Calm Parenting Podcast - "Ugh! Another Call About School!"

Episode Date: March 2, 2021

"Ugh! Another Call About School!"No one really understands the challenges your kids face in school with short-term memory, processing, and getting along with kids their own age. It’s draining. Afternoon/homework meltdowns are frequent. Behavior charts and consequences don’t work. Kirk shares three positive tools to help with focus, anxiety, blurting out, and more. GET THE CONFIDENCE YOU NEED TO LEAD YOUR KIDS. Email [e-mail]. Tell us your family situation and we’ll put together a custom package to meet your specific needs within your budget or take advantage of our BIG special this week!  IT'S KIRK'S BIRTHDAY. Because he's a little odd (and old!), Kirk prefers to give YOU a gift. Life-changing insights and products for the lowest price ever. This week only.Click here to learn more about Kirk's Birthday Sale.   Email [e-mail] for the most helpful service on the planet or to customize your bundle!  NOW SCHEDULING LIVE EVENTS & ZOOM CONFERENCES. We can provide high-energy, customized presentations for your PTA, Adoption/Foster Care Conference, church parenting conference, and Teacher Professional Development training both via Zoom and in person!  BONUS: When you schedule a TEACHER TRAINING, we will provide a Parenting Event for FREE. Take one action step today:  Email [e-mail] with the name of your school, city, and state. We will show you how easy it is to train your parents and teachers. 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. So many of us have lived with this fear of the other shoe dropping, right? They're always kind of walking on eggshells with a strong-willed child, just wondering like, oh, when's the next meltdown? What are they going to get upset over next? Or when are we going to get that dreaded call from the school, right? Because that's kind of how Celebrate Calm started was we kept getting calls from Casey's teacher saying, if you don't help us out with this, he's going to get kicked out of yet another school. So that's what we're going to talk

about today on the Calm Parenting Podcast. So welcome. This is Kirk Martin, founder of Celebrate Calm. We're glad you're here. You can find us at CelebrateCalm.com. If you need help, reach out to that strong-willed son. His name is Casey, C-A-S-E-Y, at CelebrateCalm.com. Tell us about your family, what your kids are struggling with, what you're walking on eggshells over, and we'll provide some tips and strategies, some ideas, some insight. If you're interested in our products, we've got a huge birthday sale going on. So take advantage of that. Or we can put together a custom package just for you. Just reach out to Casey because he's pretty awesome now. But back in the day, it was kind of tough. And you hear me talking about stuff in the home of de-escalating

and discipline. And I haven't talked for a little while about school, but Celebrate Calm actually started in the classroom because Casey did struggle. And so in second grade, I was working a full-time corporate job, but I would take time out of the day at my lunch period to go down and eat lunch with him and sit in class for a while because I was trying to keep him from getting kicked out of school because he really, really struggled. Some with behavior and some he just had a different learning style. And what ended up happening was I found, okay, I can see the way these kids learn is very different. How they respond to teachers is very different. And so as a lay person, I started coming up with interventions and strategies that really worked in the classroom. And so Casey a lay person, I started coming up with interventions and strategies that really

worked in the classroom. And so Casey's teachers were saying like, hey, when are you coming back? And I was like, well, I kind of have a full-time job. Well, that got solved because I went to school so often that I eventually lost my job and started doing this full-time. But I threw myself at the very beginning of Celebrate Calm. I took kind of a two-year sabbatical and I traveled around the country and I volunteered in hundreds of classrooms in cities, in rural areas, Midwest, West Coast, East Coast, South, all over the place, wherever I could, because I wanted to learn and I was reading all of the research and taking all the science and the literature. But I guess our specialty is coming up with very, very, very practical interventions that work in real life situations.

Have you ever seen our videos or live workshops about the sensory strip? That's a 12 cent thing that we developed that has helped more kids than probably anything else we've ever done or that other people have ever done because it works with science, but it's practical in every classroom. So I want to give you a few ideas that you can share with teachers that you may use at home that you can use in the classroom because we love training teachers. The reason we're doing the birthday sale thing, it's my birthday today. And we were kicking around like, well, what are our podcast ideas? And Casey was like, well, dad, you know, you're getting older.

