What’s The Episode About:
In this episode, Paul and Stacey will be tackling the question of how to handle your kid when he or she triggers you. This is something that happens to every parent, and the biggest reason why parents can’t seem to find a solution to that problem is that they think that “fixing the kid” is the key, but it’s not.
Stay tuned as Paul and Stacey dive into the issue of demand parenting, and learn how you can use relationship development parenting to get the results you want in your household and for your children.
Key Points Discussed:
- It’s all a demand relationship kind of parenting (03:11)
- Mastering your emotions first before demanding the same of your kid (05:41)
- The detriment of demand parenting (08:25)
- People don’t trigger you, they just show you your own triggers (11:00)
- Having a higher standard for ourselves as parents (17:29)
- Allowing your kids to experience the natural consequences of life (27:53)
- Teaching our kids how to navigate life (37:03)
Where Can I Learn More:
Have you signed up for The D.I.R.T. ?! http://bit.ly/2KlobXZ
When Did It Air:
August 8, 2019
Episode Transcript:
Disclaimer: The Transcript Is Auto-Generated And May Contain Spelling And Grammar Errors
Paul: 00:00 Hey Relationship Transformers. Welcome to The Relationship Transformer Podcast. Stacey and I have been doing a lot of talking of these podcasts. So today, it’s time for us to start answering some of your questions. Today’s question is all about when your kid triggers you. This happens to every parent, we get it, and today, we’re going there. Some people are not going to like what we have to share today, I’ll be honest with you, and yet, everyone needs these solutions. So let’s cue up the intro and dive in.
Intro: 00:32 So the big question is this; How is it possible that one person alone can transform any relationship, save their marriage, create their unshakeable love, and unleash passion, divorce-proof their family, without needing their partner to get on board and do this with them, and yet still get to be happily, authentically you without compromise. That is the question and this podcast will give you the answer.
Stacey: 01:01 Alright, so one of our relationship you students brought an awesome question to the live Q&A call the other week, and we wanted to share her question with you, and then Paul and I are going to answer it because this is really regular life for most families at some point or another. Her question was this, “Okay, our 11-year-old son is really triggering me and the rest of the family. He knows how to push our buttons. He’s always trying to get a reaction out of everyone. He triggers others and it spirals out of control. He doesn’t listen or follow instructions, and he won’t stop. I’ve tried all these different ways to try to get him to stop. I’m wondering if there’s anything else I can do to try to help him control his emotions better.” Paul, I know on the call you were the first one to jump in to serve her, so how about you help with that here.
Paul: 01:46 So, I think most people would hear that and be like, “Oh, I totally get what she is describing there.” And yeah, what do you do? How do you make them stop that?
Stacey: 01:57 Ho do you get that kid to stop?
Paul: 01:57 Right? That kid needs to control his emotions better.
Stacey: 02:00 He needs to learn.
Paul: 02:01 He needs to learn.
Stacey: 02:02 He needs to stop triggering people in this household and causing big drama.
Paul: 02:06 Exactly. I got a feeling a lot of parents are already like, “I totally want to know the answer, and man, I can’t wait to fix that kid.” Well, the question alone speaks volumes. Volumes about what Stacey and I have been teaching you already. “How do I get my partner to X? How do I get my kid to X?” Right? Red flag for us right off the bat. Now don’t get me wrong, this parent had the best of intentions and understanding because, at the end of the day, she wanted harmony in her house just like every other parent does. It’s not that it’s a bad question. There are no bad questions, but what I want to first start off with is, most people think that’s a normal question to ask. In our group, we see it very differently. We’re like, “Oh, I already see where the challenge is here.” And because the parents that don’t have the clarity that our students have don’t see the problem, what do you think their chances are of being what the answer is, right? Or what the outcome is. You can’t hit a target. You can’t see, and that’s part of the problem here. So…
Stacey: 03:06 Start talking about what is the challenge inherently already in that question.
Paul: 03:10 Yeah.
Stacey: 03:10 It is…?
Paul: 03:11 It is demand relationship. Right? It’s wrapping a big demand relationship question. “How do I get my…?” And I know for those of you who have been, you know, listening to all these podcasts, or you know, binge consuming them…
Stacey: 03:24 You can hear it already.
Paul: 03:25 You can hear it already. Right?
Stacey: 03:25 And yet we all get stuck in this moment where we’re like, look kid, I don’t know what else to tell you, but you got us stop. Right? We still get stuck in the, but I’m telling you like, what am I supposed to do? Just let this go crazy in my house. I’ve gone to get him to change,
Paul: 03:41 right? And, and of course that’s playing the non power play a role of demand relationship. If they’re like, I don’t know what else to do, so maybe I just give up. No, no, there actually is a middle path. There’s a third path. But I just want to address one more thing before I go into it. Because anytime you start talking about parenting, it feels like the rules are different, right? It’s like, nope, they’re my kid. They will do x and that’s the way it’s supposed to be.
