Child Call You An Idiot, Have Trouble in School, Fight with Siblings? 5 Ways to Change Behavior

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[24] So there's this light bulb moment that I kind of live for.

[25] It's like when I'm talking to parents are like, well, we've got a sibling rivalry issue in our home.

[26] What do we do about our kids?

[27] I'm like, I don't think you have a sibling issue.

[28] I think you have a confidence issue, right?

[29] Because that child, your strong -willed child who doesn't feel good about himself, who's always in trouble, who feels like everybody's teaming up against him, is resentful toward the good child and is now taking things out on the good child.

[30] And it looks like you've got sibling fights and sibling rivalry when in fact what you have is, a confidence issue because once you show the strong will child how to use his or her gifts talents and passions and build their confidence and give them a sense of responsibility and purpose then they feel good about themselves and they no longer have to or feel the need to pick on their sibling and there's this this awesome moment where I can hear parents on the other line or if we're doing a Zoom call you can see them like oh see we were we were headed down this other path and now it's like we don't have to go down that path because usually the path is usually how do we stop this from happening and what I like to refocus on is I'm not really great at stopping things from happening but I'm really good and humans are good at start doing other things something else and that usually solves the issue so on today's calm parenting podcast we're going to talk about that light ball moment and about shifting our thinking.

[31] And I also want to get a little theme of you knowing that you're not alone.

[32] So welcome to the Calm Parenting Podcast.

[33] This is Kirk Martin, founder of Celebrate Calm.

[34] You can find us to Celebrate Calm.

[35] If you need anything at all, anything, email our son, Casey, C -A -S -E -Y, Celebrate Calm .com.

[36] He'll help you with our resources, provide encouragement, listen to you, whatever you need.

[37] We're here for you.

[38] So reach out to us.

[39] So I've got five kind of random things written down on my little yellow note pad here, and I hope I can make them all fit together.

[40] Even if they don't, just roll with it.

[41] It'll be good.

[42] And please, by the way, share the podcast with other parents.

[43] We appreciate you doing that because we want to help more people.

[44] So on a call today, so I'm doing a phone consultation.

[45] And it's one of the beautiful good things about this whole COVID era is we're not traveling.

[46] So actually I have time to do phone consultations.

[47] I'm doing a lot more personal mentoring with people where we're doing calls every other week and we're really working on a lot of deep, deep personal things and I'm really enjoying that.

[48] So I've got these slightly older parents and they were kind of beating around the bush of their child being disrespectful and one of the dad's biggest triggers is his son being disrespectful to him.

[49] Got it.

[50] I'm the same way.

[51] And I was like, well, what does he do?

[52] Well, you know, sometimes he'll, you know, he'll call us a friggin idiot.

[53] And I was like, well, does he actually use the F word?

[54] And they're like, oh, no, no, no, not the F word.

[55] And I'm like, oh, well, and that's not so bad.

[56] And I'm like, what do you mean?

[57] And I said, you cannot get inducted into the parent of a strong will child hall of fame until your child's dropped a few curse words on you.

[58] So just calling you an idiot, no, not all that bad.

[59] And I get why it's disrespectful one it bothers you and they're like really do other kids do this i'm like yes what what self -respecting strong -willed child has not called his parents some kind of awful name and you know light bulb moment as simple as that sounds maybe to some of you for this couple it was like so there's nothing really wrong with our son no he's a really intense kid you're going to have to do some things in different ways with him i get that he's going to it's going to be a challenge and i and i and it's hard and you're going to have to change some things yourself so no there's nothing wrong with him and your situation isn't different from anybody else's who has kids like this and as we went through the call there like well it's like so you you just explained why he was doing this i'm like yes because there are a million other kids that we've worked with that do that and it was you know it was interesting by the end of the call they're like we have a really good action plan now you've given us an action plan.

[60] But after the call, they emailed and said, the main thing that we got from this is knowing our kid's going to be okay and our family is going to be okay.

[61] And I want to send that message to you, yes.

[62] If you just do some simple things, right, it's going to be okay.

[63] Now, if you keep bearing down on my way or the highway approach and talking too much and yelling and doing those things, it'll escalate and you'll lose a relationship with your child and they'll become very, very defiant and they'll dig in and they will stop doing things for you and they will become outwardly defiant if you don't change some things.

