Calm Parenting Podcast - Why You WANT A Strong-Willed Child

Episode Date: March 30, 2020

Why You WANT A Strong-Willed ChildYeah, they will challenge everything you say, want to do things their own way, and push your buttons. They are like cops, judges, and attorneys. In 1999, Kirk wrote these words: “…the very traits that schools and society punish your child for are the very traits that society desperately needs.” If you can embrace this, it is life-changing insight into your child’s very being. You will never be the same again.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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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. Hey, welcome to the Calm Parenting Podcast. This is Kirk Martin, founder of Celebrate Calm. I'm glad you're here and I'm glad you have a strong-willed child. And I hope by the end of

this podcast or in a few years, you realize how grateful you should be to have a strong-willed child. Now, let's define a few things. I'm not a big believer in just like glossing over things. Well, I have a spirited child. No, you have a really challenging, difficult child. I have no problem with saying that. They're challenging. They're difficult. Why? Because they're very bright. They're not usually academically motivated, but they're usually very bright.

And they tend to use their intelligence to argue with you because they're very good, very good critical thinking skills. That's why they can't remember anything that you told them to say, but they will remember everything that they can use against you. They have this high need for justice, right? So when they need to prove their point, they are relentless at it and they just keep coming and coming and coming. And they're these relentless arguers. And that's a great trait. And I'm about to do a podcast just on relentless arguers. So watch for that one. They tend not to sleep well at night. Why? They're up all night thinking of ways of getting out of

doing what you want them to do. Because you know what it is a lot of times, kids with busy, busy brains often have a lot of anxiety. So sleeping is really difficult for them. Again, we cover that in other areas. But here's the hard part. When these kids wake up in the morning, they have an agenda because they know what they like and they know what they don't like. And what they don't like is anything that you want them to do. So there are power struggles over everything. And you will say to your child, you're going to spend your child's entire childhood saying this, if you would just do what I asked you to do, you would be done in seven minutes. But you'd rather argue with me for seven hours or days

or weeks or years and lose everything you own. How many of you have those kids? How many of you have kids for whom consequences mean nothing? They literally don't care. And you can tell them, I'm going to wash your mouth out with soap. And they'll say, oh, could we use Irish Spring? They'll call your bluff. Consequences don't work on these kids. And everybody's going to judge you, right?

And say, well, you just need to discipline that child. And you're like, really? Thanks so much for the insight. I never thought about being consistent or following through. But look, you've done all those things. It doesn't matter with these kids. You know why? Because they're stove touchers. They have to touch the hot stove. It's how they learn best. And that's actually a really, really good trait to have in life. Just makes them difficult to raise, right? And you can't push these kids. You're going to have to lead these kids. them difficult to raise, right? And you can't push these kids.

You're going to have to lead these kids. The consequences don't work, and so you're going to have to give them tools to succeed and do it in a different way. One of the hardest parts about the strong-willed child is they're just going to do things differently from you. They just are. They're not going to do it your way. And you're going to be like, but I'm the authority figure.

They need to do things my way, my way or the highway. That's what I grew up with. Guess what? They're not. And if I could, I'd bet $1,000 on your six-year-old. Do you know why? Because he will own you in every argument because they don't give in and they will fight at you and they're not going to do it your way.

But if you learn to embrace this and you learn how their brains work and the way their hearts are made, you will find that these are the most awesome kids on the planet. So we could spend, I could spend five hours telling you why you need to be grateful for this child. But I want to, why this came up was I was just thinking about, you know, our kids and we were going through some old documents here. I found something I wrote in 1999. And this is when we decided to begin this mission. The name of the organization was originally Celebrate ADHD because I hate all the negativity with it. It's like, oh, you can tell that ADHD's going to be a failure. I was like, no way. There's advantages to that, right? So here's what I wrote. This is 21 years ago.

You need to celebrate your child's differences because the very traits that schools and society punish your child for are the very traits that society desperately needs. Think about that. And I want to give you a thought while we're going through this COVID-19 thing. I believe that one of a child or an adult now, but it's going to be someone like your child who is at least partially responsible for developing a treatment or a cure for COVID-19. Why? Because it's going to take someone who's not afraid to challenge what everybody else says, who has an ability to hyper-focus, because your kids can do that. I get tired of this thing of like, I know our kids struggle with focus and attention. I have no problem with that. But what no one points out to

them is you have a distinct advantage in that you can hyper focus. When you are interested in something, when you care about something, you can drill down on that. You can do it for hours and days on end. And that is a distinct advantage to have in life. There's nothing wrong with your brain. Please, please, please, please get to know your child's brain and heart. Please learn this. Observe your kids. Begin to accept them as they are. Stop trying to change them all the time.