Stacey: 04:04 We’re the opposite. They’re my kid. Like I need to take care of them, I need to love them. I, I can’t be mean to them. I can’t squash their spirit. I can’t, I don’t want to do to them what was done to me. Like they either play the demand of power player role and demand relationship or the nod power play a role in demand relationship. And what happens is just demand parenting. And why the way you use your methodology for getting your kids to do what you want them to do is demand parenting.
Paul: 04:34 Yup. And again, this, it goes back to like they, they see it as a special case and I get it. You are their parent. No question. And you have a special job as their parent. No question wholeheartedly on board here. And yet in this question, just to point it out, it was an, I believe the child. Yeah, it was 11 years old. So the boy was 11 years old. And the question said, I’m wondering if there’s anything else I can do to try and help him control his emotions better. And yet the question was, this child is triggering the crap out of everybody else in the house. Like it’s triggering these adults to lose it. So this child is being held to a standard of controlling themselves and how do I help them control themselves when the parent is the one who’s not controlling themselves? So how is it that we can lead from an evolve standpoint if we’re the ones who are being triggered? The problem wasn’t that the child is creating that trigger for you as a parent. The problem is, as a parent, you haven’t mastered your emotions. So how can you possibly lead them to help better control theirs?
Stacey: 05:41 Anchor that in because it’s so huge. We do this all the time, whether it’s our kids or our partners, but in this episode we’re focusing on breaking the chains of demand parenting. And in this example, it’s so perfectly laid out because here we’re like, how do we help him control his better? Like how about your emotions, right? We’re 40 50 the kid is 11 why are we asking him to have more emotional maturity than we’re able to have? Why are we not mastering our state to the point that his reactions are not a trigger for me? I’m here to serve the kid. I’m here to be a leader. I’m good. I’m sitting in the seat of the Observer. I’m okay. I’m not triggered by him. I love him and I’m ready to help serve him and help him navigate life if he’s triggering. And again, I remember how beautifully and vividly you said like, okay, so this 11-year-old has really got some power in your household because clearly he knows how to trigger everyone in the family.
Stacey: 06:36 So he’s the most powerful player in the whole place. How about everybody else who might not be 11 get their state mastery on so that they are not triggered by their kid. If you were not being triggered by him, then you really are in a place of service where you can then serve him using the relationship development tools, which we’ll teach in a minute, but it’s about shifting it to what can you do to serve, not how can I get him to change because the 11-year-old really needs to stop triggering us. Nobody can trigger you. Let’s start there. I know we’ve done this before, but this is the breaking the chains of demand parenting. Your kids aren’t triggering you. You’re allowing yourself to be triggered by something you’re perceiving in your children. That is a fact. That’s not an opinion. That’s not a guess.
Stacey: 07:27 That’s a fact. So when you say like, Oh my God, my kid wakes up seven times a night and she’s so triggering me. No, you have a meaning that you’ve attached to it. You clearly have a trigger around multiple times that your kid gets up and you’re getting triggered. When you solve your trigger for yourself, then you can really serve the kid and solve the kid’s problem or whatever the kid is navigating. Our job as parents is to help our kids learn how to navigate life, not help them learn how to navigate us. Right? We’ve talked about this before, but we’ll talk about it again. Demand parenting is when you tell your kid when you could take out your chart, look at your chart. When you use things like guilt or blame or shame or leverage or whatever you’re going to use to get your kids to do what you need them to do and all of that.
Stacey: 08:25 Demand parenting has only one of two results. When you do demand parenting, one, you’re successful in your child, conforms to what you want, and now you’ve successfully raised a conformer who conforms to authority or two, they don’t conform. They won’t conform to you, but they learn how to con you to make you happy with them, and then the minute they’re out of your sight, they’re doing whatever they want. Either way, you’re not actually instilling any values that you wanted to instill in them. You’re not really helping them become who you really wanted them to be. You have the best of intentions for your kids. We have, we all have the best of intentions for our kids, but when we own, the only skills that we resort to is demand parenting. A, you’re not building up a relationship with your kid, you’re breaking it down and B, you’re not really teaching them or instilling the values or teaching them honor or teaching them how to tell the truth or how to care for someone else’s feelings or how to be responsible.
