Which Consequences Work for Lying, Disrespect & Defiance? #551

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So what do you do when your toddler says, I hate you, mommy, or your child responds to you in a disrespectful tone, or perhaps your teenager rolls her eyes at you? How do you handle those situations? Are there consequences that will work during those times? That is what we're going to discuss on today's episode of the Calm Parenting Podcast. So welcome, this is Kirk Martin, founder of Celebrate Calm. You can find us and our sale at celebratecalm.com. So you have very strong will kids. They're not always going to walk around and say, yes, mother, of course, father. These are kids who have definite opinions, who are impulsive, who are often very moody. We've talked about these kids that oftentimes, they process their disappointment and emotions verbally. And some of you have kids who kind of came out of the womb, like our son with boxing gloves on and a pretty strong mouth. And so we don't want to do the two extremes. I don't want to say, well, she was upset. It's okay. I don't want to excuse the behavior. I also don't want to go the opposite route and just shut kids down. You're never going to talk to me like that young man, because they're just going to look at you like my son did at one point and say, just did. So I want to give you some different ways to handle this. So I'm going to go through three, four, maybe five different situations that you will encounter with kids of all ages. Now I want to start with this one because it's one of my favorite ones ever. And this had to do with my niece, Jordan. And I changed the name for protection. But Jordan, she was a tough kid. She was adopted. She had some issues coming out of that. And so it was hard for her. And like many of our kids, she just struggled being around a ton of people. And the scene is, it's Christmas time. So we're all at my mom's house, my brother's, all of our kids. So it's chaotic, it's noisy. There's competition involved because of all the nephews and nieces. And she didn't always have the best behavior. So one time, there's this one Christmas where she came to me and there were these Christmas cookies on this plate. And she said, Uncle Kirk, you need to watch these for me. Make sure no one takes these last three cookies. Well, I don't always do demanding. And I did want to see how this worked. And so I made sure that by the time she came back, the cookies were gone. Now, a little bit of that is me provoking, right? So just know that. And I knew that at the time. So you don't want to intentionally just provoke your kids to anger. But when she came back into the kitchen, she looked at the plate. She saw that the cookies were gone. And without blinking, she looks me straight in the eyes and said, Uncle Kirk, I don't like you. Now, I had every right to take that personally, to give her a consequence, say, you know what? If you don't apologize right now, young lady, you're not getting any Christmas gifts from me. But why would I do that? Does that actually change anything or solve anything? I'm just forcing an apology against her will in that case. Look, I knew she was just an upset kid. It's like your toddlers and little ones who are like, I hate you, mommy. Do they really hate you? No. Should they say that? No. But they're little kids who didn't get their way because you were being a good parent and just said no. And they're having a tantrum. And so one of the first things they go to is, I hate you, mommy, because they want to pull on your heart strings and they want to get a reaction out of you. Don't bite on that stuff. We're grown adults. Just know that this stuff is going to happen. So there is no need for a big reaction. Could I have given her a consequence for that? Sure. Look, you have to do consequences to put boundaries on things, but in this case, I didn't. But just don't assume or think the consequences actually change human behavior all that well. They don't. And usually you have to go two steps beyond that. So a couple hours later, I said, hey, Jordan, listen, why don't you go up and ask grandma if we can get some cookie dough out of the fridge and we could actually make some more Christmas cookies? So Jordan runs upstairs. She comes right back down. She said, grandma said, we could make cookies. Now, here's the thing. To this day, I am 99.7% sure that my niece didn't ask my mom if we could actually bake cookies. Why? Look, she lied. She lied right to my face. And I understand that because why would she tell the truth? And why would she actually ask her grandmother? Because see, if you ask your grandma, grandma could have said no. And so by shortcutting this whole situation, she guaranteed the outcome, which is she wanted to bake the cookies. Now, you are going to have to wrestle with this and wrestle with your child's nature. Well, you're letting her get away with lying. And that's an issue of personal integrity. And what is she going to do later in life? Look, I make distinctions at times. And I read the moment. And I also get inside the head of a kid. This is a kid who there were not a lot of positive things going on in her life. She really wanted to bake cookies. And it wasn't a big deal. I don't know if my mom would have had control issues and like, no, you can't do it. But my mom pretty much let the grandkids do anything. So I wasn't moved by that. And you can disagree with that. And I could have shaken my head at her and said, you know what, Jordan, earlier today, you are disrespectful to a grownup, to your