Because that's what we do. That's what I did. Spent the first nine years of Casey's life trying to change him because he made me uncomfortable. Because I didn't like him. I didn't like the way he overreacted to things. Notice the irony there. What do you think he got that from? I didn't like the fact that he was difficult, that he wouldn't say yes ma'am and yes sir and just do what I told him to do. I didn't like that he was always pushing boundaries and pushing the limits and pushing buttons. I didn't like all those things because it made me uncomfortable and it made me come face to face with the fact that I

was the one who needed to change, not him. So don't go through your child's whole childhood trying to fix him or her unless you want your child to not have any confidence, you want them to shut down and resist you all the time because that's what's going to happen. And for some of you, that's already happened. And one of the biggest keys to understanding this is that's, look, it's not necessarily your child. It's how everybody else treats that child. Again, I'm under no illusion that your child is some easygoing, carefree, easy to raise child. They're not. We had 1,500 of these kids in our home for extended periods. We know how difficult they are. It's difficult to get them to do simple things like just brush your teeth. It's not that hard, right? Like I'm just, look, I'm just

asking you to put your shoes on. Like I bought you special shoes. You don't even have to tie them. They're Velcro, right? Like I get it. It's hard. But don't make the mistake of spending, this is another insight. Don't make the mistake of spending 85% of your energy trying to fix what you think is wrong with your child. Because while you're doing that, look, nobody's successful in life because you fix all their weaknesses, because there are some things you can't fix. I want to spend 85% of your energy building on their strengths, building on their natural gifts, talents, and passions. That's what produces a confident individual who can take on anything in life,

who, by the way, can be responsible for his own actions because most of your kids won't be responsible for themselves. They're going to lie. They're going to make up things, right? And they're going to blame other people for their issues. Is that because they're horrible people? No. It's because when you don't feel good about yourself and you think everybody's trying to change you and you're the one who's always in trouble and it feels like you're swimming upstream in life, it's really hard to take responsibility for your actions without feeling like, guess what? I'm just a big dope and an idiot and a stupid kid. Why don't you just put me on lockdown and give me every consequence you can think of for the rest of my childhood? Because that's pretty much what

happens, right? Is that not true? That's what happens. So we don't want that. So I want you to learn, and if you can embrace this, it will change who you are as a parent. If you will learn to see when your child triggers you, instead of reacting to your child, first look at yourself and realize, I'm only being triggered because I have that trigger. If there's only one person in life that I can truly control, which is true, is myself, then maybe I should spend my time trying to control myself. And maybe if I worked on my own triggers, I would now be liberated. See, this child is going to liberate you from yourself

because you and I have control issues and we are riddled with anxiety over our child's future. Your two biggest enemies as a parent are not the school system, are not the current or a past or any future president. It's not anything else except your own issues. And there's no condemnation. There's no blame or no guilt. Do you know how liberating that is? I'm 54 now. So hopefully you can learn from my mistakes. I went through a large part of my, oh, it's their fault, it's their fault, it's that party's fault, it's the school's fault, it's society's fault.

And I blamed everybody else. I blame my wife, my kids, everything else. Blame everybody else until I finally learned I'm the only person in life that I can control. And I know this every morning when I wake up. My biggest enemy is not lurking out there somewhere. It is within me. It is my own negative patterns of thinking. It is my own control issues. It is my own anxiety that trips me up every single time. Almost every single bad decision I make is based on stuff with inside of me. And here's why that's liberating mom and dad. Because I can control that. I can change that. I can't change another person.

If my happiness, success, however you want to define that, is based on trying to change or control or manipulate another person, two things will happen. I will make that person miserable and I'll make them hate me and I will be miserable and frustrated myself. But if my happiness and success and contentment in life are based on changing myself, I have limitless possibilities of controlling and changing myself and I become very ruthless at that. And I will promise you, the quickest way to change your child's behavior is to first control your own.

