Calm Parenting Podcast - Take the Pressure Off Yourself & Your Kids

Episode Date: April 15, 2020

Take the Pressure Off Yourself & Your KidsDo you ever feel burdened trying to make sure your kids do well in school, have friends, eat right, play well together, and become the person you want them to become? That’s exhausting and inevitably backfires. What if by taking the pressure off of yourself you could release your kids to be responsible for themselves? Learn how with meltdowns, social skills, and more. Every Mom needs to listen to this so SHARE this one! We have slashed prices on our products at www.CelebrateCalm.com to help struggling families use this time together to create changes that last forever. Email [e-mail] for the most helpful service on the planet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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no multiple step protocols, just simple scientifically validated solutions. The secret is One Skin'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, OneSkin 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 K-I-R-K. After you purchase, they'll ask where you heard about them. So please support our podcast and tell them we sent you. Do you ever feel like you're under so much pressure, right? Pressure to make sure you feed your kids the right way, that they do their schoolwork, that they sleep well, that they have

friends, right? That you handle all of their emotional things going on. It can be suffocating at times. I'm sure you feel like that, especially if you're a mom. So that kind of comes with the territory. But I want to free you from that pressure. I want to take the pressure off of your entire family. And that's the theme we're going to discuss today, and how to do that on the Calm Parenting Podcast. So we're glad you're here. My name's Kirk Martin, founder of Celebrate Calm.

You can find us at CelebrateCalm.com. If you ever need anything, you can talk to our strong-willed son, because he's the reason we're here. And his name is Casey, and you can talk to our strong-willed son because he's the reason we're here. And his name is Casey, and you can find him, Casey, C-A-S-E-Y, at CelebrateCalm.com. He was a very challenging child, but he will provide the best customer service on the planet. So if you ever need anything, reach out to him. He's phenomenal for other people. He's just horrible for us, like your kids.

I'm kidding. He's awesome. So I want to thank this mom for sending an email today. This is very fresh because it just came in and I thought, well, let's hit on this theme of freeing us up, taking the pressure off. So here's what her email said. She said, you know, we've been listening to your podcast for a long time. We really like them. We're debating whether to get the CDs and the downloads. And we eventually decided, here's what the truth was. She told me on the side, she's like, my husband's a cheapskate.

He didn't want him, but he finally got so tired of us always yelling and lecturing and being upset at each other. He finally gave in. And plus he said he likes a good sale and we're having a big sale. So you can find that at celebrate calm.com. There's a big sale we've got going on because we slashed the prices for the COVID crisis and we want the tools in the hands of parents. So, so she's like, so we started listening and here's what we noticed first. You take the pressure off of us. You took the pressure off. We don't have to fix everything. We don't have to create the perfect child. We don't have to impose our own anxiety and our own control issues, our perfectionism.

We don't have to impose that on our kids. You've taken the pressure off, right? We don't have to do everything right. We just have to accept our kids as they are. And we have to control ourselves. And so we've shifted. She said it's really interesting. They have spent, the first they've got, I believe, a 9-year-old and a 14-year-old.

So she said, we've spent the first 9 and 14 years of our kids' lives basically trying to dictate to them and control them and make them behave the right way. And here's the other one she said, we've been trying to make them be just like us. And she said, and we finally figured out it wasn't the strong-willed kids who were the issue, it was us. And it's not because we're bad people, it's not. And she said, this is what's freeing.

Our hearts are in the right place. We thought we were doing the right thing. We thought we were doing this and we were trying to make these kids be a certain way. But when we listen to your materials and we go step by step, we realize we don't have to do that. We don't have to create the perfect child. All we have to do is control our own anxiety over our kid's future. And we have to learn how to deal with our own perfectionism, our control issues, our guilt. And she said the awesome part of that is we're changing ourselves at the very core of who we are. And it's changing every relationship we have, and most importantly, it's changing us from within. And that's the beauty of this.

Look, if you go through a program or your methodology is behavior management, right? Now, some behavior management is fine, but most behavior management tools don't work because you're trying to manage the behavior of another human being. That doesn't work. If I were to come to you as a grown adult and say, listen, a couple areas of your life I'm not happy with. I'm just going to manage your behavior, and I'm just going to spend time with you every day. And I'm going to point out every time you do something wrong. And then I'm also going to give you a consequence. And at the office every day, you're going to be on the red, green, or yellow on the behavior chart, right? And before you leave the office every day, I'm going to either give you a happy face sticker or a sad face sticker, depending on how you behaved according to my