uncle. And now you just lied to me about what grandma said. You know what, if you don't learn, I could have done that. But it wouldn't have done anything. So we began making cookies together. And there are a few things in here that I was really looking for. And I hope you can take some lessons. One, we're standing side by side now. And there's something powerful about not looking your kids in the eyes when you want to have a good talk with them, a big talk, side by side. We had our hands in the cookie dough. You have very sensory kids. It is often very calming for them to build with things, to make things, to get into messes. I get this all the time. Parents will ask like, oh, my four-year-old, five-year-old, they're always making messes. They go into the bathroom. And they're smearing toothpaste on things. What consequence can I give? Look, you can give a consequence. Make them clean it up. Have them clean it up. That's a perfectly fine consequence. You know what? No more treats, no more toys until you clean up the mess that you made in the bathroom. That's perfectly fine. But that doesn't change the underlying fact and need that is being met, which is you have kids who like to experiment with things in order to see how things work. And they tinker with things. And they're very kinesthetic. And they're physical. And they like to feel things and push things. See, just giving a consequence all day doesn't really get to the root of the issue. It lets her know, hey, yeah, smearing toothpaste all over your bathroom. Yeah, that's not working here. So I give the consequence. But I don't assume that that's going to keep her from doing it next time. Because next time your little kid, or even an older kid, gets an impulse to get into something, they don't always put it together of like, oh, yeah, remember last week or two days ago, this is what happened? They don't care. And so I always go the extra step. And so giving your kids very tactile things to do, meeting sensory needs proactively, having that obstacle course in the backyard in the basement where they have to push and pull and climb under and climb over things, shoveling mulch, doing climbing trees, those things are all really good for your kids. So my niece and I are there and our hands are in the cookie dome, we're side by side, and we're talking and having a good time. And in the midst of that, with no prompting, see, that's part of it too, there was no pushing. You know what, Jordan, before we go forward anymore, I think that you owe me an apology. There's no need for that because you know what I got? Hey, Uncle Kirk, I'm sorry about what I said earlier. And then a couple seconds later, you're my favorite, Uncle, because I was making cookies with her and she had a really big sweet tooth. And so look, I know part of that. I know it was sincere apology because what? I had led her to a calm place. There wasn't all of this pressure. And so I got that and it's also slightly manipulative because I give really good Christmas gifts. And she knew that. So after we got done baking the cookies, this is important, two more important points to this. How many cookies did my niece keep for herself? The answer is zero because she didn't need to. She only was hoarding the other ones because her life always felt out of control. So by controlling three cookies, it gave her some sort of sense of her world being in control. It's not unlike many of you where before you go to bed, you have to clean the kitchen sink. It gives you a sense of control. She had a very giving heart. And so she went out, she gave away all of those cookies because she had a giving heart and she loved when people said, oh, that is such a creative one. I love that. Now, the next Christmas comes. We're all together again. And my niece is a little bit older and she said, hey, Uncle Kirk, do you wanna go get frozen yogurt? She loved frozen yogurt. So I took her to the local mall. And what she really wanted was to talk to me. And she started opening up and saying, Uncle Kirk, it always feels like I'm in trouble. It feels like no one likes me at school. And what hit me at the time was, oh, this related back a year ago to how I handled her saying, I don't like you, Uncle Kirk. It was because in that moment, I was showing her how to control herself. I was leading her to calm. I was building up the positives. See, I'm telling you, most of these awful situations, you can turn them into positives. So, well, what do you do when you have a kid who's just disrespectful in how they talk to you in their tone? Because that's going to happen. I used to wake up congested and sneezing every morning until we began using our air doctor air purifier. That was three years ago. We immediately noticed reduced allergy symptoms, better sleep and cleaner air for our family. Air doctor's powerful three-stage filtration captures extremely small particles, about a hundred times smaller than what typical air purifiers can remove. Air doctor captures airborne contaminants you don't want to breathe in. Dust, pollen, mold spores, pet dander, bacteria, viruses and more. It's partially why Air doctor won Newsweek's Readers Choice Award for best air purifier. Head to airdoctorpro.com and use promo code calm to get up to $300 off today. Air doctor comes with a 30-day money back guarantee plus a three-year warranty and $84 value free. Get this exclusive offer now at airdoctorpro.com using promo code calm. So this is one of my favorite stories about Casey. So he was, I don't know how old he was at this time, maybe eight, nine, 10 or something. I