I promise you the biggest problem you have in your home is not the strong-willed child, it is how you are interacting with that child. It is how you see that child. And once you begin to change how you view that child and you interact with and speak to that child, and I'm not talking about being sweet, right? I'm not talking about like, well, just give in.

That doesn't work either. So I'm not talking about really, really sweet and having to walk on eggshells, not at all. But when you learn to be the calm, confident leader who can control yourself, this child will follow you and you will find you love this child and you will find that you can enjoy this child will follow you. And you will find you love this child. And you will find that you can enjoy this child and appreciate these qualities. So let's get back to this. Why are they going to, why is someone like this, why do we need this child? They can hyper-focus and guess what else they can do? They see patterns. It's a huge insight. It's partly why your kids

are so good at arguing with you. Why? Because they're good at tinkering with things. So they'll tinker with their Legos. They'll take things apart and not put it back together. And now they're tinkering with your brain because they know the last 43 times I said or did this, my mom reacted exactly this way. My dad reacted this way. And my siblings this way. So they see patterns. And they already know what your response is going to be before you even say it. They're good at chess. And what they're doing when they're arguing with you is they're moving you all over this little chessboard. They're moving you emotionally. And I know your response is going to be, well, that's mean. That's not nice. No, the real response is you're immature and you're allowing it because you're the grownup. So stop taking it so personally. Well, after all I do for

them, I'm not letting you get away with that. But please understand, none of this is condemning. There's no blame. There's no guilt. But I am tough on people because I'm ruthless with myself because I don't want to leave you in this place of like coming and just giving you a hug, which you're not allowed to do anymore anyway. But I only want to give you a little virtual hug, right? And just say, I know it's so hard. Like there's value in that for a minute. And I want you to know you're not alone. You're not a bad parent. You didn't do anything wrong, but you need to change yourself. And if you want to be free from not alone. You're not a bad parent. You didn't do anything wrong. But you need to change yourself. And if you want to be free from this, the key is not to change the strong-willed child. It's to change yourself.

And that's liberating, right? So stop being so immature and stop using I do everything for my child because that's just a manipulative tool that you use. Watch how awful this is. And look, it's out of a good heart in places, but here's what it is. Because I've done so much for you, you owe me. That's a nasty way to look at things, right? You don't realize we're doing it, but that's what it is, right? And for me as the dad, it was always my way or the highway, fear and intimidation. If it's good

enough for my dad, it's good enough for my son. I'm the authority figure. And I hid behind every excuse I could because the truth was I needed my son to behave and I needed my son to do what I wanted him to do precisely because I couldn't behave myself. I couldn't even control myself. Watch this pattern thing. Why do you think your kids are so good at building with Legos? They see patterns. And if you understand that, it will help you in how you teach them, how they learn in school, and how they choose a profession, and how they get ahead in life. But if you don't know that, that's right. So I want you to know that. I want you to dig into this. If you have our CD programs, listen to them.

Listen with your child. Look, many of you have decades of blinders on and all kinds of preconceived ideas, and you're not always going to get this stuff as quickly. I guarantee you put on the ADHD University or the strong-willed child program for your kids and just play them in the background. Let them listen. They're at home all the time. They don't have anything to do, right? And it's more valuable than school right now is them learning how their brains are wired and how to be successful in life by using what they're made of and accepting themselves. That would be huge. Let them listen. And I guarantee they'll be like,

oh man, so that's why I'm so good at it. Yeah, I do see patterns in things. That's a huge insight. So here's why one of our kids is going to grow up and do great things like this. Why do we need people like this working on COVID-19? Because we need someone who's accustomed to being contrary. We need contrarian thinkers who are going to follow everybody else and who look at something and say, huh, they're missing something. I think I want to go down a different path. Someone who doesn't seek social acceptance. It's going to be really hard for you moms and dads, especially those of you who are very, very social because you're going to be like, oh, but my son must be so sad. He doesn't have a lot of friends. Now, I don't want kids to not have any friends. And we go through that in our programs, how to help them with social skills.

