10 Ways To Help Kids with Big Emotions Part 2 (Why Punching Pillows Doesn’t Work)
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So on the last episode of the podcast, we talked about five ideas for calming kids with big emotions. I want you to expect and plan for meltdowns. Have a code word. Use that positive intensity. Give your kids space to process their disappointment. Remember, no eye contact.

and control yourself and lead kids to calm. We use the example of coloring with a toddler and even a teen. But sometimes you need more physical tools when kids get more intense or even aggressive. So in this episode of the Calm Parenting Podcast,

I'm going to give you five more tools to help kids with big emotions. So welcome, this is Kirk Martin, founder of Celebrate Calm. You can find us in our Black Friday sale at celebratecalm.com. Look, raising kids with big emotions and all kinds of other challenges like anxiety, OCD traits, and more can be really hard.

So I have enormous respect for you as moms and dads, and even as grandparents, raising your kids and grandkids, working through your own trauma and childhood issues like this mom, because I want to give her a shout out. She said, I decided to get your programs because I wanted to help

learn how to handle my 14 year old son who has high functioning ASD and anxiety. But the programs also help me better understand my strong willed daughter. We just had an episode where she touched the hot stove and now we're having open communication and honest conversations and

instead of any of my ego, trauma, and hurt speaking. It's a really good insight. I'm fully present and enjoying being the best parent I can be while giving myself some grace. I think that's a big part of this. So kudos to you. I think that's absolutely beautiful and wonderful.

Even though it can be a messy process. So proud of you moms and dads. Okay, number six to ten ideas. Observe your kids for clues. This is one of my favorite tools to use as a parent because your kids will tell you everything they need by

by what they do. And so you simply begin observing them and what they do naturally. Quick one was, we had all these kids who came into our home and I noticed there are a certain number of kids, they liked fixing things. It gave them, it was something tactile and tangible. So when they would get upset,

I would ask them, I give them a challenge. Hey, you know what? I just remembered there's a broom in the basement and it's broken. Could you find some duct tape and fix that for me? And then they had a mission. They had a challenge. So instead of like, you need to calm down, stop being upset or talking to them endlessly, I gave them something that they felt in control of that they were actually good at doing. Because look,

I'm not really good at calming down. I don't have a lot of impulse control. I get really upset really quickly, but I'm really good at building things. That's a quick one. Now, I noticed also a lot of the kids that came into our home, they would take the cushions off our sofa and then they would lie down on the hard part of the sofa. And at first I thought, you guys are weird.

But then I started to think, okay, how can I use that insight? Because what they were looking for was some sensory pressure. And I've shared this before in other places that I would begin to do homework because they like confined spaces, doing homework underneath a table in a closet. I'd have kids sleep in a sleeping bag in a closet and it really helped.

But what I came up with was a code word and a plan. So when these kids would get upset, we had it prearranged. I would just say, "Hey guys, sofa." And their mission was not to calm down. Their mission was to go in my living room, throw the cushions off the sofa because I knew they weren't gonna place them nicely on the floor. I'm a realist.

So they would throw them on the floor. They would then lie down on the hard part of the sofa. I would come in, I would put the cushions on top of them, and then I would sit on top of the cushions with appropriate pressure, of course. And here's what happened. It was instantly calming. Why? Number one, it was weird and weird stuff works for your kids. Number two,

that sensory pressure is so calming for their bodies. Number three, no eye contact. I wasn't looking at them. And we had amazing conversations during those times. And we would walk through and problem solve how to handle the situation differently. And so I want you to think about what calms you. See, many of you, when you're upset, you'll start cleaning and organizing. Why?

It gives you a sense of control and external order, which helps you with internal order. It gives you something to do, an action step. You're being proactive, like making your bed. It's partially why maybe you change your earrings or your clothes, because that can shift your mood and your energy and how you feel about yourself. So when you clean your kitchen sink at night before you go to bed, what you're kind of saying inside is,

The rest of my world is out of control. I can't control my kids or my spouse, but my sink is spotless. So what is that kitchen sink activity for your child? Just observe them. Do you like this dance or spin, create things, climb trees, sing,

play an instrument, fish, organize and count things. That's a lot of our kids on the spectrum like to organize and count things because why? Order and structure. So use that to your advantage when you're helping them calm down. Number seven, I titled this this, punching pillows and breathing often don't work for our kids.

And using lots of words and just talking about your emotions tends to provoke kids to anger even more. Because if your kids were more mature, they could probably say, "Look, I don't need to talk about my emotions. I need an adult here to show me what to do with my emotions."