asked him to do something and his response was wow. And we always joke that Casey was too lazy to say whatever. So when he was disrespectful, he had to just make it three letters, wow. Now at the moment, that, in the moment that shocked me. I was like, wait, I was used to a really strong will kid, but for him to come up with wow, which is really is the height of disrespect for what I just said. I would, inside, I'll tell you what my honest thought was. One was I wanted to ring his neck. And I was like, what? You know, when I was a kid, I could have never said that. If this kid, that was one of them. And then the other part was like, you know what? Respect to you, my friend. Like that is a fantastic comeback because all other kids roll their eyes and say whatever, but you came up with wow. I like your ingenuity there and your individuality. But I gathered myself, didn't take it personally, didn't react to it. And I just said, you know, I appreciate that response. I did, I actually said like, hey, that was pretty ingenious there. What I want you to know is you can be proud of that because I know you'd probably been practicing that and waiting for the right time to use it. All I want you to know is it's just not gonna work well here. Right? That's never gonna work for you because the next time you come and say, hey, dad, you have to take me to hockey practice. Hey, dad, I wanna go buy this. My response is going to be wow. Right? And I was very clear of like, you can be disrespectful. Just know that I have 40 years of experience being pretty strong willed myself. See, that's where having a very clear boundary, but without reacting to it. I can't believe that you would say wow to me. I can't believe after all I do for you that you would be that disrespectful. What do you think you're gonna do in life? How are people gonna treat me? No, I didn't do that. I was just very clear that that would never work and that he would not get anything else from me until that attitude went away. Some of that was him trying to see where the boundaries were. What can I get away with? And just because you don't yell at your kids and go off on them doesn't mean you're letting them get away with things. He knew very clearly that if he had come later that day or the next day and said, dad, you have to take me here. I would have just said wow. And I would not have taken him. So I want you to be firm in how you do some of those things. Now my overall things for kids in that age group is, I'll give you my favorite thing to do. I ask them to do something. I give them a direction and then I step out of the room because I kind of expect pushback from strong will kids. And I also proactively when I give them jobs to do, I give them adult type jobs. I make it a challenge. I make it interesting. I give them ownership over how they do it. A lot of the disrespect we can overcome just by doing things differently proactively. Now the one I wanted to get to for older kids, and this could be a seven year old as well. But it's a very common example. This was kind of like mom and daughter of mom asked her daughter to do something and daughter rolls her eyes at her mother. Now, here's what usually happens in our home. And then we, mom might respond with, you know what, when I was a kid, I never did that to my mother. If I would have done that to my mother, blah, blah, blah, after all I do, and you're gonna roll your eyes at me and then dad comes into the room and dad's upset because his wife is upset. And one daughter by moving a few eye muscles just got two grown adults to react to her. So she's getting that need for brain stimulation and intensity in negative ways. And you've heard, I'm not gonna go through how to do this in positive ways, but you've heard me say this, but here's why I wanna go with this. You don't have to have this long talk, but I wanted to do this to kind of demonstrate some principles. What mom could say to her daughter in that case is, hey honey, I don't need you to respect me. See, I have something called self-respect and self-respect moms and dads is really important because if you have to demand respect from another person, oh, you don't have it. And what it says is, I need you to behave and respect me so I feel respected. No way, I am not giving anybody else that power over me. No matter what anybody does to me, I always have the power to demonstrate self-respect. And it can look like this. Look, if you're gonna roll your eyes or talk or say whatever or talk disrespectfully to me, here's what I want you to know. The next time you want something, do not expect me to get up out of my comfortable chair, to go out in the car, to drive through snow or rain or traffic, to take you to an extracurricular that costs way too much and that you're not even good at and won't practice that. I'm kidding on the last couple of things. You can use sarcasm inside your brain and heart, but don't say it. But it is very reasonable to say, hey look, I'm cool. If you want to talk to me like that, you can because I can't always control what you do. I can't control how you behave, but I have 100% control over what I do. And what I'm very clear about is, if you are going to treat me that way, do not ever expect me to get up out of my chair, go through traffic and take you to your extracurricular or to buy things for you. That is not how life works, not how I roll. And I like getting that down even, I like short phrases like, not gonna work in this home, not how I roll. See, that's demonstrating self-respect. Now, you can go further and you can say, honey, the