22 Ways to Teach Impulse Control & Delayed Gratification #573

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So how can you teach your kids impulse control and delayed gratification in very practical ways? Oh, we're not going to wait for that. That's what we're going to do. I'm going to give you 22 ways to do this on today's episode of the CALM Parenting Podcast. So welcome. This is Kirk Martin. I originally set out to provide 10 ways, but then I got really into this because it's really important and I wanted to over deliver. So a few shout outs first. So bear with me with some impulse control. Thank you to everyone who has taken advantage of the Black Friday and March sale. We know inflation and gas prices are hurting everyday families. And so many people have emailed, hey, can you extend your sale? Of course. So we've got a few days left and we're always here to help with that. So just let us know. So many good testimonials coming in. I also appreciate you letting me know that you find the ads on this podcast annoying. Look, I don't have any other way to say this other than I find them annoying when I listen to my favorite podcasts. What I've learned over time is that I value the work and insight I get from my favorite podcasters. And so I just kind of say inside, okay, I'm getting a lot of free insights and this is a way to support their work. And I just go through the ads at like two times the speed. So I do appreciate your parents, patients and support. If you want, we have an ad free option. People seem to be enjoying for $5 a month. It's to celebratecom.com. And finally, thank you to all of you who have been listening to the new PDA parent podcast and leaving positive reviews. It really helps us reach more people. So let's jump into this. If I were raising a child today, I would slow my life down and spend way less time on academics and chores and spend much more time teaching life skills such as impulse control, delayed gratification, financial literacy and emotional health. See, these life skills have a disproportionate impact on your child's health, wealth and happiness throughout their lives. So impulse control. Look, kids are supposed to be impulsive when they are young. That's how our little stove touchers often learn best and why I didn't get freaked out when schools would send home notes saying, oh, Casey is acting impulsively in school. Well, I expect that. That said, teaching Casey impulse control and delayed gratification was a huge priority that has paid dividends throughout his first 33 years. This is a superpower that could save your kids considerable pain in life socially, socially, relationally, financially. And it's even more important for kids today who are growing up in an era of same day delivery, YouTube shorts, and instant feedback on social media and Snapchat that are eroding the natural ability to wait. And the consequences are far higher for our kids now. One rash response on social media or via text can hurt their reputation. Sending pictures via text could result in being expelled or even arrested. And that rise of online gambling and shopping can be costly. And look, our kids are nerd of virgin kids, kids with ADHD. They're especially susceptible. And so also, this is a superpower. Looking for a competitive advantage for your child as they grow up? Oh, impulse control, delayed gratification? Yeah, it's pretty rare. So let me cover the risks briefly, not to cause fear because I don't like doing that, but to stress the importance of teaching impulse control and delayed gratification. Look, when the breaks on the brain don't work effectively, the costs tend to compound over time, moving from small social hiccups to significant life hurdles. Consistently saying the first thing that comes to mind can lead to a reputation for being rude and sensitive or unreliable. Impulsive anger or just quitting in the heat of a moment can destroy friendships or relationships it often took years to build. The financial costs of impulsivity are staggering. Constant debt and associated stress, job instability, wasteful impulse purchases, losing money on get rich quick schemes. All of this can lead to chronic stress from living in a cycle of crisis management. Look, in extreme cases, lack of impulse control lead to reckless driving, substance abuse, anxiety, depression, and then you end up beating yourself up. As you kind of feel like a passenger in your life rather than the driver. So impulse and self control and delayed gratification are skills, kind of law skills. You have to learn just like addition and subtraction. You have to practice these skills. They're not just going to happen. And I do believe it is a huge competitive advantage for your kids to have. So let's do this. I'll probably break this into two episodes. So I'm going to encourage you be consistently intentional with teaching these skills. Number one, make it fun when kids are young. Play a version of the game freeze. When you say the word freeze or the music stops when dancing to freeze dance, your child has to stop and remain perfectly still holding whatever position they were in when the music stopped. By all means, let them control the music and then you and your spouse freeze. You can make it more fun with players freezing like a statue, an animal or a superhero. Depending on the age and ability of your child, you can add penalties for moving, right? Like doing push-ups or jumping jacks. Play freeze tag with your kids. When a child has to freeze their body while their brain wants to keep moving, they are