[64] But these things are all changeable.

[65] Why?

[66] Because it's about you changing yourself.

[67] Boom, big light bulb moment that I had early on with Casey was the quickest way to change his behavior was not controlling him.

[68] It's controlling myself.

[69] It's controlling my tone of voice, my body posture.

[70] It's sitting instead of standing over him.

[71] Right?

[72] It's asking questions instead of lecturing all the time.

[73] It's about using an even matter of fact instead of being like this and trying to convince him, right?

[74] Those are light bulb moments.

[75] Here's another one I got the other day from a, and this is a dad who's like, well, we just called because we need to talk about consequences.

[76] And I was like, well, let me ask this.

[77] You've been doing consequences for the first 10 years of your child's life.

[78] Has it worked?

[79] Well, no, but we thought you'd be able to give us some good ones.

[80] And I was like, I can give you all kinds of consequences, right?

[81] I'm all about declaring martial law.

[82] I love harsh consequences, but for some of your kids, they don't work and in certain situations.

[83] So I was like, let's talk about giving them tools because consequences are basically punishing a child for failing at something or doing something wrong.

[84] Child did something wrong, and so we react with a punishment, hoping that'll change his behavior, and it usually doesn't, because most of your kids don't even care about consequences, and they don't even have anything to do with the real issue.

[85] you.

[86] And so I said, what if instead we know that your child struggles in a certain area and we proactively give him tools to succeed?

[87] What if we begin this week to create successes, some small wins, so that your child, we begin to affirm him for what he's doing well instead of just punishing him for what he's not doing well and what he's failing at?

[88] And a dad, you could hear, oh, okay, that's a different approach.

[89] Yes.

[90] And it's cool.

[91] And look, this doesn't have to be overly complicated.

[92] The ideas, hopefully, are novel enough, and it's a shift in your thinking, but it's a lot easier than doing the old way of like, well, we've got to stop sibling fights.

[93] Look, here's where we usually go.

[94] I've got to go back to that one.

[95] Sibbling fights, it's usually like, well, we have to, you know, I need to talk to my girls, I need to talk to my kids, about loving each other, and about being kind.

[96] It's nothing to do with the issue.

[97] Nothing at all.

[98] and you will waste literally years trying to convince your kids to be kind when it had nothing to do with kindness in the first place.

[99] Does that make sense?

[100] It's kind of cool when you do this.

[101] So here's another good one.

[102] So this was awesome.

[103] It's kind of a more of a personal mentoring one with this mom and she's in a foreign country many, many time zones away.

[104] But we make it work.

[105] It's kind of cool.

[106] And so her question was, well, how do I?

[107] I get my hubby back?

[108] How do I get them to respect me?

[109] And I asked her if I could be completely honest with her, and she said yes.

[110] And I said, our goal is not to get your hubby back.

[111] It's how can we change you?

[112] Because if your goal is to just get your hobby back, you will keep doing what you have done for the past 15 to 20 years, which is compromise yourself, give in to him, always do whatever he wants you to do, right?

[113] And you'll keep repeating that pattern within you of the fact that you're just repeating the pattern that you don't respect yourself because the whole time you have given into him and you have managed his emotions and tried to make him happy and you try to make everybody happy.

[114] And in the course of doing that, the message you send is that you're not a confident, smart woman yourself.

[115] And the question was, and this stings a little bit and she handled this really well because I told her, I said, when I hear that of you, well, I just want him back, I just want to get him back.

[116] It's like, well, what will you do to get him back?

[117] And she's like, well, anything.

[118] And I was like, and that's the problem.

[119] And so he doesn't respect you because he knows you'll just do anything to get him back.

[120] And so, but what, and I can't control.

[121] I can't control what he does.

[122] But what we can change is we can control what you do.

[123] And we can start to build your confidence and demonstrate self -respect.

[124] And I can't guarantee that you will get your husband back.

[125] I can't guarantee that.

[126] But what I can guarantee is that you will begin to respect yourself.

[127] Your kids will begin to respect you.

[128] And if there is any hope at all of getting your husband back, it will be by drawing him back because he looks at that, looks at you and says, oh, that's an interesting, confident person that I want to spend my time with.