reason I want you to respect me is not for me. I don't need it. It's because when you respect your parents, it's good for you. See what I've found in life, and I do like that phrasing, hey, something I've discovered in life is that when you respect older people, when you respect bosses, when you respect your parents, things just tend to go better for you when that happens. So I'm gonna walk out of the room, I'm gonna go get a drink, go to the bathroom when I get back, why don't we try that again? And you can see if you get a better or different result. Does that make sense? Okay, so I can do that. Now, if I think there's something deeper going on, I can then invite my daughter or son and say, hey, I've heard that tone. It usually tells me something's going on at school with one of your friends. So if you wanna come and have a snack with me, if you wanna go walk the dog with me, I'd love to listen and help you out with that. Because now there's an invitation, and again, it's like with my niece, I guarantee while you're walking with them or having a snack, you will get, mom, sorry, I shouldn't have rolled my eyes at you, and you will build that trust. Now, quickly on this, I've been getting this, and I wanted to address it of like, well, you say you don't like consequences. Well, I don't, I do consequences. I'm just not under the illusion that they actually change behavior all that well, because they usually don't get to the root of the issue, but you've gotta do consequences. So dad just emailed, and he had said, hey, our son is using alcohol right now, and I've heard your dad say he doesn't do consequences. No, you've gotta do them. But here's the difference. So if I have a teenager who is starting to do drugs or is drinking, maybe even vaping, my consequence is, hey, I just want you to know, when you're doing those things, absolutely no use of the car. Like the car is done, driver's license taken away. That's a fair consequence. That's the right consequence because there could be deadly consequences for letting your child drive. But here's the difference. I don't think that taking away the car is going to get your child to stop doing whatever they're doing, because it doesn't meet the root need. So I give the consequence, so we provide some safety and boundaries here, but the real work that needs to be done is to figure out, hey, why have you started smoking weed? Why are you taking edibles? Why are you drinking? What's going on? I wanna help you with that, because they may be doing it to relieve anxiety. They may be doing it because they're under so much stress. I'm not making an excuse, but we all do stuff like this. So it may be that they're not doing well in school or don't have a lot of friends. They're depressed over that. I want to get to the root of the issue. So in all these cases, I can give consequences, but I'm always going the extra step or two to get to the emotional part of this, if there is one, so that, see, that changes behavior long-term. In my son's case, when he was like, wow, there was nothing emotional going on there. That was just purely him looking for a reaction and seeing what he could get away with. And if I would have overreacted with a long lecture, I can't believe that you would say wow to me, well, then he would have figured, oh, my dad's triggered by that. What else can I do to him? But when I addressed it by saying, hey, nice try there, son. Just want you to know that is really going to work against you. So let's try it differently. See, now you can handle it, but in all the cases, let me just reiterate as we close up. There is no drama. Whether I'm disciplining a toddler, a four-year-old, a nine-year-old, a 15-year-old, what I always come down to is there is no drama. I am short, sweet as much as I can, even matter of fact tone. I like with older kids, when I talk to them, going out for a late night talk, going out to eat somewhere a little bit later when it's dark, it's really effective with these kids to get to the root of it. And at the end of all of this, it's the one thing I always want you to hear. It's about the relationship. Relationship and connection changes behavior more than anything else. In the first example with my niece, that connection and relationship helped her to apologize, but also to come to me and ask for my help with some deeper things later. The connection with your kids when they get into the teen years is paramount. That you can't consequence a teenager into better behavior. You're gonna have to do consequences, right? So if they're like, oh, I'm not turning in my iPhone at night, okay, good, well, you just don't have service anymore. That's fine, but I always wanna go to the relationship, to the connection. So let's practice this this week. I hope all of you have instances where your kids are defiant. And I hope they do listen to this and you try the wow thing on you sometime instead of whatever, or someone was very efficient in his defines. Well, what I'm most interested in is how you respond to it because that's what you have 100% control over. So I hope this happens to you this week. You now have some tools. We have an entire program called Stop Defiance and Disrespect. And so that's part of the big package that's on sale along with discipline and 13 other programs. So if you need help, reach out to Casey to let us know. But let's practice this week. Okay, moms and dads, this is hard raising these strong will kids, but I know you can do it. I respect you for breaking those old patterns. You're doing an awesome job. Love you all. Bye bye.