Why don't you reflect on some things? I was like, well, I can't tell you what I said. But I was like, forget that. I don't want to talk about getting older. That's not a lot of fun on your birthday. So he's like, well, why don't you tap into something? What means the most to you? And I started thinking through and I was like, let me go back to the beginnings,

because what meant the most to us was these kids who are outcasts, who don't always fit in, who end up feeling dumb and stupid in class or like they're bad kids. And I had a heart for those kids. And that's why this all developed. We eventually invited all those kids into our home and had 1,500 of them in our home, but where we first interacted with them was in the classroom, and so I also have a heart for teachers because teachers have a really hard job, and most of them are not trained to deal with strong-willed kids or kids with ADHD or on the spectrum and learning differences, And so it's frustrating for everybody, but it doesn't need to be. It really doesn't need to be. And so let me kind

of walk you through this, kind of how I've formulated this in my brain of really setting it up. I'm not going to do a long version of this. It's kind of a short version, but it's one of my favorite newsletters we've ever written. It was called UGG, Another Call from the School. And if you don't get the newsletter, email Casey, sign up for it on the website because the podcasts are great because you get it verbally and you can hear the tone of voice. But the newsletter is great because we put it in writing and some of you learn better that way, right? So look, by the time your child steps foot in school, I guarantee he's probably already distracted, probably anxious. He's thrown off by the morning

rush, maybe by negative words, right? Or chaos on the bus ride or in the carpool, right? And now you can throw into it everything that's happening with learning from home by Zoom. Or as you know, I'm volunteering at a community center in town, and I'm watching these young kids try to do almost all of their schooling online. It is extremely difficult, and there is a lot of anxiety, and there's boredom, and it's hard to keep them engaged. And now, just picture your child going to school. Now he has to navigate classes in which three of his greatest, or if you want to call them worst, weaknesses are tested. He must sit still and listen attentively for long periods of time to auditory commands that he's not really interested in. He then has to memorize information, which is hard when you're not great at short-term recall. And then you have to recall it for a timed test. Cue the big anxiety there,

right? So processing information is often taxing mentally and even emotionally for many of your kids. Relating socially to peers, to kids your own age can be extremely taxing emotionally, right? And so your kids are already kind of worn out by third period. It's hard. So please, please do not use the phrase anymore. Well, if you would just apply yourself, I guarantee you they are. They're just overwhelmed and that will cause them to shut down. Right. When we say, you know, if you just apply yourself, you know, this isn't really that hard. If you would just focus, you would be done in 15 minutes. What the child begins to internalize is, well, there must be something

wrong with me because this actually is hard and it's taking me longer. And so that makes me dumb. Well, if I'm a dumb kid, then I'm shutting down. I sure as heck am not going to work hard for you. So picture this child, right? He's already into second, third period. What does he look forward to? Okay, well, at least at lunch or recess, I get a little bit of a break. But what do we find at lunch? At the lunch period, oftentimes in school cafeterias, it is definitely, I didn't say that right, really loud, right?

And so that throws them off. Or they struggle connecting with kids their own age. So guess what? They end up sitting by themselves. One of my favorite memories ever was this really cool kid named Zach. And I doubt his parents are listening because he's grown up, he's in college, he's done great in life. But he was just a little bit different. So he would sit by himself in the cafeteria and read a book. So I used to go in to, and it almost makes me cry when I think of it, because we didn't even really talk. I would go into that school and I'd go and sit, I'd take my lunch in a little paper bag like he did, and I would take my book and I would literally just sit with him all class period long and sit and read my book. So this kid didn't feel like an, I almost

said an effing loser. So I'm just going to say, so he didn't feel like an effing loser because that's what it feels like when you're one of these kids and you don't, you don't know how to connect well with kids your own age and And think how hard that is. Hey, kid, guess what? For the first 12 years of school, you're going to go to school with kids your own age that you have a hard time connecting with because our kids are better with adults and older kids

and little kids and animals, but not their own age. And it's hard. So guess what? By the time they come out of lunch period, they're often frazzled or feeling bad about themselves. Think about recess. Recess is hard for many of your kids for a few reasons. One, there's usually a lack of order, right? Because like, well, go out and play. And now they're playing a ball game and your kids don't lose well. So they change the rules of the game.

They cheat or they quit or quit. So, right, and they're going to jump in line. I get to go first. I didn't go first. And then when they miss the ball, they make them an excuse. No, in my way I play, we get five strikes. And guess what? Nobody ends up liking them, right? And so by the time your child gets home from school, they're exhausted.

That's why there's a big power struggle after school. That's where the meltdown. Hey buddy, how was your day at school today? What? Look, I'm not being funny. Why would you ask that, right? Don't ask about their day if they don't like school. Hey, how was your day at that place where you're bored, where you don't listen well, where you're constantly in trouble, where you're on red on the behavior chart, you don't have any friends, and you feel like a loser. How'd it go today? Right? And so then you start getting the calls from school about your child. And then you feel pressure of like, oh, we didn't raise him to be like this. What's going to happen to him if he can't do well in third grade or eighth grade or 11th grade? How's he going to be successful in life? And so you start putting more and more pressure on the child, and that's why they end up shutting down or melting down.

