Calm Parenting Podcast - Try This During Meltdowns, Chaos, Sibling Fights

Episode Date: February 19, 2023

Try This During Meltdowns, Chaos, Sibling Fights Usually when things are falling apart at home, we rush in to try to fix the situation or change the child. And it backfires. Kirk shows you exactly how to change this dynamic and break those negative patterns that lead to emotional escalation. Questions? Need help? Email [e-mail] and Casey will help you personally.  Get the tools you need to FINALLY stop the yelling and power struggles at https://celebratecalm.com/products/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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-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 k Kirk to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price. 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 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 have situations in which chaos is just breaking out all over your home, right? It's noisy. The kids are squabbling. There's stuff all over the place. Or maybe you have a

child who is melting down, usually over something small and seemingly insignificant, right? And it's frustrating. And so you rush into the situation to fix it, and it usually makes it worse. Today, I want to give you a tool, strategy, an action step, just one. I want you to work on this this week because it will completely change those situations, stop the power struggles, and it'll break some nasty patterns that we all have from our childhood. So that is what we're going to talk about on today's episode of the Calm Parenting Podcast. So welcome. This is Kirk Martin, founder of Celebrate Calm. You can find us at CelebrateCalm.com. If you need help, reach out to our strong-willed son, Casey. And I was about to say, well, he was

the one who created chaos in our home, but that's not true. I'm the one who created chaos. My responses, my reactions to Casey created chaos. And the number one thing that changed our family life was not changing our son. It was me changing myself, getting control of my own emotions so that I didn't escalate everyday situations. So Casey gets this because he lived all of this. He is like your strong-willed child because he's a strong-willed young man. It's Casey, C-A-S-E-Y at CelebrateCalm.com. Tell us about your family, ages of the kids. What are you struggling with? We get together as a family. We talk about it and then we will reply back to you personally with practical, helpful tips. Why? Because that's what we do. We want to help you. If you ever need anything, if you want to book us for a live event, because we're traveling a lot now for live events, or if you need help with our products, even need to help financially,

reach out to Casey. He lives, look, he's like all of your kids. He wasn't that great when he was in our home, but he was awesome for other adults. So take advantage of that. So here's the situation. And I want you to do this next time your child's melting down, really upset, sibling squabbling, there's chaos in your home. I want you to try and practice one thing. I want you to literally just sit in the midst of the chaos and meltdown without trying to fix the situation, without trying to change your child, without trying to make it better. I want you to sit in the midst of the chaos and meltdown without trying to fix it. So just sit with your legs crossed, without emotion, observing. Release yourself from the impulse, the need, for some of you, the compulsion to fix your child and fix the

situation so that the noise and chaos and meltdowns go away. And here's why this is critically important for you to do. Number one, it allows the situation to play out and fix itself sometimes, right? Without you jumping in and escalating things because we go in and we start talking a lot. And when kids are upset, they're not rational. Talking is rational. Using lots of words provokes your kids to anger. Is that not true? You've seen it before. So I want to prevent you from provoking your kids to anger and escalating. Number two, instead of trying to convince your child that everything's okay so that you can move on with your day you actually listen and problem solve and get to the root because how many times do we just try to put out the fire right so we can keep completing items on our parenting agenda right

it's almost like we're saying hey enough with all that emotion stuff right now I've got boxes to check off because I'm on this parenting project where I'm trying to be the best parent I can be and I got a long list of stuff I gotta get done. And your little emotions and your meltdowns and this chaos and all this stuff, just getting in the way of what I'm trying to accomplish. Right, that's kind of what we're saying sometimes.

So I don't need to convince my child. In fact, I'll just encourage you stop convincing other people of anything it doesn't work right and so you control yourself instead number three when both parents rush in the room what happens you usually trigger each other because you're not on the same page and now three people are upset instead of just one. And your child's looking at you like, I get why I'm upset because I'm a little kid, but why are you two grownups freaking out all around me? See, that escalates things as well.

Number four, you are breaking that caretaker pattern that compels you to help and fix everyone else, usually at your own expense. I'm talking to you, my dear social workers, nurses, teachers, anyone in the helping professions. Most of you have a caretaker pattern that you learned from childhood. You started taking care of everybody else and ignoring yourself, right? You know how that works. Look, some of that is very noble. You're giving, caring people.

But you go too far and then you become responsible for everybody's happiness, everybody's moods, and then you don't take care of yourself, so you end up becoming resentful, right? Moms, dads, you are not responsible for everybody else's happiness or their moods. You're not responsible for making sure every situation goes perfectly. A lot of moms have struggled with this. Why? Because you are married to a man who comes home and gets upset at what the kids do. So now you're managing your kid's behavior. Kids, pick everything up, pick everything up because dad's on the way home. He doesn't like when there's mess on the floor, especially if you're married to an engineer, project manager kind of person, right? They don't like that disorder. It freaks them out. And now you're managing your kids' emotions and now you're

managing your spouse's emotions, trying to hold it all together. And that'll lead to adrenal fatigue and that will lead to resentment. After all I do for everybody around here, nobody ever takes care of me, right? So you've got to internalize this truth that you're not responsible for fixing everything and making sure everything goes smoothly. Or you will end up either being resentful or you'll control everyone else. They won't like that. And you get resentful when your kids or your spouse doesn't respond the way you want them to. And watch this part of it.

