Calm Parenting Podcast - Why Kids Resist Your Help

Episode Date: April 26, 2021

Why Kids Resist Your HelpYou’re trying to help your kids with school, making something, cooking, sports, a chore. And they resist you. It’s frustrating! Your tone shifts and now it’s WWIII. Kirk shares how you can change this so your kids listen to you. Our Mother's Day Sale Begins NOW! You get the Calm Couples Marriage Mentoring Program FREE with your purchase of the Calm Parenting Package or the Get Everything Package. Make this your Mother’s Day gift to yourself or tell your husband THIS is what you want. Want personal mentoring with Kirk via Phone? Click here to learn about mentoring packages. Questions? Need help deciding on the best tools for your family? Email [e-mail] and Casey will help you personally!  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. Do you have a child who resists you? Like they just resist you when you're trying to help them. Like your intentions are good. You want them to be successful and feel confident and do well and yet your child pushes back and resists you and that's frustrating and that's why we're going to deal with that on today's episode of the Calm Parenting Podcast. So welcome, this is Kirk Martin, founder of Celebrate Calm. We hope that you will share this podcast with other struggling parents. And if we can help you, you can contact our strong-willed son who resisted us all the time when

we were kids. His email address is Casey, C-A-S-E-Y, at CelebrateCalm.com. But he won't resist you. He will help you because he is like your kids. How many of your kids are awesome for other people and horrible for you? That's how our son was as well. And so if you need anything, email us. Tell us about your kids. What are the ages of the kids? What are you struggling with? We will respond personally. This is not some form that you fill out and it goes to some corporate office. This is our family's mission. It's not a business. It's our mission. And we want to help and make your life better and help you enjoy your kids and improve the relationships. And if we can help you, email us. If you want our resources,

Casey can put together a custom package within your budget. But we do have a huge Mother's Day sale going on. You know what's cool about Mother's Day moms? It's really your only day. Christmas is all about the kids and the truth is your birthday tends to be about making it special for your kids when they're little. Right? You end up buying your own gifts anyway. Mother's Day this year? No. Let's draw a line in the sand moms and let's begin to be assertive. Being bossy is telling other people what to do but being assertive is being very clear about what you want and what you need because your needs, mom,

your needs are very, very important and they are no less important than your hubbies, than your kids or your mother or anybody else's. Your needs are important and I want you to begin acting like it because that's called self-respect. Demanding respect from other people doesn't work because you can't make other people respect you, but you can demonstrate self-respect. So determine, think about what do you want for Mother's Day? What do you want to be different around the home? Now, if it's a material thing,

fine. Be very clear and specific about what you want. But if it's something like, hubby, I want us to work on our marriage, or I want you to start taking a bigger role with the kids and helping me with bedtime or with discipline, just give them tools and let's make it very, very clear. It's part of the reason we included the marriage program in the Mother's Day package because it's extremely important that you get on the same page. Most men will not go to marriage therapy, but you can do this right from your home. Or if you're bold enough, you can schedule mentoring with me and I'll get on the phone with you and your spouse. And we'll hash these things out because I'm a pretty good mediator because I can talk to men like men, and I can help translate

things, and I can be tough on both of you at the same time, so your hubby or the wife doesn't feel like he or she is being teamed up on, and that's pretty cool. So here's the situation. Your son or daughter is doing schoolwork. Maybe they're making something, creating something. Perhaps they're cooking or doing chores, and they're not doing it the way that you kind of want them to do it. And so you start to talk to them, say, honey, it's okay, but if you would just do it like this, and I know you know how to do that. And you can feel this little tone of voice. In that tone of voice, there is a very subtle disapproval in your voice and they can hear it and they can feel it. Now this is subtle. This is not the overt stuff like you never do anything

right. How many times do I have to tell you? No, look, if you're doing that or your spouse is doing that, you know, you need to change that because you're going to crush your child's spirit and it just doesn't work and it'll cause a rift in all the relationships, that overt stuff. But the subtle disapproval also can be very, very damaging and it just causes pushback and resistance. And the thing is, your intentions are good. You want to help your child. But this tone of voice is driven by something that's not good and helpful. And it's probably very, very deep. And you probably don't even realize that you're doing it. Why? Because you've probably always done it. Because a lot of these things begin in your childhood, right? Now, some of you, you know, who knows where it is, but a lot of you, when I do phone consultations,