And we use movement a lot. You've heard us say motion changes emotion. Movement is a tool we use to help a child begin to self-regulate. Instead of telling them what not to do, stop yelling, stop hitting, you give your child something they can do and you make it a mission or sometimes even a challenge.

The punching pillows thing, I get it. If it works for your child, by all means do it. But for most of our intense kids and me, punching pillows is not satisfying. Look, you've got intense kids and

And they've got this frustration, this shame, embarrassment, disappointment. It is coursing through their veins and bodies. It's actually a physical thing for them. And so just punching a pillow can feel deeply unsatisfying. Look, how many of you have kids who immediately lash out and want to hit or throw things? See, throwing something, frustrating.

feels really satisfying. I've done that my life. I still, I know I'm the calm guy, but I still get that urge. It's like I want to throw something, the motion, the impact, the noise.

all express very well, I'm really PO'd right now. So I understand the importance of breath work and breathing exercises. Those can be extremely helpful. But that also implies that in this moment, your child has some level of self-awareness and self-control

plus a desire to be calm. And don't miss that. Sometimes when upset, I want to get the frustration out. I don't want to be immediately calm. So we need to do something more sensory and physical. Some of your kids are more tactile and aggressive, as we mentioned. So proactively, I would spend a lot of extra time, even money, meeting those needs for sensory pressure.

Have, build a little obstacle course. It doesn't take any money, just old stuff. In your basement or backyard with tire swings, things they have to push or pull, climb under or over. I'd sign your kids up for things like martial arts, rock climbing, swimming, get a lot of physical sensory exercise. And by the way, that will also help them during homework time and with processing of information.

Now, if you follow us on Instagram or TikTok, you're going to notice most of our videos are taken atop mountains. Why? Well, it's beautiful, but it's also sensory work because we're climbing 2,000, 3,000, 5,000 feet. That takes effort and energy. There's a lot of sensory pressure with climbing up rocks. You're on uneven surfaces.

on loose footing. And so that's very settling for us. And even Casey, he's a grown man now. He'll routinely say like, dad, I need to burn off some energy so I'm not a jerk. And he'll go climb a mountain in the winter through snow going uphill on his skis. Why? It works off some of that angst. So I just got an email from a dad who said, look, I listened to your programs and this one weird idea has worked really well.

We made little trays of ice cubes that we take and when I have a bad day, I'll throw them against our brick wall and it feels satisfying to throw something, see the ice splatter and not hurting anything and I'm not even hurting anyone or anything not hurting our house. And so my son will now say, "Dad, can we throw some ice?" And we go do it together.

And I know the neighbors must think we're weird, but I don't care because it's been a great tool for us. So I was talking to this mom once. We were texting back and forth. And she said, my daughter is like, she's starting to get aggressive and destructive. What do I do? And I said, well, do you have a basement? She said, yeah. And I said, is there like a sofa down there? And she said, yeah. An old one. I said, oh, here's what I want you to do.

You kind of walk out of the room because we don't give a lot of eye contact and a lot of that negative intensity to our kids and just say, "Oh, you know what? I just remembered, I need to email your grandma about something. Listen, I don't know if you can do this, but I was going to clean downstairs in the basement. Do you think you could move the sofa from one side of the room to the other? Because that'd really help me out." And then a mom walked out of the room, gave no eye contact, not a lot of attention to her daughter right then. She said she heard her daughter run downstairs

here's things being moved, mom gives it a couple minutes, goes downstairs, and what does she end up seeing? She sees her daughter had moved the sofa from one end of the room to the other and she was standing there beaming and asked, "Is this what you wanted?" And see, there's something in here that we don't realize. When your kids are really upset and feel out of control,

They're beating themselves up. That's why I don't like the eye contact because they're like, "I'm stupid. Why can't I control myself? Nobody else in our home gets this upset. It's just me."

And instead now, her daughter was beaming because she had just done something she was good at doing. Because when we ask our kids like, "Why did you do that?" They're like, "I don't know. I don't know why I do these things, but I know it's bad and it's wrong and I'm the bad kid in the family." But now by giving her daughter something very physical and sensory to do that she would be good at doing, we just created a success.

And now, see that's partly from observing your kids and knowing that they're doing that. I have a lot of kids who like doing outdoor work, shoveling mulch.

And look, if you have kids who are being really aggressive, I encourage you, go through the Discipline That Works program. I just completely updated that thing. It's a four and a half hours alone. For those of you who already have our programs, it's already downloaded onto your app last month, so give that a listen. Or if you get the Black Friday sale, listen to that one, it's fantastic.

It's about an hour long on dealing with kids who are hitting you, hitting siblings. But I can't cover that in a podcast because there's a lot that goes into that underneath the surface. Okay, let's get on to number eight. I like this one a lot.