But don't miss this. Some of your kids don't want to have social acceptance. I personally thrive on being different. It's not just to be different, just to be different, but I don't need it. I don't want to be like everybody else. If everybody else is saying, oh, you have to watch this movie, you have to watch this movie, you just ruined it for me

and I'm probably not gonna watch it, right? Or read this book, it's the hot book. I don't wanna do anything that's very, fat, right? That's really hot right now. I want to do the weird thing. I want to do the thing from 1760 that I found because I just found something. Watch. This is really cool. Hang on with me here just for a second. I'm reading this book about, uh, uh, uh, Lisbon and about the, um, roll with me here. This will be kind of interesting. So about the big earthquake that happened in 1755, because we were supposed to go speak there, but now it's delayed. So anyway, they completely reordered society afterwards, because they got rid of the old thinking and a lot of the established stuff.

Anyway, this was such a great quote. When they redid their education system, this is by, I'm not going to mention names because I can't tell, I can't read or read them. They're French dudes and stuff from 1760. But think about this. The true purpose of a young person's education is not that they should be perfect in a particular science or I'd say particular subject, but rather to expose them to understanding and to provide them with the necessary tools to learn whatever it is to which they wish to apply themselves. Does that make sense? So it wasn't just to teach them, here's what you're supposed to know. It's to teach them how to think and to expose them to what they're naturally curious about.

Those are your kids. Those are your kids. They are curious about stuff. And what we do their whole childhood, no, no, no, don't be curious about this because you have schoolwork and homework and chores that have to do in this area. So no, don't do that.

And you're really gonna have to resist shutting them down because we want them to be able to explore and to be able to apply themselves to whatever they're curious about. So it goes on to say, this kind of liberty was inconceivable in the old kind of religious dominated system, which at that time was very, very closed down, which prized obedience over curiosity and doctrine over reason. Does that make sense? So they prized obedience over curiosity. And you can apply that to our schools, but I'm not judging the schools because we do it as parents, because it makes us very uncomfortable. So don't worry about that. We need kids who are, what else do we need? Who are a little bit impulsive. Why? Because you're, look,

when you get older, you stop being as impulsive. And guess what that means? You're not as curious and you're not as much of a stove toucher. We need kids to have and people to have a little bit of impulsivity to go down that rabbit hole and to go places other people aren't willing to go. We need someone who's completely obsessed with a singular subject or mission. That's who's going to solve this because they have to go deep, right? We all want, this is a big insight, parents. We want our kids to be good at everything. And we say those horrible things like you need to do your best at everything. No, you don't. That's not true. And it's a horrible thing to tell someone

because you can't be good at everything. You have to be good at the right things and you have to prioritize. And your kids are largely wired to be very, very, very, very, very good, exceptional at a few things, but other things they're going to be horrible at. You have to get comfortable with that because the only person who's going to solve big problems is someone who's going to drill down and say, I'm going to go deep into this. Someone who had motivated, can spend hours and days on end experimenting, finding holes in arguments doing repetitive tasks over and over again often without regard to hygiene eating or sleeping because those are your kids we need people like this and some of your kids are like that they do the same thing again and again and again and again

and it drives you crazy and we put labels on it like oh they're OCD. And I get that. But sometimes you need someone like that. Look, we need someone who doesn't get dissuaded when he believes he's on to something, even though other people are doubting him, who has that high need for justice and who has a big heart because your kids do have big hearts, just not towards you, right? It may just be that civilization depends on a child like yours, one that school and society and even peers and parents often reject or castigate. I'm going to read what I wrote 21 years ago again. The very traits that schools and society punish your child for are the very traits that society desperately needs.

See your strong-willed child in a different way. Accept him as he is. That's hard to do, but I want you to do it, and I want you to learn how his brain is made. I'm going to tell you a couple other things, but if you need help with this, contact Casey, C-A-S-E-Y, at CelebrateCalm.com, because he he was our strong willed child. He'll help you out with anything, anything you need. Go to celebrate calm.com. We have a big sale going on. We're doing this as we're not going to call it the COVID-19 sale because that's a horrible name for a sale. I don't even know what we're calling it, but we're trying to get our tools and this insight because you've got to listen to the