oh, we get the right to the deep stuff really, really quickly. And we'll find out, oh, you were like that as a kid because maybe you had an alcoholic parent and you had to be the ultra responsible one, or you had a brother or sister with special needs or they had some kind of family trauma and so you had to step up and feel like you were responsible for everybody else maybe there was something else going on that that you had to be compliant and be really really good in order to get your parents attention or affection. So what you find is you've been doing this your whole life. So you don't even notice it. But that tone carries an expectation that traps your child or freezes them. Right. And so and it creates that resistance. But you can feel

you feel compelled to say it. Right. and you can feel that it's not just like hey I'm just teaching and hey here's a different way to handle that and look I'm going to give you some perspective look I was thinking if you want to do with it not like that you feel compelled to say it and they resist and it feels like what they're doing is never good enough for for you and I know that was one of Casey's complaints when I was raising him when we were when we were going through all of this was it never feels like it's good enough for you. And I know that was one of Casey's complaints when I was raising him when we were going through all of this was it never feels like it's good enough for you and you're always trying to change me. And so here's what you may feel though. It's like they're offending you by not doing it the right way. So think of the situation, child is there, you have good

intentions and so you want to help them out. You're suggesting things and this little tone is coming through. And it's like they're offending you because they're not doing it the right way. And the right way is defined as your way because you do have some control issues, right? Maybe it's they're offending you because they're not getting it right. They're just not getting the concept, especially in your or on your timeline, right? Because you've got a lot of stuff to do and you're like, I know you know how to do this and look, if you just buckle down a little bit and apply yourself, I know you'd be able to do this. And so now you're starting to say inside, well, when I was a kid, I was so motivated. Well, who knows what you were motivated? Maybe your motivation is a good thing, but maybe you were super motivated because you motivation is a good thing, but maybe

you are super motivated because you've had a lot of dysfunction in your family. And so you are extra motivated because you had to please everybody and you couldn't deal with it when people were upset. So you are super motivated to manage everything. Well, that's exhausting and that will wear you down and that will ruin your family life. But that's in there sometimes, right? Like they're not doing it on your timeline. Or maybe it feels like they're offending you by not caring about what they're doing as much as you do. That's a huge one. Look, I'm trying, you know, all I'm trying to do is help you out here.

And after all I do for you, you know, the least you could do is put the same amount of effort into it. Huge, huge trap. Because when you start to feel that and you get offended by them not doing it the right way, your way, on time, and not caring about it as much as you, your tone shifts even ever so slightly. and it creates this vicious cycle. And that always ends in resistance, meltdowns, power struggles, harsh words, or subtly harsh words like, you never try hard enough. Or I don't know why you won't do it that way. And these things just drive that child further away from you.

And now they don't want to listen way. And these things just drive that child further away from you. And now they don't want to listen to you at all. And you've been there and you might be there now. And so let's think this through. And I want to show you a different way of doing this. Where does that come from? We talked about the childhood stuff. That is deep within. I have been doing so many phone consultations lately. And it's like, well, we need to talk about my kids. I'm like, we will get to your kids. But right now we've got to deal with this where it's coming from because it's holding you back. It has been a pattern that has been part of you maybe since you were five or seven or 14 and it has controlled you in ways that you don't know. It probably helped determine who you married. If you're like me and like most people,

you didn't really consciously choose the right spouse. You were driven by something else. For some of you, it was like, when I grew up with this father, it was very much like he was a certain way, and so I learned to manage his emotions, and then, who knew? In my 20s, I grew up with this father that was very much like he was a certain way. And so I learned to manage his emotions. And then, who knew? In my 20s, I met this guy.

