Calm Parenting Podcast - Stop Trying to Fix Your Kids—Train Their Brains

Episode Date: November 27, 2018

Stop Trying to Fix Your Kids—Train Their Brains Have kids who forget to turn in homework, feel "dumb," get overwhelmed, blurt out, or struggle in school? Society will crush your child’s spirit and destroy their confidence. So you must teach your kids that their brains are different (even advantageous) and that there is nothing wrong with them. Kirk gives several specific examples that will help your kids be successful. Share this with your PTA, teachers and school counselors. Contact [e-mail] to have Kirk come train your school’s teachers and parents. Get our comprehensive ADHD University program to learn 100 more strategies like this. Learn more at https://www.celebratecalm.com/celebrate-adhd/ 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. You can find us at CelebrateCalm.com. I want to talk to you today about this theme. Stop trying to fix your kids. Most of your kids don't need to be fixed. They just have brains that work in very different ways. And unfortunately, we as parents, teachers, society, schools don't understand how their brains work, and so we try to change them, or we make them feel like they're dumb or stupid or something's

wrong with them, when in reality, it's the way that we look at them that's wrong. The way our schools are often set up are just set up according to arbitrary standards. Very little of it has to do with real science and research and learning. It's just the way we set up the schools. And for most of your kids, it just doesn't work that way because their brains are wired differently. And instead of us training the teachers, which is my passion in life, one of them, training teachers to see our kids in different ways and give them tools to succeed, instead of doing that, we don't change the school. We don't change society. We just try to change little boys and girls and teenage boys

and girls, and we inadvertently send the message that there's something wrong with them. And I will give you a little caution here when doing therapy. Very quickly though, I believe in therapy. I have several friends that are very good therapists and I see a therapist on a regular basis just because what I do giving out and helping people. I like to keep boundaries and want to make sure I'm on top of my game. So I believe in it. But many of your kids don't need to go to therapy because sometimes therapy actually reinforces the message that there's something wrong with you. And you also have to watch in dealing with any professional.

Many, many, many therapists don't understand your kids. And so they're just going to tell you, well, you just need to be firm. You need to set consequences and follow through. Well, if it were that easy, you've already done that before. It would have worked, right? So I just caution you with that. And my theme today is this. I want you and I want us to spend a lot of time learning how your kids' brains are wired and letting them know there's nothing wrong with you. Your brain just works in a different way, and it's not better or worse than other kids. There's nothing wrong with you.

And in many ways, our kids have advantages that other kids don't have. And that's why the original name of our organization was Celebrate ADHD, because I wanted people to take a very proactive, positive approach, and instead of being defensive, trying to fix kids, thinking it's gloom and doom, I wanted parents to say, oh, here's the way your brain is wired, and here's why it's a good thing. You are going to struggle in this area, but you will excel in that area. Take this for example.

Focus issues, right? Attention deficit. What a horrible label, and how misnamed can it be? Do our kids struggle with focus and attention deficit in school? Yes, I do as well in my real life in certain areas. But what we forget to tell them and what we don't focus on is that your kids often have a gift, which is the ability to hyper-focus. Because when your kids care about something, when they are interested in something, they can lock in for hours at a time.

Now, usually it's video games and something like that, or building with Legos, but you've seen it. They can lock in for hours at a time. They can remember details when they care about the subject. The problem is it's usually not a subject that they get grades for. Usually the things your kids hyper-focus on is not school, and that's okay because in real life, in their adult life, most of your kids are going to be specialists and they're going to find what they're passionate about and what they care about

and they're going to put 150% into it and they're going to hyper focus and they're going to nail it and they're going to own their subject material and they're going to own their profession and they will be wildly successful. And you know what? Most of them will not have the confidence to do that by the time they become adults because during their childhood, we stripped them of that. And if you sense me getting a little bit angry, I am kind of pissed off. And forgive me for that language. But I get angry because of what we're doing to our kids,

and by second and third grade, many of your kids have their spirits crushed and their confidence destroyed, and it's very difficult to rebuild that, and you get kids by middle school, eventually they're saying, you know what? Screw it. Screw you. Screw school. Screw trying to even do well because everybody just assumes the worst about me. Everybody's trying to fix me. Everybody assumes I'm not trying. I'm not applying myself. And so they shut down. And I'm passionate about this and I want you to be because I want to avoid that with your kids because it will devastate them. I cannot tell you how many young people I meet in their early to mid-20s and the first thing that I hear from them and this is they don't even know what I do. I'll just randomly be talking to them and they'll come

out with this. I grew up and in my entire childhood I just felt like I was stupid because nobody ever teaches them these things. Nobody teaches them, gives them tools to know. You've got a great brain, so let's use it. So during homework time, let's not have them sit down at a table and stand over them. Let's let them listen to music. And in fact, experiment with letting your kids listen to very intense music while they do homework because music has rhythm in it. The rhythm will stimulate the brain. It will create rhythm in their brains to counter a lot of that kind of disorder that you see in the brain. Stimulating multiple senses at the same time.