ADHD. And even if the child doesn't have it, it's insight into the child's brain. And the Strong Willed Child program helps you do away with all the power struggles. All these programs we have, we are doing it as part of this because we know that families are struggling. We want to get the tools and the insights and the strategies in your hands. And so we've discounted everything and we've slashed everything, the prices. And we've already gotten a few, I got a few emails from people who said, well, we bought it for this amount three months ago. What can we get? And I just said, has the programs helped you? Has it changed your relationship with your child? Has it changed? And I just said, has the programs helped you? Has it changed your relationship with your child? Has it changed? And they said, yes. And I was just giving you a hard time, but it's worth

every penny. So, but if you need help, go and look. We have big, we have slash prices on everything from all the CD programs to the marriage program to the no BS instruction manual. If you need help, email Casey and he'll put together a custom package. We can work with your budget. It doesn't matter to me. I just want you to have the tools and I want you to change this about your child so you can see him in a different way. I want you to learn how to enter into the difficult parts of your child's personality and draw out the strengths. So you're going to have to do that. You have to resist that urge to go and fix everything that's wrong and fix all the weaknesses. Instead, you're going to have to go in there and draw out the strengths.

I'll give you another challenge. I want you to find a trait within your child that irritates you or a time of day that usually trips you up as a family. And I want you to enter into that. And I want you to be creative. And I want you to turn that into a bonding opportunity. One of my favorite things I do with parents is to take like morning routine, which is usually awful and say, I want to take the most awful time of the day, whether it's homework time, dinner time, bedtime, morning routine time. And I want to take the most awful time of the day, whether it's homework time, dinner time, bedtime, morning routine time, and I want to flip that on its head and make that a time when you bond with your child. And you can do it, you just have to work on it, and you have to be creative,

and we can show you how to do that. But here's the cool part, because when you start to bond with your child during that time, you're going to have memories that last forever and you will have created connection with your child and connection breeds compliance. Remember, it's relationships. I know I say this every podcast, but we have to drill this into our heads. Relationships change behavior. Relationships change society. Rules, consequences don't work for your kids, but relationships do, giving them tools to succeed instead of just giving consequences for failure. I want to encourage you to lead these kids instead of push, to reject arbitrary standards that have nothing to do with success in life. This time that you are away from regular schooling right now is a fantastic time to begin to really think,

huh, are we focused on the right things? Are we just in this headlong rush through childhood, signing my child up for all kinds of extracurriculars, taking him to tutors, doing this, taking him to psychologists, all these different things, trying to fix him, trying to make him do homework every night, and we're not even questioning it or ask why we're doing anything. We just are in that headlong rush to get good grades and to get into the right schools. And maybe it's time to step back and think, what do we really want? And I'll encourage

you where we came out was, we just want a curious child who loves to learn. And if you keep that as your focal point, a lot of other things go by the wayside. What does it take for a curious child who loves to learn? That means sometimes we don't do homework, but we do follow our child's curiosity. And he's learning more doing that than he did by doing some things that are completely arbitrary. Does that make sense? It's not, none of this is easy. Your child's not easy. But if I was to ask your child, you know what they'd tell me? This just popped in my head. Yeah, my parents aren't all that easy either, right? Your child is strong-willed and doesn't want to do what you say and they're difficult and they're going to challenge everything. But part of the problem

is that you're the same way, just in different ways, right? You may be a compliant rule follower who's a people pleaser and everybody really likes, but inside you've got a lot of resentment and you may have control issues because you want things done a certain way. And that makes you difficult, or you've got a lot of anxiety and you lecture all the time. So you have a chance. But part of getting our programs is not just learning how to give your kids strategies to do well in school, to change them and stop the power struggles. It's to change who you are. I got this great thing on that and I'll close up with this. When I posted this little thing on Facebook, a mom wrote and said, this changing my view has changed my life and my kids' lives. It's weird. That almost made me cry when I actually say it out loud. Changing my view

has changed my life and my kids' lives. Like this isn't just like, I don't know. It's not like, oh, we just got like ice cream, which is pretty cool because I love ice cream. This can actually change the trajectory. I sounded funny when I said that, didn't I? Trajectory. Change the trajectory of your kid's very life, how they feel about themselves, your life, you have a chance to change your family tree and to be liberated from the control issues and anxiety and the perfectionism on all these things that hold you hostage in life. And so get to change. It's cool. We want to help you change. So reach out to Casey,

C-A-S-E-Y at CelebrateCalm.com. If you want to call him, 888-506-1871. We will listen to you. We will find out about your family. We'll help you find the tools that you need to change your family and yourself, and we'll walk through this with you. Thank you for being open to this. Thank you for enjoying your strong-willed child, even though he or she is difficult because we need these kids. Anyway, thank you guys so much. Talk to you later. Love you. Bye-bye.