And I didn't think about it then, but he was a lot like my dad. And I was comfortable because I'd grown up managing my dad's emotions. And so I fell into a comfortable role, right? And so there's deep stuff in here. And the opportunity, there's no blame or guilt i don't do blame or guilt or shame it's not your fault it is who we are but we get to determine the good news is we get to break these patterns we get to change that now you didn't have control of that when you were a little girl or a little boy. It

was just imposed on you and you did the best that you could to survive. But now you're a grown woman, a grown man, and you find yourself compelled to, you feel responsible for making sure everybody's happy, that everybody's okay, that the kids succeed, and that will ruin your peace inside. You cannot sustain that forever. It will ruin your family life, your relationship with your kids, and your spouse. It doesn't work. And so there are control issues, right? You're always controlling everything. It gives you the illusion that you're in control. I had a mom tell me, marriage. And part of it was out of good intentions. You want your spouse to do a really good job with your kids. And so, but you fell into kind of criticizing that husband or wife and it's continued. And so he kind of stepped back because

it was like nothing I could do was good enough. And so now you're left raising your kids kind of alone. So what are we going to do differently? Again, the good news is I can't control anybody else. I can't control the kids. I can't control my spouse, but I can always control myself. And when I change myself, good things happen. And I want you to let go of those control issues. Sit in the midst of it next time. The next time you feel compelled to try to fix or control, don't. Resist that impulse, that compulsion. Just sit in it. Just sit. Don't fix it. If you want to do the opposite, then compliment your child and say, you know what? One thing I admire about you is your persistence because when you care about something, man, you get it done and then walk

away, right? Let's let go of that anxiety. Replace the anxiety about your child's future because you're projecting out in the future with confidence. You know what? I believe that you're capable of getting this done because I've seen you do this before, right? Let's release the expectations of yourself, of your kids, of your spouse. You have false expectations that your kids are supposed to just do things the way you're supposed to do it, do it on your timeline

and care about things as much as you do. And that's a false expectation that you're putting on them and that you put on yourself. The false expectation on yourself is that you're responsible for everybody's happiness and everything going well. You can't do it. It causes adrenal fatigue and all kinds of issues, right?

Let's give kids tools and space. You've heard me say that. Let's give them space to do it. And let's work on our marriage. I want you to work on your marriage. Because if you don't, bad stuff happens. You won't be on the same page and your kids will manipulate you guys because they can hear and feel all that tension. Let's do it. It's not going to get better with time. It gets worse

with time and let's dig in and do that. Ask your husband, say, I'm not asking for a lot, but I want to work on a couple small things with you. We got married for a reason. We had these kids together. Let's do this together, right? It's important. And three things that'll happen. One, I want you to enjoy your life because you're not enjoying life now. There's a compulsion. You're always trying to do it. You're always worried about things and you can't sleep well and you're doing all these. I want you to enjoy your life. I want you to enjoy your kids again. You had a family for a reason. I want you to actually enjoy them. Number two, I want to stop the resistance. See, if you don't change your tone and change all these underlying things, you're just going to keep getting resistance and you're going to keep emailing me or someone else like, well, how do I get my child to be compliant? Well, I can teach you to help them be compliant,

but remember, connection breeds compliance. It always begins with us and that gives us more power. So let's stop the resistance. Let's improve the relationship. And the third thing we can do, and this is critical critical is break generational patterns See, I had a generational pattern. I got from my dad which was fear and intimidation my way or the highway I would just grumble and I'd force my way out of things or into things and I just And and I thought that I can intimidate Casey and I make everybody kind of bend to my will That ruins really that's what I learned from my dad. So the greatest gift I've given my son is when I learned how to control my own emotions.

My dad could not control himself, so he tried to control everybody else in our home and it made everybody miserable. And so the greatest gift I gave my son is breaking that pattern so that when he gets married and has kids, he doesn't keep repeating the same generational pattern. I want you to do this. Look, some of you won't even do it for yourselves. There's deep stuff there and you don't feel, well, I don't feel worthy of that. I'm not worthy of doing that.

But you'll do anything for your kids. So do you want to do something really cool for your kids? Break those negative generational patterns that have shown up in your marriage and your life so that when your kids are older, they don't have to keep repeating that. Now that is really cool and we can help you get that done. I encourage you, reach out to Casey, C-A-S-E-Y at CelebrateCalm.com. Look up the Mother's Day package. It is fantastic. If you want to do mentoring with me, let's do it.

Let's do it. And let's get this stuff done and change it, okay? I love you very much. I hope that we, let us know if we can help. It's what we exist to do. So don't be afraid or shy.

Reach out to us and we'll help however we can, okay? Thanks so much.