Stacey: 09:26 All of these great things we really want to instill in our kids when we demanded of them or when we reprimand them because they don’t do it that way and we make sure we use leverage to get them to do it our way. We’re not really instilling it in them so that they’ll do it that way when they’re out of our site. When you do demand parenting, what happens is, and we’ve talked about this before, but we’ll say it again. Nobody likes to be controlled and you know that cause you hate it when people try to control you. So just remember that your kids don’t like to be controlled either. And if all that’s been going on in your household has been demand parenting, the minute they become bigger than you, financially independent from you or no longer needs to live in your house, they’re the hell outta there.
Stacey: 10:13 They can’t wait to get away from you fast enough because demand only is temporary control because you have leverage over someone and as soon as you lose that leverage, they can’t get away fast enough because nobody wants to be controlled. They want their freedom and when they leave, you don’t have a relationship with them. They can’t wait to get away from you fast enough. And a lot of you can relate to this because this is how you were raised and you could not wait to get out of there either. And so when we do demand parenting, yes, the end result is not what we want with our kids. But even in the moment, the result that you’re getting is not what you wanted for your kids. Our job for our kids is to teach them how to navigate life, not teach them how to navigate us.
Stacey: 11:00 So we don’t need to train our 11 year old boy to not trigger us. Like, hey man, I can’t control my state, so stop triggering me like I’m 50 the kid is 11 we need to master ourselves. By the way, people don’t trigger you. They show you your own triggers. Write that down. Nobody’s triggering you. They’re just there to show you your triggers and no one else can solve your triggers for you. Getting this 11 year old kid to change, it’s not going to solve her trigger for her is her trigger and she’s got to solve it for herself. And there are ways to do that. We do that all day long, but the key is that it’s not about us trying to get them to stop triggering us. It’s when we have mastered ourselves. When we don’t have triggers around that, now we can be there to help teach our kids, to guide them on how to navigate life so that when they are not in your site, they have learned how to have integrity.
Stacey: 11:59 They have learned how to have honor. They’ve learned how to make decisions and how to have great choices so that when you’re not there, it’s really become part of them, not just something they were doing because or else in your household. I know I went off on a huge tangent there, but I just wanted to lay the groundwork for why breaking the chains of demand parenting is such a huge focus, um, for our relationship transformers and maybe for you and your home too and how we can use relationship development parenting, which is what Paul and I are going to give you a sample of now to actually get the results you really do want in your households and for your children without using demand parenting tactic.
Paul: 12:37 Yep. So the first thing I want to say is going back to what, I’m going to wrap this kind of all up with a little bowl, if I can with some real-life stuff and a little wrapper of its own to show you the gap of where most people are with this and how to bridge that gap pretty quickly. Meaning the first thing you need to recognize is, again, here an adult is asking an 11-year-old to have a higher standard for how they can show up in the moment than the adult. Right off the bat. You can see how obviously flawed that is, right? Again, with best intentions I get, and I’m not blaming this adult, you know, without the awareness, this is where everyone else in the world is right now. 100% amen. Knee jerk reaction, and she had the best of intentions.
Paul: 13:13 She just wanted peace in her household and she thought this is the way to do it because what do you do with a kid? Right? Well, I’m going to give you an example of what to do, but know this, you can’t have a lower standard than the person that you’re dealing with and expect to influence them from a position of leadership or any kind of influence over them, right? Again, your standard must be higher than the one that you’re trying to influence a change in or you don’t have a chance. And I’ll give you a real-life example of that. Imagine that you’re sitting there in front of your teenager smoking a joint and you’re like, look, drugs are bad for you and if you don’t quit it, I’m going to punish you. Oh, hang on for a second. Let me smoke some more of this. Are you hearing me kid? Like, like what kind of, what are you really accomplishing there? So their standard was not higher and yet the teenager who, by the way, teenagers hate that kind of,
Stacey: 14:03 they have a disdain for hip hop.
Paul: 14:04 They have a disdain for up ocracy like you’ve lost them for a minute. One, how can you possibly influence someone when your standard is either at our level or lower, right? It’s a failed approach from the get go. So that’s one rapper I want to put on this so you can start seeing it for what it is. I get it there. Your kids, I get it. They’re younger than you and your children, but the truth is they’re little people. They’re little people that when you start to deal with them from a place of personal responsibility, the true higher level of a standard that they will emulate naturally if you really want to influence them, have this standard that you want them to follow so they can say, I see it and I understand that standard and you know what I, I see that about that person and I respect that and they intrinsically want to whatever it is appropriate for them, whatever’s really true for them, they’ll naturally absorb that
Stacey: 14:56 in this example, just to tie it up, if you didn’t follow that metaphor, you know I love the pot example in that moment cause it’s so ridiculous. But the same thing happens here. You’re losing your shit with your kids and you’re telling them, hey, control yourself because this is crazy and ELL already, right? You’re losing your crap. It’s the same thing. I know we have to be able to laugh at ourselves. Parenting is like the hardest thing on the planet and nobody gives us a handbook, right? That’s why we’re building this relationship development parenting course and why we’re giving, creating all of these actionable tools like what Paul’s going to tell you in a minute about how to solve this because otherwise we default into demand parenting like that even faster sometimes than we do in our love relationship because we just don’t know what to do and the stakes are so high because we love them, we care about them, we’re worried we want to prepare them.