practicing. They are practicing the exact neural pathway needed to stop themselves from grabbing a toy or hitting a sibling. It's fun. It's practical. Number two, practice at Red Robin. I know people laugh at this, but it works. When Casey was a kid, we go to Red Robin because back then Red Robin was kind of a new cool place. And I'd ask Casey, hey, how many fries are we going to leave on our plate tonight? And he'd look at me like I was crazy and ask, why would you leave these delicious greasy, salty fries on the plate? And I'd say, great point, son. And then he'd add this, dad, there are children starving in third world countries. We shouldn't waste food because our kids are kind of quick like that. And I'd say, well, we do it just to show that we can. It was a concrete way of physically practicing impulse control. Those fries were right there in front of us begging to be eaten. We could see them and smell them and taste them. And then we chose together to leave a certain number on our plate. Did we do it every time? No. Do you have to do this with food? Of course not. I don't like creating anxiety around food, but I like doing practical things. I'm just going to throw this in here. Your kids aren't going to like it. They're not going to be like, mom, dad, thank you for going through these awkward times. And doing this even when I'm mad at you because you know that this is an important life skill. They're not. You just have to do some of this stuff. Number three, model self-control in your daily life. And I made this the third point, but you know by now this should be points number one through eight. Your most powerful lecture is your example. Your kids are always watching you. So this begins with the basics. Can you control your own emotions, your own anger and frustration? And there's no blame or guilt here. Just focus on that and keep making progress. Your kids will notice. Can you control your own anxiety that compels you to lecture too much? Can you control your impulses in traffic? Do you allow one person, right? Because two is too many for us type A people. Do you allow one person to cut in front of you in traffic at the grocery store when you're tired and in a hurry? Do you prioritize getting exercise and practicing self-care? Do you delay gratification in the short term because it means you will be healthier later in life? Again, you don't have to be some freak Instagram optimizer. I certainly try to exhibit a healthy balance. We work out, we eat healthy, but we also enjoy brownies and pizza and a glass of wine at dinner sometimes. Just not a whole bottle. Number four, establish traditions and routines that you practice as a family. From an early age, we had a tradition or rule in our home. We never buy anything at the checkout counter. That's where they put all those high margin impulse control purchase items that kids and adults geek out on. I like the word tradition because traditions tend to be a shared value or something your family does or doesn't do. It's just how we roll. Yeah, we never do that. Just like you would wisely and rigidly say, yeah, we don't steal or hit other people or spit on the carpet. It's a non-negotiable. And that eventually eliminates the 457 times your child asks or pleads, can I get this? Eventually they learn it's not worth even asking. It's showing that you honor certain boundaries and you stick to them. I do remember there's one time we were at a checkout counter and I saw something small. We needed for the house and I went to reach for it because it was convenient and we actually did need it. But I could hear the words forming in Casey's mouth. Right? Like we don't buy anything ever in the checkout counter. So we actually left the checkout line to find it in the regular aisle. Now I know that's a little extreme and you don't have to do that. But I wanted to be consistent. Otherwise, those little prosecuting attorneys you and I have will remind us of that evidence, right? Of when we did it hundreds of times to justify them breaking the tradition. So what are some traditions you want to keep in your home that reinforce the importance of impulse control and delayed gratification? Number five, practice waiting even when your kids think it's stupid. This simply involves a lot of discomfort on your part as your child complains at first, but it's worth it. You don't have to do any of these things, but I would. I would at times say to Casey, hey, I want you to wait 43 seconds or two and a half minutes before you do X or Y. It's dorky. It's awkward. Your kids are going to complain. Why are we doing this? This is stupid. Who cares? I promise you it's worth it. Again, you are purposefully practicing impulse control. I want you to do something. I want to eat something and now I have to wait 18 seconds or 94 seconds. You can have a little tradition that says, hey, before you eat the snack, you have to wash one bowl in the sink to put it in. I'm building an extremely critical life skill, but I'm not training my child to be a Marine. So I have fun with this as well. There were times when we pick up a pizza and just eat a couple slices while driving on the way home. We get an ice cream and just dive into that thing without a spoon and gobble it down. So I don't want any gung-ho guys out there making every single thing you do, a lesson in impulse control and delayed gratification. So have some fun with it. Number six, wait 24 to 48 hours. Sleep on it. Here is another family tradition that has saved us tens of thousands of dollars. The rule was that with any large purchase, we had