arbitrary standards, right? You would hate that. You'd be like, that doesn't work. You'd be like, give me tools to succeed. Let me know what it takes to succeed. Give me some tools and then give me some space to work things out and I'll be great for you. And that's what your kids want to say to you. They don't know how to say it. See, oftentimes when kids yell at you and call you names and they melt down, it's an immature way for them to say, mom and dad, I know what you want. I know that. And I'll do it. I may not do it the way you want. I may not do it exactly in the way you would do it. and I may not always do it according to your timeline. I'm not talking about doing their schoolwork and doing their chores. I'm just talking about general life stuff, right? But I know what you want me to do, and I can do it, but would you

take the pressure off of me? Would you stop trying to micromanage me because it's suffocating? And so let me give you a couple examples of this. And this is beautiful with this mom because there's this whole liberation that comes. It frees you from thinking, I have to create the perfect home. I have to create the perfect child. No, you don't have to do that. You have to work on yourself. And the byproduct of that is your kids will change very quickly when you focus on controlling and changing yourself. And the other byproduct is you get to become a new person in your daily life, not in relation to anyone else.

You will find yourself free from the anxiety and the cares and trying to control everything in your family dynamic, your larger family dynamic with your own brothers and sisters and your parents and your grandparents and family get togethers and everything else in politics, in religion, in every other aspect of your life where you're trying to control other people and control situations, it only yields frustration. And when you get to be liberated from this thought of, I don't have to fix everyone. I don't have to fix everything. I don't have to fix society. I don't have to fix this group of people that believe different from me. No, I get to fix and control myself. And when I do, I find that I am a resource

to other people and people come to me. And now I'm kind of a light shining out to people by my example, not by trying to fix them. So here are a couple examples. So one is one of their kids struggles with emotional meltdowns. And so what typically happens, you can picture this, a couple kids, there's a child with emotional meltdown. Mom in the moment tends to get triggered by her son getting upset, right? There's a whole interplay of like he gets upset and then mom gets upset because mom thinks, oh, did I do something wrong? What's going on?

Is he going to hit the walls? Is he going to do this? Why is my child unhappy? Is there something wrong with him? Did I do something wrong? Can you kind of hear all of that going through your brain? So mom gets triggered. Well, when mom gets triggered, that triggers back to the son, and he gets even more upset. Now you take a husband. Most of us, I'll speak for me as a man, we have no idea what to do in that moment. But when I hear my wife getting upset, my first thought is,

I'm going to go shut this down right now. And what happens, I walk into the room and try to shut it down. And I end up yelling, screaming, using some kind of tone with my son. Now that just triggers my wife again, right? Poor moms. It's a wonder. Most of you probably have PTSD or adrenal fatigue of some kind because you spend your whole life trying to manage your child's emotions and managing your husband's emotions. And what is dad doing now? He's now trying to control his son's emotions so that his son doesn't make his wife upset. See how that whole, see how that happens? And it just escalates every time. So in this example, what the mom did and what I've encouraged her to do is go to your

husband and say this, Don, here's how I could use your help. When our son gets upset, you don't have to fix it. You don't have to come in and know the right thing to say. You don't have to calm him down. You also don't have to shut him up. Here's what I want you to do. Every time he gets upset, I simply want you to do this. You walk in the room and calmly say, Jacob, I need your help. Could you come help me out in the garage? Jacob, I need some help. I've got to run to the grocery store right now. We need some milk. Would you come along and help me? We've got to go take recycling. Son, I need your help. Would you go walk around the neighborhood with me? Son, I really want to get some exercise. Son, I want to play catch. I want to go outside. Would you come outside and we'll play catch? I don't care. But here's the point.

You give your husband something that he can't control and you take the pressure off of him. And I guarantee your husbands will love that. Okay. So I don't have to fix everything in this situation. Nope. So I don't have to say exactly the right thing. Nope. I don't have to calm you down, honey. Nope. What do I have to do? You walk into the room, you address our son calmly and you say, Jacob, I could really use your help. Come help me. And then just take him somewhere. Cause here's what you know about. I know about your kids, you know about your kids. If hubby can take that son out to the garage to build something, something they enjoy, listening to music, to the grocery store, wherever, for 10 minutes, hubby doesn't even

have to talk to the child. They don't have to talk about the discipline. They don't have to talk about their emotions. It's better if they don't. Go do that for 10 minutes and bring our son back because in that 10 minutes, guess what will have happened? Your son will have calmed down and your wife will have calmed down. And now what usually happens? Most of our kids are contrite when we give them some space to go through and process their emotions, and we're not standing over them telling them, talk to me about your feelings, right? Nobody wants that. But this husband didn't fix the situation. All he did is walk in and say,

son, I need some help, and then led him and took him somewhere. Don't even have to talk to your son. Brings him back. And when he comes back, now mom has calmed down. She's no longer triggered. Son has calmed down. Now they will probably have a good discussion and come up with a solution and problem solve. Does that make sense? But here's the thing.