Paul: 15:56 Right? And that’s the key. We have the best of intentions, his parents, every one of us. And it really comes down to us running to the end of our skillset. And either not having a role model to give us some guidance on or just, you know, we just hit the end of our skillset for one reason or another and then we’re out. So we’re like, we just kind of throw something out there and, and demand that it be done because we don’t have any other resourcefulness within us. So let’s use a real life example, and I’ll use the one that actually happened with our daughter because you brought this up earlier about waking up during the night. Kid keeps waking up during the night and triggering me. Right? And, and I get, I think every parent has been there. Um, unless you’re magically lucky and you have a kid who from minute one have all sleeps. Yeah. Sleep there that night
Stacey: 16:38 one, raise your hand. Everyone gets one. Everyone gets a these one kid, right?
Paul: 16:46 So, and at the root of that is often fear. So, in this case, it was her daughter and she would wake up with fear during the night. So you can imagine that a few trips in to the bedroom, like, I’m scared I can’t go to sleep. I need you to come do x, Y, and Z. I want to turn my light on whatever that looks like for you with your child. Imagine this happening over and over and by like the third one and you’re getting woken up over and over, what happens? You snap, right? That’s your, the knee jerk reaction for most people is you start to lose it.
Stacey: 17:14 You’re not as compassionate, you’re not as patient.
Paul: 17:17 And you see all these logical reasons why it’s okay to snap at that child because they’re just having this awful behavior, right?
Stacey: 17:24 It’s selfish, it’s inconsiderate. You don’t realize, I gotta be up at five o’clock
Paul: 17:29 and it happens and I get it. And there’s another way, and again, it’s about us stepping up, having a higher standard for ourselves and we’re holding this young child too. And just say to them like, support them through this. And I’ll tell you what, support them through it, whatever it takes to that night. Because if you want to snap at them, can you imagine what to the fear level that was already there? It’s not going to get better. And I bet there’s a lot of parents out there that had evolved, already witnessed that dynamic. So they’re already scared to come into you for help, which is, which is our job as parents, right? And then you snap at them, which creates even more fear, more panic, and then they’re like, oh, now they’re going to lock down into their room at best. And their disconnect from you scares them more than the monster that was originally in the dream.
Paul: 18:15 Trust me. Right? So that’s one of the worst fears, right? So instead of actually helping them navigate that moment, we either cause some kind of a trauma for them. Perhaps. I hate to use that word trauma. So please forgive me for that. I don’t see it as a trauma, but I’ll just say that in a moment to make it clear, to make it worse. Right? But I bet there’s a ton of parents out there who have seen this and they’ve snapped. And then what happens? Did the kids stop coming in? No. It keeps going. It keeps going throughout the night. And then you, you think maybe I’ll ramp up my demand relationship all scream even louder. All create all kinds of punishments around this until I get them to stop because why? We’ve run to the end of our skillset. So let me offer you an alternative approach.
Paul: 18:53 So instead of snapping, you catch yourself the moment you want to snap and be like, Whoa, all right, that’s not the right answer. Okay? First thing is awareness. Stop Yourself. And the next thing is whatever your child is needing in that moment, get out of bed, you’ll get sleep. You know, sleep is overrated. Um, your child’s life and helping them navigate life to really solve this so it doesn’t keep repeating is more important than whatever sleep you get interrupted on in this particular night. So you go into the room with them and you help them through whatever it is that you need and you build that rapport and that connection with them where it’s like, Hey, I’d get it and I’d love to talk to you about this tomorrow. And I can help you with some ideas of what we can do to help empower you so that you don’t feel scared anymore.
Paul: 19:35 And you’re doing it from a place where the kid is not only listening to you because you’re not screaming at them. Do not like just trying to block you out and feeling fearful. You build rapport in the moment. You help them through it and when they wake up the morning, they’re going to be feeling like, thank you for helping me with that. And then with that good rapport, good rapport that you’ve developed, you can say, all right, great. So let’s make this a positive thing. You don’t say that to them, but let’s, let’s work on that. Let me give you some ideas of some things that you can do or maybe let’s plan together. Help me see what it is that you think you might need to make yourself feel safer or less scared, or how we can help you with your dreams. Like, let’s collaborate on this.