Standing at the kitchen counter, listening to music, chewing on a snack. Often doing homework in another place at a coffee shop or with candles on because when you stimulate the olfactory senses, it actually helps them concentrate better. We talk a lot about giving kids tools in school. The sensory strip under the desk, letting them fidget with things that are quiet, letting kids take tests while sitting underneath their desk at school, letting them do writing projects while chewing gum or laying down. My son found this to be true and it's really true for your kids. It's not about

managing your time. It's about managing your energy. I was in the corporate world for a long time and we did countless seminars on time management. Time management doesn't work if your brain is wired like your kid's brain, like my brain is. It's about managing our energy because we're all into momentum and we can hyper focus. So when we get locked in, we want to run with it. We work in spurts. So we work hard and we pound it out, but then we need to take a little break. And then we come back and we pound it out and we hit it hard. I work great in spurts. So does my son. But if you don't teach your kids that their brains are wired like this, they're going to grow up thinking that they're dumb and they're stupid and there's something wrong with them and there's not because I believe

that people with ADHD are often the most productive people in the world, the most effective people. We can get a lot done in a short period of time precisely because we have really good brains for doing that. I want you to teach your kids that. Here's one. Kids who forget to turn in their homework, right? So here's a tool for you. And a lot of people don't like this, but I'm not backing down on this anymore, and I'll tell you why. So they forget to turn in their homework. So here's an easy one. You have them earn 10 bucks. You buy a little scanner. They come home. They do their homework. Scan it into the computer. Email it to the teacher. Boom. Homework just got turned in. Or if you want to save a little bit of money, just snap a picture of it on your iPhone and scan it and then email it to the teacher. Now it's turned in. Now I know a lot of people are going to be like, well, your child needs to remember to turn in his homework. Why? Why? Seriously, why? Why does a nine-year-old have to stress over turning in his homework the next day

when it's not really important to him? Everybody projects out, well, when they're an adult, they're going to have to remember to do their assignments at work. Well, duh, they will because they're getting a paycheck, right? We have to break out of some of these preconceived ideas of there's only one way to do it. There's not. And so here's what happens. A kid does that. We're like, well, you can't do that. Well, what if we took the opposite approach and we went to that kid and said this, hey, you know what you just did? That was brilliant because here's what you know. You struggle with short-term memory, which is fine because the only time in life that you need short-term memory is in school to memorize things

for tests. That's the only time you need it. You don't need short-term memory in the corporate world. I never had to memorize information. I had to access information, think about it. I had to come up with strategic recommendations, which I was really good at doing. But I never had to memorize information. And so we're creating all these arbitrary standards for our kids that don't really matter. Instead, we ought to be looking at that child and saying, I love your self-awareness. I love the fact that you know that your brain, you struggle with short-term memory, but here's

what you're good at. You're good with strategy. You're a good thinker. And so you used your strategy and your good critical thinking skills, and you came up with the idea to get a scanner and scan it into the teacher. And that's called a workaround. And workarounds in life are brilliant and smart. And you just did it. And now you can sleep at night and you get up in the morning and you go to school. Now you don't have to waste brain energy wondering about whether you're going to remember to turn in your homework or not. You know why?

Because yesterday at 3.52 in the afternoon, you turned it in and your enlightened teacher who came to one of our teacher trainings looked at you and called you brilliant and said that was good thinking. And they said, you know what? You were the first one to turn in your homework. Well done, my friend. Nicely done. What if our kids went to school and started hearing that? Let me give you another one. Kids who blurt out in class, and some of you have heard this before, but it's really good. There's two different approaches here. Typical approach. Stop blurting out my class. It's rude. You don't have good impulse control. You need to learn how to control your mouth, right? And all we do is negative, negative, negative.

If you can't learn to do that, if you keep blur learning out, I'm going to take away recess and I'm going to send a note home to your parents, right? And then your parents are going to be upset. They're going to take away video games and everything's going to be negative, negative, negative. Now, I get why teachers do it because they haven't been trained. And I feel badly for teachers because you've got 20, 25 kids with all these issues and nobody's ever trained you in this. So if you're listening to send this to teachers, if you're a teacher, send this to the school counselor, email us, call us. My son's name is Casey, C-A-S-E-Y, Casey at CelebrateCalm.com. Email us, we will come and we will do the most fantastic teacher training. This past on back to school time, I got standing ovations from teachers. It's not because I'm great. It's just because the insight is really, really helpful and effective,

and it's very, very practical, plus we make it fun, right? And it's undergirded by science, but it's all practical, and it's fantastic because it will change the way that you see these students, and it'll give you practical tools to actually stop the blurting out. To stop all the distractions in class. Now if you can't do the teacher training. Then get a hold of our ADHD University program. Because it's extremely comprehensive. I want your kids to listen to it.

