. I could stop the podcast right there. And if you just meditate on that

and start thinking about that, what is my role as the parent? Is it to come in and just yell at kids and I'm the chief source of discipline? And when I change my mindset to know my job is to be the chief source of wisdom in this home. Because if I'm a source of wisdom, I can teach my kids so that instead of yelling at them, I can teach them how to control their own behavior. You take that mindset into every situation in your home, their behavior will change very quickly. And it didn't have anything to do with you changing their behavior, but changing your own mindset, changing your tone of voice, changing your body posture, and changing who you are. And that's why I want you to listen to the

programs because you got to get it deep inside of you because once you start changing, you will see changes in your home very, very quickly. And the good thing is those changes last. Here's why. Because you're not just applying certain strategies to a child. You're changing who you are. You're changing the very relationships in your home. And it is relationships that change behavior. That's the Christmas message. The Christmas message is that a relationship changed. And with that, human beings changed. That's a very powerful concept. That's why once you're doing the programs, go to the Christmas sale. It's really cool. By the way, if you already have some of our CDs or all of them, email my son Casey at celebrate calm.com and say, listen, I've got these certain ones. I've got these. What else do you have for me? And he'll give you a special on some of the

other programs or on completing your set. And we'll make it very special for you. This is Christmas season. We want things changing. So how do we teach? Now I look at my two kids, and from a place of confidence and a place of wisdom, I say, guys, look, I've seen this scene unfold in our home like 37 times this month. Because doesn't this happen all the time, repeatedly, repeatedly, day after day, and it never changes because we never

get to the root of it. And now I'm just setting the scene. Guys, I've seen this scene unfold. Look, I know what's about to happen. So son, let's call him Jacob. Jacob, I know what's happening with you. You've got this awesome brain, man. It's really busy. All these ideas floating through it all the time. It runs really quickly and it's really, really busy, but it's really active. And I love that because you've got a lot of great brain energy, my friend. But what I know about you is you need your brain stimulated because you get bored kind of easily. And that's not a bad thing. That's a good thing. But here's what usually happens. When you get bored, you pick on your sister. Two downsides to that. One is you're dependent now on your sister because you need

her to react and that makes you weak. I don't want you to be weak in life. Second downside is this. When you pick on your sister, you end up getting in trouble and losing all your stuff, and I know you don't like that. So here are two other things I know about you. I know that you love money. How many of your kids love money? I'm not talking about in a bad way. It's just they like money, and they're drawn to it, and they're born entrepreneurs.

So notice that. affirm that. So son, I know that you love money and I know that you have a big heart, never toward me, but toward other people, you're awesome. Again, you can think these things, these sarcastic comments, don't say them, but think them. But it is true. Your kids have really big hearts, usually toward other people. So Jacob, look, two things I know. You love money and you like helping other people. So I've got an idea. I'm going to go get started on dinner right now because I like movement. I like to lead kids.

I don't like to always stay in the same place I am because I like to give them space to think about things. You can spend the rest of your childhood picking on your sister, but all that's going to happen is you're going to lose all your stuff and you're going to get bored with doing that. But if you want to come help me in the kitchen, I bet we could brainstorm three different ways to earn some money. Because look, you're really good at shoveling mulch. You're good at doing physical things. You're good at creating stuff. You're good at selling stuff. You don't take no for an answer. That's the best quality of a salesperson. I bet we could come up with three different ways for you to earn some money in this neighborhood

because you're great with animals. You don't walk our dog, but I bet for other people, you'd walk their dogs, right? And you pick up the dog poop and you make money. And with that money, you could give some of that money to like St. Jude's to help kids with cancer. And if you do that, I'll match every dollar that you do that or I'll match your 50 cents on the dollar. You want to do that? Look what I've just done. I've just taught this kid, there's nothing wrong with your brain, it's a great brain,

but when you use it in a negative way and you get bored and you get brain stimulation in a negative way, you just lose all your stuff. But I also know these great things about you and if we use it in a positive way, you earn some money and you get to give that away and help other people. How cool would that be? And I'm giving him other choices and options rather than go to your room, stop picking on your sister or just as invaluable. I was going to say useless.

So I'll just say useless is honey. You know, it's really important that we get along as a family and that you learn to have empathy for your sister. Look, I'm just, I'm not being mean with this, but those lectures don't mean anything to your kids. It doesn't do anything. This will start to change his behavior because I'm showing him a different way. Now I have an opportunity with my daughter to say, honey, I get it. Your brother's irritating. But guess what? If all you're ever going to do in

life is react to irritating people or situations, you're going to be miserable in life. And I can't help you with that because guess what? Everybody and everything in life is miserable, is irritating. Your teachers are going to be irritating. Your boss is going to be irritating. One day you're going to get married. You're going to find that your spouse has irritating qualities. And then you're going to have kids. You're going to find they're irritating at times and traffic's irritating and politicians are irritating. Weather can be irritating. But if all you're going to do is react to those things, you're going to give all your power away to those things. And you're just going to kind of be a victim to that. And I don't, I'm not raising you to do that because I believe that you're capable, right, of controlling yourself. And so if you want, I can show you three different

ways to respond to your brother instead of react to him. Because every time you react to your brother, you give your brother complete power over you. You become your brother's puppet. And I know you are nobody's puppet. You are strong and you are confident. And that's who I want you to be. And look, does that make sense? By changing myself and how I see this situation, by changing my body posture and my tone of voice, I now become someone to my kids who's not the lecturer, who's not the person who comes in and just gets on me all the time about,

stop this and stop that. Why can't you ever do this? I'm now giving my kids wisdom and showing them how to control themselves so that they can change this long term. That's really cool. And that's what I want. If we can help you with that, reach out to my son, Casey, C-A-S-E-Y, celebrate calm.com calls 888-506-1871. If you need help with your family, we can help you. And we want to help you. That's what we've lived for. So change this now, change yourself that I, you know, I hadn't planned on saying that just kind of came to me. That's the Christmas message is we get to change and become new people, right? And have a new family, new relationships. When you begin to have a new

relationship with your kids and instead of resenting that strong-willed child, you begin to understand him and know how to motivate him and what's going on inside of his brain, that will change behavior more quickly than anything else. So go to celebrate calm.com, go to that Christmas special tab, and you'll see that it is phenomenal. I guarantee you've paid way more than that for all kinds of therapy that didn't work for testing that didn't work for all kinds of other stuff. By the way, you paid more than that for a simple lampshade, right? And stuff around the house. Get something that changes your family forever. If you need help for it, email our son. Anyway, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy Hanukkah. Hope I covered everybody there, but if we can help you, let us know. Love you all. Thank you. Bye-bye.