Paul: 20:11 Let’s, you know, make it fun for them. Kids love to have fun. Help them get on board. Besides by the way people support when they helped create, so make them part of the process instead of you just dictating what they should do, make them part of it and then work go on over the next couple of nights and basically show them the way, be the leader, show them the light of where they can go with this and give them the gift that will last the lifetime where they’re learning to navigate this in their sleep and you don’t have to keep trying to control an uncontrollable and not solve it for them. You’re doing your job as a parent in my opinion, in helping them learn how to navigate their own life so that when they are on a sleepover for example, do you have to yell at them? Do you want the other parents to yell at them to solve this?
Paul: 20:53 I don’t think so. I think you want to empower them, empower them for life and give them that gift and yes, you have to stop doing your knee jerk reaction. Yes, you have to have a higher standard for yourself and your children. You should and give them what it is that they deserve, which is your leadership and help them navigate life. And it’s a great example of the knee jerk reaction, which doesn’t solve anything, right? We hit the end of our skillset and we react or building that relationship. That is important all by itself with not seeing you as like the one they want to get away from. They’re just like man I love my parents and when I needed them they were there and they weren’t just there. And in a, as Stacey mentioned earlier in this way where it’s like overly compassionate over like oh I’ll do anything. It’s
Stacey: 21:34 about the knowledge. You don’t want to play the non-power player in demand relationship. Just be like, yes of course that I won’t sleep anymore. I’ll just stay with you or you come sleep in our bed because whatever you want is more important than what we need. Like I don’t know what to do and I’m not gonna yell at you so I’m just going to, let’s just stay up. I’ll stay up with you. Let’s watch TV. Like the whole non-power player thing, which is really common cause parents love their kids so much. They don’t want to demand parent. Like maybe some of us were demand parented and so they go the extreme other way where there are no rules and what the kid wants is what goes and there’s really no leadership in this way. The key to what Paul is sharing, the relationship development solution is we show up to serve our kids when they need us.
Stacey: 22:18 We stay above the 50% line in our state. We don’t let ourselves get triggered so that we can be centered and present for them. And the key is I really, really want you to get this outside the moment. The next day we work on building a solution, we solve it. We, if we don’t know the answer, we go to the mentor and get the answer. We work with them, whether it’s, you know, putting a lavender oil and water spray bottle in her room so she can spray the monsters or fueling her up with like 25 happy thoughts before she goes to bed or whatever it is that we need to do to get resourceful, to start helping our child navigate life differently. Thinking about it, I’m cultivating her relationship to source so that she knows that sources always around her and she’s never alone. She’s always protected, whatever it is that’s age-appropriate for your kid, there actually is a solution for what you want to instill in them.
Stacey: 23:18 You just need to be willing to outside the moment, go to the, if you don’t know what it is, go to the mentor or the s the solution that has solved that and bring it into your household. Help your child. Really solve it the next day because now what you’re doing is you’re doing, you’re building rapport and you’re moving things forward. You’re not just like, hey, you need to sleep and demand that they somehow something you can, or B, okay, then let’s just not all like whatever you want, honey. Like nobody’s going to solve this. I love you and nobody solves it. The relationship development approaches never. Nobody solves it. It’s let’s solve it. I’ll be the leader. And that’s different. We’re building rapport with our kids. We’re leading and we’re bringing solutions to our home. Yeah, that sums it up right there. So how about you give them the solution for the 11-year-old son? Because it was magnificent.
Paul: 24:16 Hi. So first of all, I want to point out something. She also said something which was really powerful, which she said, you know, he won’t stop. Why would he imagine that you’re like an 11 year old and you have the power to take down your whole house and burn it into flames. Y’all emotionally like
Stacey: 24:32 and get reactions that are reactions out of everybody who would give up that kind of power. So by reacting
Paul: 24:39 [inaudible] believe it or not, in that way, and losing it, you’re just supporting that whole dynamic
Stacey: 24:43 question in his mind. He’s like, Hey, the last time I did this, I got a new bike for shutting up. So what can I get this door?
Paul: 24:51 So in this case, you know what I said is, I said, look, first of all, recognize this kid is loving that whether he recognizes it consciously or not, he’s enjoying that kind of power and he’s using it quite often because he enjoys it. He’s not going to keep doing this. If somehow he didn’t enjoy it,
Stacey: 25:10 there’s no gain, right?