I took the pressure off the husband. He doesn't have to fix it. We took the pressure off mom. She doesn't have to know exactly what to say in the moment. And we took the pressure off our child because in the moment he doesn't have to, you know, you need to control yourself. You know, what are you feeling right now? What are your emotions? Tell me, tell me now, tell me your emotions and then fix them. Right. We just took the pressure off. Right. And when you take the pressure off, right? And when you take the pressure off, it just happens, right? And you come from it from a calm place. Second idea that came out from this mom, which was awesome, I give her so much

credit, is social skills. One of her sons is not really great at social skills, doesn't have a lot of friends. And so this is a really cool thing that we're finding out. We've got this curiosity camp thing. And it's about instead of, watch, in reality, it's this. Instead of for 12 years of your child's life, making them go to school and just try to do things they're not interested in and then call them failures because they're not really good at school and they're not motivated by it. We want to use this time and get our kids actually doing what they're really good at doing, using their gifts and talents.

And one part of this, besides identifying your kids' strengths, which, by the way, if you want your kids to be successful in life, you better figure out what their strengths are. Because what we inadvertently do is, and watch, all of this plays together. Well, I want my son to be successful. We have to do this. So, but he's not good at these things. So let's get a tutor and let's get a psychologist and let's do this and let's try to fix this. Well, what if instead of spending all of your time trying to fix your child's weaknesses, you began putting them in

a place where they shine and where they can use their strengths. I bet that would lead to confidence and that will lead to motivation. And one part of the curiosity camp, and you can find it on the website, there's a tab that says curiosity camp, is we do a personality test, which we love. And so here's what we find out in cases like this. The mom is an extrovert. She loves friends. She loves having friends. And it's anathema to her to think, why would I not have lots of friends? I get so much support there. But what we find out is her son is an introvert, and he actually likes being alone. And he doesn't fret over not having a lot of friends. The only time he frets and thinks something's wrong with him is when his mother or father comes and says,

hey, do you want to get together with those guys? Because you really need to be involved in that because it would be really helpful if you made some friends. And so, watch, this kid was perfectly fine being happy, being an introvert, doing what he wanted to do, right? And because he's a very creative kid, because most creative people are introverts, right? And a lot of them are. And so he's happy doing things alone. He was perfectly happy until the parents came along and started imposing what they need on their kids. See how that works? Well, I'm not happy unless I have lots of friends,

and my son doesn't have a lot of friends. Therefore, he must be sad. So let's pressure him to make friends. And inadvertently, what we do is we make him feel like there's something wrong with him. When the inverse is true, and we need to go to that child and say, there's nothing wrong with you at all. You get energy from being by yourself and that's why you're such a deep thinker and that's why you're so creative and that's why you come up with all these stories that you write and this is why you're so good at doing X, Y, and Z. There's nothing wrong with you at all. If you do want some friends, I can show you a couple tips of how to do

that, right? We don't how to do that, right? We don't want to dominate conversations, right? The best way to have a friendship is to ask other people about themselves. It's a dinner party rule. Go to a dinner party. Hey, what do you do? Where did you take your last vacation? And you start asking people about what they're interested in before you know it.

They love you. Why? Because you ask them about themselves. And so you give your kids tools in the area of your child's weakness. You give them tools. We show them, if you do want to make some friends, here's a good way to do it. Here's how I've learned to do it. But that's a lot different than going and starting to say, well, you could really use some friends. Why don't we sign you up for that? Then the child internalizes, there's something wrong with me. And now there's pressure because every time he comes home from

school or scouts or whatever activity, watch what the conversation, well, did you meet anybody? Did you make friends? Is there anyone you want to invite over? Can you feel all the pressure? And see, it's two points of pressure. One, you're putting pressure on yourself to try to make your child be like you, when what we've determined is your child's not like you and doesn't need to be like you. Thank God, because you're filled with anxiety. You're a freak. So I'm kidding. Well, I'm not kidding. You are, and so am I. That's what parenting is. It's about learning not to be a freak and dumping all of your issues on your kids because it's your anxiety you need to control. It is your perfectionism, your control issues. You control yourself, and then you are

free to see your kids and affirm them for who they are and apologize to them at times for like, listen, I'm sorry. I've been imposing what I want and need on you. And that's wrong. And so for now, I'm going to control myself and be happy with my own self. And I'm going to affirm what you're good at doing, right? And take the pressure off. So when this mom realizes, now think of all the pressure that's taken off. She doesn't have to fix her sons now. She doesn't have to know exactly what to say in a moment with the one, and she doesn't have to make her other child have friends. And so she can go about enjoying her life and now watch all of that negative, because it is, it's negative energy spent trying to fix your kids can now be spent enjoying them for who they are. Instead of