There's a lot of guys I work with. This is what we're really saying. Your mood makes me really uncomfortable. So cut it out and change your mood so that I can be happy. Right? That is a very common guy thing with it. That's why we say like, oh, honey, there's no need to be upset. Oh, you're just overreacting. It's because your mood makes me really uncomfortable. So I want you to stop that. Stop how you're feeling so that I'm not uncomfortable, right? Maturity, and that's why I encourage you to go through the programs, go through Calm Couples University so you learn not to control each other as spouses and you learn how to look at your wife and say, look, if you want to be in a bad mood, right? If you just want to be upset, look, I can normalize it. Look, you should be upset, right? You should be overwhelmed, honey. We have three children,

and you're married to me. I get it. If you want to be in a bad, I'm completely comfortable with that. Look, if you want to come and talk to me, preferably at halftime, I'd love to listen to you, but I don't have to fix it. I don't need to make you feel better. I don't need to change your mood for my sake. Does that make sense? It's not that I don't care about other people. I do. I want other people to be happy. I want to be giving and kind and selfless. But that's different than me trying to make other people be happy for my own sake, right? So you're breaking. So by sitting in the midst of a situation and observing without trying to fix it, you're beginning to break that pattern that compels you.

Look, you can't do a family get-together without you managing everything and make sure everybody's happy. Who brings that? Who brings that? It's exhausting. Number five, you are purposefully exposing yourself to something that triggers you. So this is triggering. Your kids are melting down. They're noisy. They're loud. It's irritating. I get it. It triggers you. So you're purposefully going in and sitting there. So you're exposing yourself to something that triggers you so that you can be annoyed by it, but then not triggered to react. Does that make sense? You're practicing this. You're sitting in it so it's like, okay, that's annoying. It's really bothering me, but I'm not going to allow this to trigger me so that I lecture, yell, and try to fix it. You sit in it and you begin to realize, I can handle this. I don't

have to fix it. I can actually experience peace in the midst of this thing that used to drive me crazy. Number six, when you slow your world down inside, and that's a big part of this, right? And that's why sitting is helpful. It automatically slows you down. You observe. You begin to see the situation more clearly. Look, the whole goal of being calm is not to be calm. That's not the end goal. People are always emailing, well, I was calm. I was like, being calm is a tool. It is part of the process we get in order to see more clearly, in order to not react and escalate everything, right? It's not the end goal. It's a means to calming the situation, to seeing it more clearly so you can identify the root of the issue. Because most of the time we rush in and we react to the outward behavior or the outward manifestation of what's really

going on inside. The easiest one is anxiety. Your kids have anxiety over going to new places. It's going to manifest as, no, I'm not going. Taekwondo's stupid. You're stupid. Well, the real issue there isn't the defiance of disrespectful words. It's the anxiety that's triggering that. So when I can identify the root of the issue, I can actually help my child. See, most meltdowns are not rational anyway. They're irrational. And that's why talking it through often makes it worse. Meltdowns happen when kids feel out of control, which is why we often give them something concrete, something tangible, something they can manipulate in their hands so that they feel in control of something in that

moment. That helps them calm down. Number seven, sitting down changes your tone of voice. So you can stay very even. You're not pleading. You're not asking them. You're not being too sweet, right? You're also not threatening and yelling. You can acknowledge your child's frustration with intensity, but no emotion. Of course you're upset. You know, if I were you, I'd be really frustrated too. See, sometimes that intensity is reassuring and calming. And then you can give your child a tool to calm down. You can give them space. You can problem solve. Give them something they're in control of. Or you just let it play out. Number eight, and one of the most important ones to me is this. You're sending this message. When your world is out of control, mine's not.

I can help you no matter what you are going through. See, then you become the safe place for your child, for your teenager, no matter what they're going through. And you are modeling for them how to handle disappointment and frustration. When you begin to learn how to control yourself, it is the greatest lecture you can ever give your child because they will see you in everyday situations, not freaking out, controlling yourself. That is huge. That's what we're after. See, this will help stop the power struggles. There's no blame or guiltiness. I

believe that we as, provoke about 75% of the power struggles because of our own anxiety, because of our own control issues, our own perfectionism, all the junk we brought from childhood. That provokes kids to anger and provokes power struggles and makes them escalate. See, this will help you stop those. And it'll break those unhealthy generational patterns of controlling and trying to fix everybody else, which makes everybody unhappy. And you will build a trusting relationship with your child. That's what we want.

Look, this is why I encourage you. If you want to make changes at last, listen to the Calm Parenting Package. You'll get the everything package, but go through it. You will go through the 30 Days to Calm, which shows you how to calm yourself, how to get control of yourself so that you can sit in the midst of all the chaos without trying to fix everybody else. It will change every aspect of your life in every relationship, not just with your kids. And you go through the mom's program. You learn how to be assertive and speak up for yourself and not be a pushover. And you go through the dad's program. You learn how to be assertive and speak up for yourself and not be a pushover. And you go through the dad's program. You learn how to lead with calm, confident

authority. And we teach you how to discipline, actually teach your kids in the moment, stop to find, to motivate your kids and everything else. Sibling issues, screens, it's all in there. So if you need help with that, go to celebrate calm.com or email Casey at celebrate calm.com. We want to help you. So love you all. Thank you for listening to the podcast. Thank you for sharing it with others. Um, please let us know if we can help you because that's what we exist to do. Thanks so much. Love you all. Bye-bye.