to wait 48 hours before making the purchase. You know, it's like when you're standing in front of or sitting in that beautiful new car or electronic gadget, you want it. But once you walk away and wait 24 or 48 hours, that desire often goes away. So often a salesperson would say, hey, that deal won't be available if you walk out and I would just stay under my breath. Hey, if you want to sell it to me, oh, that deal will still be here two days from now. So it is an underrated and insanely useful skill to practice. By the way, we would practice the following still due to this day. You know, when someone says something that triggers you, you just feel compelled to respond right away. Instead, sleep on it. We have done that countless times over the years and have never regretted it. Casey knows that phrase well. Hey, sleep on it. It works in relationships and disagreements and finances. Number seven, read. I just added this one because I haven't seen it listed anywhere else. Read. Teach your kids to love reading. Model your love of reading. Why? Because it's slow, because there's anticipation, because there's character development, because you have to wait days and maybe even weeks for the ending of the story. There's nothing wrong at all with watching a movie, but you complete the story in two hours. I'm a slow reader, so it takes me weeks and even a month to finish a book. That's delayed gratification. Okay, number eight is one we often forget about. 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We're eating more veggies because we're mixing them into the garlic beef and lemongrass chicken bowls. It literally takes me seven minutes from prep to plating and costs a fraction of what it would cost to eat out. On those really busy days, which are like all of them, it is such a relief to know. We have a couple hungry root meals in the refrigerator that we know everyone will like and that only takes seven to 15 minutes to prepare with super easy cleanup. Let hunger root simplify your life. No more stressing over food every night. You're going to love hunger root as much as we do. Go to hungryroot.com slash calm. Use code calm to get 40% off your first box. Plus get a free item in every box for life. That's hungryroot.com slash calm. Code calm to get 40% off your first box. Hungeroot.com slash calm. Code calm. On Amtrak, you can spend more time relaxing and enjoying the ride and less time cursing under your breath in traffic. Whether you're going on a quick trip or up and down the Northeast, we'll make sure you do it in comfort. With no middle seat and plenty of leg room, stretch out without ever stressing out. Book a traffic free getaway at amtrak.com. Amtrak, Retrain Travel. Play board games. We kind of forget about that one, but think about it. Board games with strategy like chess, checkers, or even monopoly require players to wait their turn and think two steps ahead. They force a child to inhibit the urge to move a piece immediately in favor of a better long term outcome. Just try it. I know many of your kids cheat at games they want to quit. I get that. But board games are a great way to teach impulse control and just slow down. Number nine, teach impulse control through money and finances. I just wrote about this in the new PDA parent program because Casey was never really good at math, but he was never going to pursue a career heavily dependent on math or be a physicist, so we didn't prioritize it. Instead, look because prioritization is extremely important. There is an opportunity cost to everything that you focus on because there is limited time and energy, so if you focus on one thing, that means you can't focus on something else. So we prioritized financial literacy and delayed gratification skills. From a young age, we modeled having three buckets for your money. You save some, you give some, you spend some. We talked about prioritizing what would mean most. Sometimes we allowed him to make suboptimal choices because it was his money, and it was better to do that at age 10 than when the stakes are higher. We made sure he had an investment in different activities he chose. If he wanted that extra expensive hockey stick, then he would pay the difference between the good one and the one everyone wanted. Then he had to weigh the opportunity cost. Well, if I spend the extra $40 on this hockey stick, that means I won't have money for X and Y. When he got his first real job at age 12, and he would make hundreds of dollars on weekends officiating hockey tournaments, we opened a Fidelity Investment account and he began investing. He had mentors who told him, taught him kind of a buy and hold strategy, and the money he invested in Apple and Nvidia stock eventually became the down payment on his home 15 years later. This can have real, this stuff is very real for our kids. Number 10, practice not buying things. I do not expect you to do this with your own kids, but I like this story because it's instructive. So one of my favorite things to do back when we had these camp kids in our home, we'd have 10, 12, 15 kids at our house and they all struggled with this. I tell them, hey, tomorrow we're going to Best Buy. They'd be so excited walking around that store, looking at that electronic candy, grabbing all these video games to purchase, visions of sleepless nights playing games, dancing in their heads. And then I'd say, hey, you need to put all your stuff back. We're leaving now. Needless to say, there was a lot of outrage. There was shock. There was screaming. No, we haven't paid for our games. You