So one of our favorite things is being a bridge between teachers and parents and giving tools to parents, but giving tools to teachers. We all need tools. Our kids need tools. And one of the best things about either live training in schools, which we're starting to do again, and it looks like schools may be going back in the fall. So it's awesome. And I anticipate there's going to be a big rush and we're going to be really busy in the fall because we're starting to get busy this spring even. So if you're interested, reach out to Casey. We'd love to come to your school, to your church, your synagogue, your mosque, wherever it is, homeschool convention, and speak because we can give you very, very practical tools.

And we do it via Zoom. We're doing a lot of Zoom for training for teachers. But here's what I wanted to go through really quickly. I want to give you a couple ideas of how practical this can be. So we all know that the red, yellow, and green behavior charts don't work. And I hate those smiley, sad face things that we give like, oh, you had a sad face day. What went wrong? Like, how would you like if your day at the end of every day, your spouse or your boss gave you either a smiley face or a sad face and you had to go home and show your spouse and your spouse like, seriously, Jim, three days in a row with a sad face at the office. We need to take away your screens. It doesn't work.

Consequences tend not to work. And we know that both kids and teachers and you as parents are frustrated. You're disheartened. You're overwhelmed. And trying to just stop negative behavior doesn't work. You have to teach them, give them tools to succeed, right? So let me give you a couple examples. So one, kids who talk off topic, which is pretty much all of your kids. Why? Look, if we really dug into this, what we'd find is the reason your kids blurt out, they really should be in some ways be rewarded for that.

Someone needs to look at them sometimes and say, I know why you blurt out. It's not because you're intentionally being rude. It's because you've got ideas. You've got this busy brain and you're always thinking of all these ideas and it's awesome because ideas change the world and the universe. And you're like a junior Thomas Edison. You get all these ideas going through your head.

But then you're afraid you're going to forget your idea. And so instead of forgetting it, you decide just to blurt out. Now that's unacceptable in my class because we're not going to blurt out, but I love the fact that you have great ideas. In fact, I wish all the other kids had as many good ideas as you do. And if I'm being honest with kids and with you, I'd say the reason other kids don't blurt out is one, they might be afraid of failure. Two, they probably don't have any good ideas, right? So they don't have anything to blurt out. And they're just like compliant little kids sitting there waiting their turn to talk. Whoever said that that's a desirable trait in real life. We want people who are assertive, who step out and take a chance, take a risk and say,

I've got an idea that might be a little bit odd to you, but if I really pursue it, I may just change the world, right? But we make those kids get in trouble. So we talk about that. One of my examples of giving kids talk tickets to redeem. Every time you have one of these great ideas, instead of blurting out, you hold up a talk ticket. I give you three a day. When you hold up your, when you hold up your talk ticket, I say either go ahead, redeem one of your talk tickets, share your amazing off-topic idea, because it's always going to be off-topic, or I say, hey, zip, hold it till after class, because I believe that you can do that, right? We also have an idea for, we have had teachers create idea boxes on their desk. So the child, instead of blurting out, writes down the

idea, places it in that little idea box, and then every day after lunch or after recess, teacher pulls a couple of those strips of paper out and reads the ideas. Now they're all going to be from our kids. And now our kids get affirmed from like, hey, that's a really interesting idea. That's really cool. And we've now acknowledged the child's interest. And then we've given them tools to deal with their need to share the idea and their struggle with short-term memory. But let me share this one. So I was in a classroom, it's a long time ago, with a little boy named Daniel. And I watched this happen because this kid, like many of yours, he loved to read, right? And so in one of the classes, he eagerly

raises his hand, which is pretty good for him, and he begins talking off topic about the book on pyramids that he had brought to show the class. Now, in this case, the teacher, who understandably, like us as parents, was kind of frustrated, said dismissively, Daniel, that's not what we're talking about right now, and we don't have time for that. Put your book away. And I watched this kid kind of hang his head, slink down in his seat, and check out for the rest of the period. And you know how your kids are. If they experience negativity, that's why we talk so much about tone of voice. I can discipline and correct a child as long as I'm even matter of fact,