spending all of that time, and that's partly what we're doing with the Curiosity Camp, we have all this time, instead of trying to, spending all this time trying to fix what's wrong, we can build on what's right, and we can teach our kids, this is the way you're wired. This is the way you're made. If you're going to be successful in life, you've got to go with your strengths and use your gifts, talents, and passions to serve and help other people, because I've seen you when you do that in your life. I mean, you are motivated, and you are driven. You do all kinds of things, so I want to apologize for trying to control you, right? This will free you up. And I promise you, when you start to step back, because you'll hear this on the

Strong Willed Child program, you'll hear this. We talk about this principle. When we step back as parents, when we step back, when we step back from controlling, from micromanaging, from lecturing, trying to fix everything, when we step back as parents, it gives our kids space to step up. child will learn better. He will learn and probably step out and start making some friendships. Watch one final thing in this podcast. Your kids don't feel free to step out and try new things because you're standing over them physically and or emotionally watching them, right? And they know they can't please you, so they won't even try, right? Some of you are like, well, my kids won't try. I promise you when you start stepping back, your kids will feel free to try, but they want to be able to try and do things without you talking about it and asking them questions about it. Did you make a friend? Did you make a friend?

How did you do on that test? Do you want to try this? Do you want to try this? No. Give them some space. They will start to do things and try new things and step out a little bit when they're out from underneath the pressure, your pressure, to do it your way, to do it the right way, because now they can try it on their own and they can fail without you standing over and noticing. That is a very hard thing to do in front of other people. I just quickly, Casey is visiting right now. And so I wanted to record this podcast and I was like, I don't like people listening to me when I do the podcast. So I was like, go upstairs, put your earbuds in. And so I text them like four times, are your earbuds in? Are your earbuds in? Why? Because I don't want them listening to me.

I don't like feeling under that pressure. I want to be able to say what I want to say the way that I want to say it without thinking that someone's going to nitpick it because that's what it feels like for your kids. So let's end it this way. Take the pressure off yourself. Watch what's gonna happen. Watch what is happening in this family. There's four of them. Dad, no longer pressure to fix everything. All he knows is when someone gets upset in my home,

I walk into the room and say, hey, I need some help. Child A, child B, you wanna go to the grocery store with me. You wanna go to recycling. I don't care where you go. You just want to drive. Gas is cheap right now. There's no traffic. Why don't we go take a drive and listen to some music for 10 minutes? How awesome would that be if that's what dad did?

We're going to go and we're going to listen to music. Half the time we're going to listen to music I like and half the time music you like. And hopefully you'll find some common ground there. So dad takes off the pressure. By the way, you know what else it did when we were talking to this mom? She said, I didn't realize I was putting so much pressure on my husband to fix everything and to be as social as I am. I'm like, yeah, that's not going to work. Hey, honey, I met this new couple. You want to go out to dinner with them? So you're stuck for three hours talking to someone. I was like, that's not going to go out to dinner with them, so you're stuck for three hours talking to someone? I was like, that's not going to work, right? So you take the pressure off,

and when you take the pressure off, he'll be more likely to get together, but just do short little play dates for introverted husbands and introverted kids. But anyway, watch what happens. Now, he's freed from the pressure. Mom is freed from this overwhelming burden to make sure that her kids are happy

and make sure her kids have friends. Now, do you think her tone in the home's gonna be different? You think she's gonna be lighter, more approachable by her kids, enjoying her life? Absolutely, and now the kids, not all that pressure coming from top. You know what they're going to do? They'll put pressure on themselves. It will come from within. Watch, this is really good. I'm going to write this down as I'm saying. Instead of it coming from without,

from on top, you free your child to motivate themselves from within. That's a beautiful, cool thing. If you want to do this, dig into this stuff, man. Download those programs. You start listening. Let your husband listen. Let your kids listen. Listen as a family.

Use it as curriculum. And as you do this, email us. We will help you with any questions. Look into the Curiosity Camp because it's really cool. It's really cool what's happening because we're having families take personality tests and what we're finding out is we're either just alike, which is why we irritate each other, or we're completely different, which is why we irritate each other, right?

And it's really kind of cool how that works. If we can help you, let us know. Email Casey, C-A-S-E-Y, at CelebrateCalm.com. I want you to take the pressure off yourself and your family. You're good people and we love you. We'll talk to you later. Bye-bye.