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I want you to simply affirm your kids when they make progress. I'm gonna keep this one short. Just notice when your kids make progress, calming down. Even saying, "Hey, that was a nice job earlier. You got really frustrated and you started down that angry path, but then you caught yourself and you calmed down." And it just shows me you're growing up. And then whenever I praise Strong Willed Kids, I always move on to something else. I don't draw a lot of attention to it. I walk out of the room. It's planting a lot of seeds.

But I'll just repeat this. Affirm your kids when they do a good job. Not, "I don't wait for perfection. It's never coming with human beings." I praise for progress so they know, "Okay, that was good. I did a better job." Some of your kids realistically, if they normally have 45-minute meltdowns and they stop after 30 minutes because they decide to give you a code word or do something physical,

That's progress and I'm noticing that. Okay, number nine. I love this one. It is a very, very powerful tool.

I want you to begin using the phrase, hey, when you're ready. Now, I want to give you a couple examples. Because here, look, you can't use it this way. Hey, son, when you're ready, get your shoes on. We need to go to an appointment. You're never going to that appointment. I don't use it then. I use it in an emotional situation.

when your kids are kind of melting down. I'll give you a couple examples because look, if you come into a room and say, you need to calm down right now, young man, it'll just escalate and the child will resist you. If you demand that a strong-willed child apologize right now, they will scream no and you'll end up with a big fight. So Casey would be upset and I'd begin using this phrase. Hey,

"Hey, I'm gonna go outside and I'll be holding a football because I like non-verbals when kids are upset." Not a lot of words. "Hey, when you're ready, come out, we'll play catch and I'll help you with whatever you're struggling with." Or I would come in and say, "Hey, I'm gonna go dump the Legos out on the floor when you're ready. Come on in and we'll finish up that spaceship we began earlier."

I love the phrase, and I'll tell you why in a minute. I had a dad whose child liked to draw, and he would come into the room with a couple sketch pads, again, a visual, and say, hey, I'm going to be in the basement drawing. When you're ready, bring some snacks down, and we'll draw together.

See, I wasn't trying to calm the child down. The child didn't become a project, someone who had to be calmed. I was inviting in, but here's the beauty of those words. When you demand something of a strong willed child, they will almost always automatically resist. When you say, hey, when you're ready, it gives your kids something they feel in control of

in that very moment. It's huge because these kids value their independence and agency and ownership. And this is especially important when they're upset because when you're upset, everything feels like it's out of control. And so when you say, hey, when you're ready, it's almost like it releases them to do what's right, but in their timing.

And I like all these examples because we're inviting the child to be with us instead of sending them to their room, but we're giving them some agency. This, we try that when you're ready thing. It is very, very powerful. You'd even use it with your spouse because then you're not demanding. Number 10.

Stop the shame cycle that makes kids feel helpless. And I believe the absolute most powerful tool to help kids with big emotions is to model how to do this yourself. I almost destroyed my relationship with Casey when he was young. He was so emotional, so reactive, and it just irritated me.

And I think it bothered me so much because it required something of me emotionally. Skills I didn't yet have even as a grown man. Patience, understanding, empathy, communication. And look, he was a very difficult kid. He's a neurodivergent kid. I'm a neurodivergent adult. So we're both like impulsive and emotional and all these things. And so we would just trigger each other a lot.

and he would react to some disappointment or change in plans or even something seemingly trivial like we've talked about, then he would look up to me, his dad. And I realized later he was looking up at me to his dad, you know, the one who was supposed to be the adult.

looking up at me with pleading eyes as if to say, can you please help me here? I don't know why this makes me cry or scream or shut down or become defiant. And I don't like when you're angry at me, but you never really help me and I need help. See, he was looking to me for help, but

But I was too busy kind of shaking my head in disappointment or looking visibly irritated. Because the truth is that in ways I was looking down at him, hoping he'd just stop it, quit, cut it out, figure this out, and stop making these situations so uncomfortable. See, I kind of needed him to stop and behave,

so that I could behave. And so here's this little kid and could be a teenager or even now, right? He's a 31 year old, still figuring out how life works, looking to his mom or dad for help, feeling helpless.

And we just respond with a sigh, a groan, a shaking head, a disapproving look. And that crushes our kids. It absolutely destroys something inside of them. And I realized along the way that he was internalizing my disappointment in him. He was feeling like more of a failure. And it made him feel embarrassed and humiliated.

And think about this, at the very moment he felt helpless to calm down or deal with frustration or disappointment, I showed my disappointment in him.