and especially if I stay positive and give tools. But as soon as I go to the snotty tone, that child says, I don't like this teacher. I don't like this parent. I'm not going to listen anymore. So later that afternoon, similar situation arises with a different teacher. Daniel, she began with a smile. I'm sure your classmates would enjoy seeing your book during break time. Why don't you put it on my desk, right? Sometimes, one time I heard a teacher say this similar thing. You know what? I love that you're so curious about pyramids and science. I wish everybody was as curious as you. Look, it's not time to read right now. It's not time to talk about that. So put your book away. But after lunch, I'm going to give you two or three minutes to tell the rest of

the class everything that you're learning about pyramids because I hope it sparks their curiosity. See, now the child responds with, I just got affirmed. I didn't get disciplined for something. Right? And it kept them engaged. And I just said, I want to learn about that. And I'm affirming that quality, your curiosity. Now's not the time, but I will give you time later. So one of our core principles is when you say no to something inappropriate, always say yes to something appropriate.

Second example. Does that make sense? It's kind of cool. Look, there were two different teachers. Same. It took 20 seconds, right? 20 words, basically both responses. But one response caused the child to shut down, hang his head in shame. And the other one made the child feel like he's a good learner. He's curious. and it gave him hope. And now he's engaged again, same kid did the same behavior, but two responses are different and get different

results. And that's really what we try to show you is let's go through. And if you take advantage, so we decided to do the birthday special. We try to do something every year, birthday special, so we can kind of give back on the birthday of, um what I try to show you. In the ADHD University, I haven't talked about that one lately, but if your kids have different learning styles, we will show you literally dozens and dozens and dozens of ways to do this in very practical ways. So test anxiety, right? Kids who process information slowly, which is many of your kids because they have very busy brains, often get freaked out when they see peers turning in their tests or class work ahead of them. So sometimes they'll just write down their answers really quickly because

they don't want to appear to be the dumb one, right? And that's when we give kids tools to improve their processing speed. Taping that sensory strip underneath the desk allows them to play with something tactile because playing with textured strips improves concentration. When we were at the very beginning of this, we went into these schools in the Bronx in New York, and they had a rule, a policy in New York City public schools, you're not allowed to chew gum. Well, the way I read that was they didn't say anything about chewing memory sticks. So I got a bunch of Wrigley's gum and I took the wrappers off. It's no longer gum to me.

I labeled it a memory stick. So teachers, so we divide up classrooms to test and control groups, and the kids come in a room, and the teachers in the test group said, Hey, here's a memory stick. Chew it while you take your test. It'll help you remember everything I taught you this past week. Well guess what happened? Those kids, their scores were 35% better just by doing something like that, right? You can have some kids take half the math exam before school and then complete it during the regular class period. There are a lot of different ways allowing kids to take a test while sitting underneath the desk. Why not? As long as they're not hurting anybody, why not try it? And then the third thing is giving kids very specific jobs. Kind of mentioned this with the blurting out example. That child is getting out of his seat, beginning to talk to other students. I have a go-to plan. Then I talk about, Jacob, listen, I need your help. Look, you've got this awesome busy brain and you're really active. And I want to use that to

my advantage because that's a great trait. It's going to help you be successful in life. Now, inside I'm thinking as a teacher, but it makes you a pain to teach and parent, right? But look, I need your help because when I'm teaching in class, my mouth gets really dry. So you and I are going to have a secret signal. When I touch my ear or my nose like this, I need you to get up from your desk, come up to my desk, grab my water bottle, take it to the back of the room, refill it, and then sit it back down. That'll really help me out. And so I start to do that. And I give that child a specific job to do when he's starting to get antsy and he needs to move a little bit. And what's beautiful is it only took 22 seconds for him to do that job.

And what I did is I just created a success. And I encourage you to write that phrase down. Let's begin this week instead of like, well, we need to start to give consequences for that. No, let's step back and give a child tools to succeed and create successes, right? And end all those little scenes with positive affirmation of like, hey, good job. Love that you're so curious. Really appreciate you refilling my water bottle. Man, you did so well on that test, man. That memory stick really seemed to help you, right? I guarantee you when you begin to use these tools, you will get a child who works harder for you, who is more engaged, who feels confident. And it also helps teachers so that

they're not overwhelmed so much. So if you need help with this, email us. We'll give you some ideas. I've got hundreds and hundreds of ideas. If you want us to come train teachers and parents at your school, we'll do it. We love doing this. We can do it live. We can do a Zoom conference. And definitely look on our website, CelebrateCalm.com. We've got a birthday special where we like to give back and we make all of this very affordable for you. If you need specific help, reach out to Casey. We love all you guys. We love teachers out there and we love your kids. And if we can help you in any way, just let us know. Okay. And please share the podcast. Talk to you soon. Bye-bye.