know how they do that. And I said, I know we're leaving. Let's go now. And then we get outside and they'd be so upset. But Mr. Kirk, I really wanted that new game. And I'd say, I know you do. It's a really fun game. I'd want that one too. But you just did something really hard. You had something fun in your hands and you had to put it back without buying it. That's what impulse control and self-control is when you really want something and you say no and walk away. And they, of course, said, thank you for teaching us this valuable life skill that will serve us well and give us a competitive advantage in life. They didn't say that. Instead, it was a chorus of like, this is stupid. This is the dumbest camp ever. Where do you get these dumb ideas? But I wanted them to feel those games in their hands, picture playing them, and then put them down and walk away. I wanted them to physically practice it with something tactile. And so over time, they learned how to say no and walk away. And they learned how to own their own boredom and their own disappointment. And I'd say, look, if I were you, I'd be upset at me. I'd be frustrated. I'd be really mad because you thought you were going to buy these video games and then I didn't let you. But you do have a choice because we still have the rest of the afternoon together. So you can continue to be miserable and bored if you want. But you have a choice over that. So work through this and when you're ready, we can do X and Y. I'm not saying you should do this with your kids, but it's an option for some of you. Number 11, show how this impacts you. I was open with Casey as he got older. And I'd say, Casey, I've got ADHD. My brain craves novel things and intense stimulation. I am prone to be impulsive to take risks. So there will always be this temptation to seek intensity in negative ways. And that's why I prioritize working out why we as a family volunteer because that provides stimulation in positive ways. And to this day, we talk a lot about risk reward with investing, with his ski mountaineering given potential avalanches. Slow your world down, spend more time talking about life than about school and chores. And we also gave him this perspective. Your impulsive nature can be a superpower in life when you have guardrails and know how to use it. Your impulsivity likely means you're going to jump into doing things more quickly than others. Occasionally you'll get burned, but that's part of the process and you learn from that. It also means that while others are overthinking things and waiting for the perfect time to take action, a time that never comes, you will jump in and get things done and experience cool things others don't. This all became part of a larger discussion we had throughout his early years, his teens and beyond. When he'd ask, why do we have to wait or do these things? Nobody else has weird parents like this. I'd say, because I want you to be different. This skill will save you thousands and possibly tens of thousands of dollars during the course of your life. This skill will keep you from saying stupid stuff that hurts people you love. This skill will set you apart from your peers and give you a competitive advantage because that's all true. Number 12, let it become part of your family DNA. Back in the day we traveled a lot for speaking events, sometimes on a road for two to three weeks out of the month. When we get home we'd be drained and emotional and tired. I remember coming up with another tradition in life. We never make big decisions or have hard talks until two days after we get back and we get some sleep. Live this even if your kids don't see it. They will start to ingest it as part of your family DNA. One of my favorite emails ever was from Mom who said, hey, I let my son listen to your programs. He said your red robin example is dumb. I love these kids. Who wants to give up eating french fries, which is his favorite food group? But he did take your lesson and came up with the idea of a phone jail. He said, I procrastinate and say, hey, I'll get my work done. I'll get this done in five minutes. But then two hours later, I find myself beating myself up because I just wasted two hours scrolling stupid YouTube shorts. So now I put the phone in the phone jail in the kitchen safe so I literally can't look at it. And he said, that helps me concentrate better and get my project done two days early. And that feels good to not have it hanging over my head. So then when I do give myself time to watch YouTube videos, I can relax without the assignment hanging over my head. That is brilliant. Let your kids listen to this episode. Let them listen. We go through this in a discipline that works program and ask them to come up with ideas. Encourage them to disparage my ideas and develop better ones. Some of your kids will love that. On part two of this series, I'll show you how to teach your kids impulse control with screens. Teenagers will do toddlers, even in the classroom. So begin practicing some of these strategies during the next few days. Ask your kids to come up with their own ideas like the phone jail. All right. Much respect to you all. If we can help you reach out to KCC, C-A-S-E-Y at celebratecom.com. Take advantage of the Black Friday in March sale. One thing, by the way, people have told us is we love your podcast. It's great. But when we get the programs, it all comes together and you give us a lot more options. And so it's making a difference. So thank you all for putting time into that. Okay, love you and we'll see you next time. Thank you.