Paul: 25:10 There’s no gain. He’ll stop. So I said, the first thing you need to do is what we would teach anyway. First, you got to stop yourself and being triggered. The problem starts with you, right? It ends with you too, because the moment that you now stop reacting in that way, what happens? And I’ll be honest, there’s actually a little bump in the way things happen here, which is the first thing that’ll happen is when you stop reacting to something that somebody else had power over you with before and then like all of a sudden it falls flat. They’re like, Huh, I don’t like that. I don’t like that. Wait, let me turn up the heat on this. I’m not losing my power. Like, let me make it stronger. I guess they didn’t really get it from me this time. I’m going to amp it up. Right. Like demand relationship. Let me amp up mine demand relationship.
Stacey: 25:50 So you go from the kid who wouldn’t eat right and you kept reacting and reacting and reacting because little Johnny wouldn’t eat and then all of a sudden you’re like mastering your state. You’re not going to react. Little Johnny’s not eating and you’re like, okay, I see you’re not eating. If you don’t want to eat, you don’t have to eat. Eventually, you’ll be hungry, whatever, and you don’t react. And the little Johnny’s like white, no huge reaction. No begging me to eat. No lecture, fine. I’ll throw the food on the floor. And so don’t be surprised if someone who stuck in demand relationship with you turns up the heat a little bit to try to get a reaction out of you. It’s just part of the progression of changing a pattern. It won’t last. It’s just part of the progression.
Paul: 26:35 Yeah. So you have to expect that going into it and know that you don’t react because now they decided to up their game. It’s you who needs to master. So the more you start showing up where you’re like, look, fine. And Johnny’s such a great example as the one I use. I’m like, so you know, fine, you don’t have to eat, but that was your breakfast. So I guess you’re not going to eat then. And there’s a consequence, a real natural consequence of just kids throwing the stuff on the food like fine, well there’ll be lunchtime, maybe you’ll make a better decision at lunchtime, maybe not.
Stacey: 27:02 And you’re the tone from Paul. I know we’re going into yet another example. We’ll circle back to the 11-year-old, but here are the tone from Paul. The key is if you master your state, then you have an [inaudible] attached tone. Parents, please listen to me right now. Master the on attached tone because you haven’t really mastered your state. If you’re like, fine, you don’t want that, no breakfast for you, I guess there’ll be lunch. Hope you make a better choice, then that’s super attached. Okay, you’re just inviting more fight. You are not solving anything that’s total demand relationship because now you’re punishing your shaming. You’re trying to use leverage of, you’ll be sorry. It’s kind of, it’s a threat in implied communication and I get it. I get it. It’s totally natural. It just, the shit comes flying out of our mouth when we don’t even mean it.
Stacey: 27:53 But part of cultivating your skillset here is learning how to truly allow your kids to experience natural consequences of life. You know, we have a saying around here, we use all the time. Everyone lives in the results of the decisions that they make and there are no exceptions. I’m telling you that part of the solution of using relationship development, parenting is allowing life to provide the lessons for your children. And to stop being the police of your children. Because when life provides their lessons, they will experience the consequences and they will feel it and not want to make similar choices in the future or they will. But if you really are on attached and you let life be that child’s consequence, like I totally get it. You didn’t want to eat breakfast and you know lunch will be on its way at some point and I’m sure you’ll make a great choice. Then what do you want to do? Do you want to go do this? Did you want to go take a walk? What did you want to do? Because we’re free now for like the next half hour and you truly are unattached. Eventually, that child will get hungry and eventually they’ll make a decision to eat something because they’re hungry or they won’t. And they’ll totally freak out. And that’s fine too. There are no bad natural consequences. It’s just they’re learning the results of their actions, but they’re learning it from life instead of learning it from you
Paul: 29:21 and you’re not the enemy. So how can you keep fighting with someone who’s not your enemy, who’s just like, Hey, I’m sorry, man. That’s really a shame that you threw your breakfast down on the floor. I told totally, I totally get it. That’s unfortunate. Well maybe we’ll make a different decision at lunchtime. What do you want to go do? Just like Stacy said, let’s go do whatever. You’re not in opposition to them. There’s no fight coming. There’s no power over you. So there’s no win for this child who loves to get a reaction out of someone else. Cause it’s like I’m not getting a reaction and it’s kind of not working out because man, I’m hungry. So it’s a great example of how that dynamic works. Okay.
Stacey: 29:54 He is you mastering your state. So just like in this example with the woman with the 11-year-old son in the same food example that I just used, because we’ve been through this hundred of times with our students breaking the chains of demand parenting. And at times a student will be like, I can tell they have a trigger around their kids eating. And I’ll say to that parent like, okay, so I totally have a trigger about needing them to eat. So this whole natural consequence of they don’t eat at that meal is clearly you have a reaction to that. What’s that about? You have a trigger that your kids need to eat and they need to eat now or they need to eat at the table where they need to eat. When everybody’s sitting down, whatever your needs are, you have a need and you’re trying to demand that the kids do that.