Because it's really, really helpful. And with that you'll get a brain boosters program. So again, contact Casey. Casey at CelebrateCalm.com. Just put like ADHDU in the subject line and he'll help you out with this program. But here's the deal. So here's a different conversation to have with that child who blurts out. What if we looked at that child and say,

Jacob, you know why I love having you in my class? Because you're really smart and you've got this brain that's really busy and you're always thinking of ideas. You're like a junior Thomas Edison man, all these ideas, and you get really passionate about your ideas and you're never really passionate about what I'm teaching you, but I love your passion. By the way, you keep the sarcasm out, but I love your passion. I love your ideas, but Jacob, here's what happens in my class. You get one of your ideas, you get really excited about it, but then you're afraid you're going to forget it, and so you blurt out my class, and that's unacceptable. So watch the difference. In the first example, I just said

you're being rude. Second example, it's unacceptable. I don't want people blurting out my class. It's good to say no to kids. I want them to have self-control, but I want to give them tools to do it. But in the second example, I actually taught him about his brain and gave him a reason, showed him that the reason he blurts out is actually because he's an idea guy with a very busy brain, which will serve him well in life because it's going to help him be a strategic person who comes up with ideas. And ideas what change society they change countries they change the world they change companies they change consumer behavior and they help people we have idea kids and all we ever do is get on them because they don't know how to use that. So instead, I may come in as a teacher and say,

I love that brain, man. That's a good brain. Let me show you how to help yourself with that short-term memory and the blurting out. So I'm going to give you three talk tickets. So imagine some little cardboard little tickets. Jacob, every time you get the impulse to blurt out in my class, instead, I want you to hold up one of your talk tickets. Big principle. Whenever you tell a child to stop doing something inappropriate, you have to give them something appropriate to do. So, that afternoon, Jacob's in my class. He's starting to blurt it out. Mr. Martin, Mr. Martin, the new Star Wars game is coming out on Friday night. And then he holds up his talk ticket. And do you know how beautiful

that is? Because he just exercised self-control. Because I gave him something concrete, a concrete way to do it. And now, instead of getting it on him, because all you ever do is blurt out, and that's rude. Instead, I get to say, Jacob, you know what was cool? Just back in math class, you wanted to blurt out because you were excited about your new video game coming out, and you started to blurt out, but you know what you did? You caught yourself. You held up that talk ticket. That's self-control, my friend. That's the way we do it in this classroom. And look, when he holds up the talk ticket, I either say, hey, hold it, put it back, because I believe you can hold your thought until after class. Or I say, hey, redeem your talk ticket.

Share your amazing off-topic idea because it's always going to be off-topic. And he redeems one of his three tickets. But in this way, I can get him to stop blurting out so much because I'm giving him a tool. But the most important part to me is not just changing his behavior. It's giving him insight to know that he's got a great brain. I hope that makes sense. Let me give you one more example of how I want you to think about your kids because there's nothing wrong with them. Just put the time into teaching them how their brains are wired and how they work. But you have to learn that first and do that for the teachers. Get the teacher training. Get the ADHD university program. But watch,

here's a really cool story. So this past summer, we were doing some training in California and we had a couple extra days. So we went hiking in Yosemite. Well, I always end up finding the parents of the different kind of kids. So I'm hiking with these parents and they're telling me all about their child and his childhood. And here's what I hear. Our son, his entire childhood never shut up. He just talked and talked and talked and blurted out. He never, never, ever stopped. And the worst thing is he just talked about this very narrow interest that he had. And he memorized all these useless facts. And over and over again, it just was so difficult.

We were so worried, like, what is he ever going to do in life? He's always in trouble in school. And we spent our entire childhood trying to change this kid. And you know what I was thinking? And look, you're good parents. We're all good parents. We just fall into this. I just want you to stop it. But what they said was, we tried to change the very essence of his character just so he would fit in to society and into school. So fast forward. You know what that kid's doing today? He is the play-by-play announcer for the Boston Red Sox baseball team farm club. Do you know what he gets paid to do now? He gets paid to not shut up. He gets paid to talk and talk and talk. and he is uniquely gifted to do this job because he's a

talker and that's his gift and because he memorizes useless information what's useless to other people so you know what he's interesting because when the opposing team's third baseman comes up the bat, he doesn't have to look at notes. He knows everything about that guy, and he makes the game interesting. And people love tuning in to him, listen to him. And I have zero doubt that one day he will be an announcer for a Major League Baseball team. And he will do that for decades, and people, dads and moms and kids will grow up listening to him on the radio, and they'll get to know him, and they will

love his voice, and they will be glad. Their lives will be made richer, more entertained, and they will love it for decades precisely because he's different, precisely because his brain is wired in that way. And this kid will get to spend his life doing what he loves, not sitting in a corporate world feeling unfulfilled, right, and having someone doing what he doesn't like doing just because he needs a paycheck. He's having someone doing what he's not, doesn't like doing just because he needs a paycheck. He's going to do what he's passionate about. And that's what we want for our kids. But you've got to take a different path. So get the ADHD University program. Bring us to

your school to train your teachers so we don't keep destroying kids' confidence. And if you need extra help, come to the boot camp. We've got boot camps where I go through this in detail with you as a parent. But if we can help you at all, email my son Casey, C-A-S-E-Y, at CelebrateCalm.com. You can find us on CelebrateCalm.com. You can call us at 888-506-1871. Thank you for listening. Thank you for doing this and be passionate about your kids and advocate for them and teach them how their brains are wired and celebrate them. They've got awesome futures ahead of them. Anyway, thanks so much. Talk to you later. Bye-bye.