[129] And I need to pursue her because she's smart and she's creative and she's highly conscientious and she can run this business and she can do all these different things and she's a great mother and instead of see we do it with our kids too well i just i talk really sweetly to my kids and i try to cater to them because i don't want them to have a meltdown and see they stop respecting us when we do that and but when you demonstrate self -respect that you are a bright confident competent person right and you're a leader that draws them to you and they begin to respect you but it begins with you respecting yourself and so by the end of the call the entire conversation has shifted from how do we change and influence the behavior of another human being in some cases it's a hubby or a wife or could be a child to know what can you do what are five things we can begin doing this week to change you so that the end of the day at the end of the week at the end of the month at the end of the year you become a different person I can't always tell other people what they are going to do but I can always tell them and let them know what I'm going to do there's an enormous amount of self -respect and confidence that that works with spouses it works with your kids it is really really important.

[130] And so in there, in all of this, I wanted to share this idea that I thought was really cool.

[131] And it's partly where the light bulb idea, light bulb moment came from for this podcast, is there's all kinds of family dynamics going there.

[132] And because I'm on the outside, I can look in and kind of simplify things a little bit.

[133] And so we're coming up on the Christmas season.

[134] And so the mom wants to make sure with the kind of the marriage falling apart that the daughter has a really good Christmas.

[135] And so I was like, okay, here's an idea.

[136] Let's do the 12 days of Christmas.

[137] But instead of giving your child physical gifts, instead, let's start identifying the gifts inside of your child.

[138] And by the way, let's start every day for 12 days.

[139] I want you to give your daughter something physical, not a gift, but something to represent one of her character traits that you love.

[140] And I want you to put in a box, a box, an envelope, a statement about yourself.

[141] And so, you know, one idea was, and look, some of the ideas don't make sense.

[142] they're not always great, but they lead to other ideas was, I want your daughter to open up a little box, and there's going to be a light bulb in it.

[143] She's going to be like, why'd you get me a light bulb?

[144] And so the answer isn't, well, you need to read by light or your eyes are going to go bad, right?

[145] No, it's because, honey, when you walk into a room, you light up the room, because you have this brilliance, this energy about you, and you light up that smile that you have, you light up a room.

[146] because when you walk into that room, all of that energy.

[147] And by the way, for context, this is a girl who's getting in trouble because she has lots of energy.

[148] She's getting in trouble for the very traits that are going to make her successful one day in life.

[149] And so I want to begin building up this daughter, this girl, and giving little gifts to say, this is what this represents.

[150] It represents a character trait that I love about you.

[151] You do that for 12 days.

[152] You're going to build up a child and you're going to get to see because watch what we've done.

[153] We've spent 12 days, 12 weeks, 12 months, 12 years, watch, identifying all of our kids' weaknesses and pointing them out continually.

[154] Is that not true?

[155] There's no guilt and blame in that.

[156] Just stop doing it, but it's what we do as parents, because we're like, oh, I have to pick out all the things that they do wrong, and I'm going to hyper -focus on it until it changes.

[157] I'm going to get a therapist for this one.

[158] I'm going to try to change that one.

[159] And then our kids get to a certain age, and they have no confidence, and we wonder why.

[160] But what if you did this coming up for the 12 days of Christmas and you're going to look it's going to take a little bit of time and it's going to take a little bit of creativity so everything that they open and some of you have three kids but maybe you don't have to do it for all three kids because two of the kids are just fine maybe it's just with the one and you do it in private or you do it with all three it'd be a lot cheaper than buying them all kinds of gifts right and you do creative little things a little statement that you put in there because when they open that now you've got 12 days where you've identified one of their gifts, their creativity, their leadership, whatever it is, it could be pictures of something that they did really cool, right?

[161] And so I was like, Mom, I want you, I want you as a woman to begin writing down.

[162] What are those qualities?

[163] Who are you?

[164] Not who are you in relation to this man, but who are you?

[165] Right.

[166] And so she sent me the next morning was cool.

[167] She sent me and she said, I've already got 12.

[168] And I was like, oh, you're an overachiever.