Stacey: 30:42 What’s that about? And very often you’ll hear your blueprint coming out like, well they have to eat like their health is my responsibility or I need them to not eat so they don’t meltdown later. Or I put this food together like they have to eat this meal. Like we have all these they have to use. That’s our trigger. You just have to face your triggers and navigate them. Like sometimes like with this woman and her son, like when we asked her, okay, clearly you’re getting triggered by your son. What is their real fear behind that? What are you really afraid of? So you want to do that.
Paul: 31:18 Yeah. So you know when you start looking for what it is that’s really going on underneath that behavior, you’ll get to the bottom of it. You’ll start to see it differently. Now, in this case, it was one more, my instructions were stopped letting that trigger you. So this child realizes there is no win in, you know the power that he has over you. And you’ll find that if you loses that power, there’s no win. He’ll naturally stop trying to show up to trigger you in this way. He’ll look for other things and there’ll be things that any kid will do that you may not agree with. That’s because they’re a different person than you
Stacey: 31:54 and her. And so when we asked her, okay, so what is your trigger around this? Why are you reacting? And if, if you don’t react, what’s coming up for you? Like, why are you, what’s your, what’s your fear around this? And the next thing she said was, well, what happens is one of our kids is really gentle. And every time our 11-year-old starts triggering me or dad or someone else in the household, the other one who’s really gentle shows up and starts trying to convince the 11-year-old, hey, calm down, don’t trigger people. Cause then Dad’s going to get upset or mom’s going to get upset. Like don’t get us in trouble. And then the two of them go at it and she’s like, so I step in and I tell the 11-year-old, you gotta stop it right? Cause I don’t want my gentle child to like really start fighting with their sibling and what she was really upset about.
Stacey: 32:41 And so we said to her, okay great. So let’s solve that. Your role is not to protect your gentle child from getting triggered by the 11-year-old son. Your role is to teach your gentle child how to navigate life when some people around her lose their shit because there are going to be people who are going to lose their shit around her and she’s gentle. And it’s your responsibility to teach her how to navigate life when people lose their shit and not try to convince them to stop because she doesn’t like disharmony, right? And it turns out this mom is also gentle and she doesn’t like it when there’s a lack of harmony. So she’s getting triggered and clearly not leading her daughter who also is gentle and gets triggered when there’s a lack of harmony. And I said, so you’re all trying to get the 11-year-olds sourced to stop.
Stacey: 33:31 You are 50 and have not learned how to navigate life when someone disrupts the harmony and you have a daughter here. Now she’s your inspiration. She’s your opportunity. Learn how to navigate life when someone loses their shit and disrupts harmony and teach your daughter how to do the same because you can’t control all the people in the world. And this is a life skill that you need. And clearly you, God sent you another one so that you would learn it for her. Teach her how to navigate life. Teach her how to find your own internal peace. Even when her brother freaks out. Teach her how to not try to get other people to change, to get to an internal peace teacher, how to get to that for herself and do that by doing it for yourself first so you can lead. See Our job as relationship development parents is to teach our children how to navigate life, not demonstrate for them the way to try to get life to change. For us, that is our job. That is our role. And until you’ve mastered yourself in these tools, you really can’t lead.
Paul: 34:32 And you know, look at the outcome too. For this child who was sensitive again is the gift that that child gets to keep for a lifetime. But most importantly you don’t need to be there for the rest of their lives. Continuing to block him, protect them from people who are having that kind of behavior. Yeah, we all have to learn these skills. You know, there was sort of the upbringing that used to be, or at least when I was younger, it looked more like a case where we were closer to like pets or it’s like the pets were let go for the day and he’d come back for a meal or two and then he’d go back out and there was no real leadership there and we were learning through consequences, but also a lot of things were learned the hard way that wasn’t necessarily needed.
Stacey: 35:14 We want more for our kids today. We really want to be their leaders. We love them, we care about them, we see them, we validate them and nobody ever modeled for us these skills and tools because like Paul said, you know, I don’t know about you, but for when we were kids and our age, you know, kids were not really seen or heard. We just needed to do what we needed to do and we want better for our kids. And part of that is learning the skillset to do that so that you can show up from relationship development, parenting, teach your kids how to actually navigate life model. The skills for them so that eventually after enough repetition they’ll start modeling them back, which is amazing when you see it and really cultivate rapport and a relationship with your kids so that eventually you have that relationship.