And that was brutal. And I remember I could see it on his face. And this is when situations escalate even more because here's what Casey has now been able to verbalize about those times during some of our, when we do some longer hikes now, we're kind of reconstructing some of the childhood stuff that was going on. And I think you'll find this kind of helpful and sobering.

He said, "Dad, I already felt helpless and out of control. I didn't know what to do. I was looking to you to show me how to handle this because you were my dad and in some ways my hero."

And I saw how successful you had been in business, at sports, at stuff I wasn't good at. And I looked up to you and I thought you'd be able to help me. But you just looked at me with what felt to be like disdain. Like you didn't even like me. This is even hard to read right now. Just

Just give me a second. Like you didn't like me. Like I wasn't even your son. And I felt that like in my bones that it was too much to bear. And I already felt like a failure, but now my dad is mad at me and I'm going to get even more trouble and feel like even more of a failure.

And listen to this insight from Casey. That's when I would explode because I thought if I'm going down, you are too. I'm not going to be the only one out of control in this home. It's bad enough to be the bad kid with two parents looking at you, but at least now I wouldn't be alone in my shame.

Now that's some deep insight into what's happening inside your kids. And I remember once seeing that shame register on his face and thinking, I can't do to my son what my dad did to me and to my brothers. And that's really what inspired us to do what we do today. And that set me on the hardest challenge of my life, to learn how to stop reacting, to control my own emotions, and to model how to handle things

disappointment and frustration in life. And so I encourage you, model this for your kids every day. I think lectures are a large waste of time. It's a sign of parental anxiety. I don't think you heard me the first 350 times I told you this, so maybe you'll listen this time. Look, our kids watch everything we do, and then they emulate us.

Where did we learn to react like this? From our own parents. So begin to choose to model how to react calmly to your own anxiety. And if you want to have a calm, respectful child, I will then act in a calm, respectful way whenever I get upset at another driver, another parent, a teacher, a salesperson, a hotel clerk,

Practice this so you begin to retrain each of your reactions because all learning is repetition and we already have enough practice screaming and stomping through the house and lecturing.

The truth is, moms and dads, you and I, we are our kids' greatest lecture. And your kids will do what they see you doing. And that's when I began by sitting down, asking questions instead of lecturing, learning how to reset myself. It's when I began coming home frustrated, but instead of slamming the front door or barking at Casey, I'd say,

"Man, I had a really rough day at work. Traffic was backed up. I'm frustrated. Would you do 10 push-ups with me?" And what I was modeling with this to my son, my dad gets upset and he gets frustrated, but instead of yelling, he does his push-ups. And so we began finding ways to bond over physical activities. Look, he's 30 now. We still bond over physical activities now.

And that's when our relationship began to heal. When I stopped reacting and shaming and began teaching and showing them how to handle life. That's what we're after anyway, right? It's not about getting our kids to behave. It's about giving them life skills to handle the inevitable disappointment challenges, changes and frustration in life.

Because if we don't learn how to calm down, watch how insidious these episodes usually unfold. At the exact moment when our kids are crying out for help, we push them away from us in anger instead of using this as a teachable moment. And we model the exact behavior we want to discourage. We deal with our own anxiety by yelling at them. So,

We're going to reverse course on this, okay? Does this take time? Yeah, but so does freaking out and creating more drama.

This is what parenting is all about, turning the nastiest moments into teaching opportunities. I think the reason that Casey and I are so close to this day is because we fought each other so hard, and we both wrestled with this together throughout his childhood. He was actually watching me finally change as an adult right in front of him.

And so that's why we have to slow our life down. Otherwise, we mask all of our issues and we just threaten kids to get them to obey outwardly. And I don't want to do that. I want to deal with their ick and the stuff going on within them.

so they know they can trust me with their toughest issues as teenagers. Because if you can teach your child how to control his or her emotions when disappointed and frustrated, your child will be ahead of 99% of adults. It's more important than anything they will ever learn in school. So,

We have our marching orders, moms and dads. We've got a game plan here. Begin working on this. Go through it. Pick one of these strategies. Begin working on that way. Get at progress. Look, praise yourself for progress. When you do a good job, say, you know what? That was a good job because usually I react and I blow things up into a 15-minute...

drama, but instead I started down that path, but I caught myself. You're retraining yourself. If we can help you take advantage of that Black Friday sale, because that's what our programs do. We go through the step-by-step with all the situations. If you need help financially, reach out to Casey. He'll help you. We want you to have these tools. So

Thank you for listening to the podcast. Thank you for sharing the podcast. And thank you for doing the hard work. I respect you so much for this. So if we can help you, let us know, okay? Love you all. Bye-bye.