[169] right and her statements were so rock solid i'm like yes every morning when you wake up instead of thinking how do i get my hubby back how do i get that back instead i want you to focus on this who can you be who can you be differently anyway i stop focusing on what you can't change focus on what you can change fifth and final thing is this is my cartwheels example so uh phone consultation, a parent told me, look, I hear this a lot and I get it, but a child in class by the teacher because I know teaching is really, really hard, so I don't want to bash on the teachers, but this teacher is all over this little girl because she's got a ton of energy and she said some pretty negative comments about this child.

[170] So I had mentioned once on one of the podcasts, or maybe it was the ADHD University CD program, about using movies, during the learning process.

[171] It's really, really important to stimulate your child's brain and using movement is extremely important.

[172] Letting kids listen to music.

[173] I've mentioned this a thousand times.

[174] But this mom had her daughter didn't want to do math, but her mom said, I decided to try something different.

[175] Kudos to you.

[176] And so her daughter will do cartwheels while her mom does the multiplication tables for her and her daughter likes to sing so they started singing songs while she's doing cartwheels and she aced her multiplication tables so we go into school and i said mom go into that school and talk to the teacher identify with her struggle of how hard it is to teach 20 25 kids in the classroom and that you know your daughter has a lot of energy but could you use this to your advantage and it recessed maybe when your daughter has a hard time playing with other kids the same age, what if the teacher were to go to this little girl and say, hey, you know, your mom told me that you aced your multiplication tables because I've noticed, like, your math, you're, you're killing it there, you're really good at that.

[177] She said you learned by doing cartwheels.

[178] Hey, there are a couple other kids who are still struggling a little bit.

[179] At recess, would you show me how you learned your multiplication tables?

[180] Because this mom had sent me a video.

[181] It was really cool.

[182] It was beautiful.

[183] She's singing a song about doing cartwheels and doing her math tables.

[184] It's different.

[185] It's odd.

[186] But who cares?

[187] And so watch what happens.

[188] This little girl who's always in trouble in the classroom, now by shifting the thinking a little bit from difficult child who makes everything hard in my classroom and who's annoying to now it's, oh, I can really use your help teaching the other kids.

[189] Now picture out on the playground.

[190] This girl is using her gifts because she's good at moving.

[191] and cartwheels and music and now she feels useful and needed and she's helping other people and the teacher's like that's awesome could you keep doing that it didn't take any money it didn't take an advanced degree it took a little bit of insight into the brain and into the child and a shift in thinking to change these situations in very radical ways so this week let's work on shifting your thinking.

[192] If we can help you with that, it's partly what the CDs are for.

[193] By the way, someone asks this about, oh, how are the podcasts different than the CDs?

[194] The CDs have so much more detail because I try to keep the podcast focused on one specific thing.

[195] The CDs have literally hundreds and hundreds of insights and strategies for multiple situations.

[196] Like on a podcast, I'm able to go through one or two per situation.

[197] On the CDs, those programs, I can go into great depth and show you eight different variations and you can try all eight or you can say, oh, I think that one would work best.

[198] Right.

[199] And so if you need help with that or if you want to talk on the phone because I can kind of cut through the clutter, go to our website, celebrate calm .com.

[200] We have big sales going on on everything, 60 to 70 % off on the CD and download programs.

[201] If reach out to Casey, we've got the call.

[202] perk.

[203] We've got the, I can do the personal mentoring, we can do phone consultations, whatever you want.

[204] Reach out to Casey, C -A -S -E -Y at celebrate calm .com, and tell them about your family and what you're struggling with.

[205] And we'll talk about it as a family and we'll give you some ideas and we'll point you in the right direction.

[206] It's what we're here for.

[207] Anyway, I'm going to try to keep this under 20 minutes.

[208] Thank you for listening.

[209] Please share the Calm Parenting podcast with other families who might be struggling and let us know what you're struggling with.

[210] I'll try to address it on a podcast.

[211] But thank you for listening.

[212] Thank you for being a good parent.

[213] you for working through this when your child does call you a friggin' idiot or actually uses the F -bomb, right?

[214] So I'm hoping for those parents that we can begin working on that a little bit.

[215] But part of it, look, part of that one is acknowledging child's frustration with intensity.

[216] Remember the intensity, positive intensity is really good.

[217] Okay, I got to stop now.

[218] Love you all.

[219] Talk to you soon.

[220] Bye -bye.