Stacey: 36:02 You know when we first became parents, I didn’t know Jack about parenting. I was not really thinking I was going to be a great parent either. I had to learn everything I do and yet like now our kids are 15 and 11 and I’m blown away when they come to us and say like, oh my gosh, your, you know, you being here for me is the most important thing. I’m so grateful I have you like when when one of our kids has to process the things that are going on in their day at school and they come to us like the gratitude that they have that we can actually teach them how to navigate that stuff is really, this is what the juices, this is what life’s all about. You know, it’s one thing when you have no skills and your, you’ve defaulted demand parenting and your kids have a horrible day at school with kids who are mean to them or bully them or pick on them and they come home and you’re like, those damn kids at school need to shut up and not tell you that.
Stacey: 37:03 Don’t listen to them. They’re jerks. And that’s not really teaching your kids how to navigate anything. When we default into the demand relationship of blaming the other person telling them to change and we teach that to our kids. We’re not teaching them how to navigate the kids at school. We’re not teaching them how to navigate the teacher who’s really brutal where the coach or grandma or anybody, it’s our job to teach our kids these skills so they can navigate life. I’ll tell you, I would not trade places with my kids for $1 million. Being a kid at school is so tough. Other kids are tough. Teachers are tough and I’m so, so, so grateful. Every single day that we teach our kids and model for them, the skill sets that really work for them to be able to learn how to build rapport, to be able to navigate any situation or any argument or any fight or anything that’s going on from a relationship development approach because they really are having a different quality of life.
Stacey: 38:07 So not only do we want a great relationship with our kids, but we want to teach our kids and model for them how to have amazing relationships in their lives too. Because life as a kid is really hard and there are big things that happened today for kids. It’s even harder for them than it probably was for us when we were younger. And so this becomes like mission-critical to really not only cultivate this and have a harmonious relationship with our kids in our household, teach our children how to literally have integrity, not just do what we tell them to do, which we’re calling integrity, but literally cultivate it within them. And all of the other values that we have that we want to make sure that we help lead them with. But truly also model and teach them the skills to be able to navigate life themselves too because men, is it hard to be a kid and this is, you know, I mean this really gets to the core of what Paul and I do.
Stacey: 39:01 Our mission, our whole mission here is to help the children do this for them, teach you so that you’ll model it for them so it makes their life better. Teach them how to show up from relationship development so they won’t need us when they’re 40 all of it, and I know it’s mission-critical for you too because being a parent is just the most important job in the world and nobody ever really equipped us, which is why we’re doing this. The next episode we’re going to do another demand parenting example and give you the relationship development, parenting solutions and because these are so big and we’ve got hundreds of questions literally that we’ve already answered and solved, which is why we’re building the relationship development parenting program and all of the things that we’re doing to really serve you and your family to navigate real life stuff.
Paul: 39:44 Yeah, I think we’re all set in and at the end of the day, what we really want for our kids is for them to become the people that are capable of navigating their world. And there is a way of doing it and you know, it’s not just I’m going to toughen them up so much that they’re ready for the world. Trust me, the world’s going to do that for you. You don’t need to be the one to do that. And what’s more is actually needed you to be the one to lead the way.
Stacey: 40:06 Amen. All right. Palsa what action steps can they start taking right now to start integrating this into their lives?
Paul: 40:13 All right, so first one, notice, right? We’ve got to start with this awareness. Notice where you are already using demand parenting. So where are you insisting that they change to make you happy? And all this stuff that we talked about on this podcast and others, right? Demand relationship. So number two, ask, is this for you? Whatever it is you’re trying to do, or is it for them? Whatever that moment is, was it for you and your needs? What was it for your child?
Stacey: 40:42 This is such a key quality question because demand parenting is always what we want. It’s for us relationship development. Parenting is for them. So really ask yourself when you’re in the heat of something, what I’m asking for is that for me to feel more comfortable or is this really for them? And number three,
Paul: 41:02 number three is act right. If we don’t show up differently, our world doesn’t change. So if it is for you, do the work to solve your own trigger. For example, in this case, and if it’s for them, get the relationship development, parenting solution to actually lead your child so that they can get what you want them to get from it, but it’s authentically theirs.
Stacey: 41:22 Yes. Amen. Amen. All right. If you loved this podcast, take a screenshot of your phone, share it, spread the word for more families to get these solutions on the relationship transformer podcast. Until next time, remember together we are changing the way relationship is done.
Outro: 41:41 Hey, would you like to get big results in your relationships in just 10 seconds a day? If so, then subscribe to our daily inspiration for relationship transformers or The Dirt at www.MartinoPodcast.com/Dirt.