From Authoritarian to Connected Parenting (Without Being Too Sweet)
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It is really hard to raise a strong-willed child. These are kids who want to do things their own way. If you push them, they will resist. They'll do the opposite of what you want them to do. They don't care about consequences. And so you're gonna get frustrated. If you're married, you're gonna fight over this because one of you, usually the husband, but not always, some of the moms out there, you're like this, right? You're gonna go my way or the highway. I'm gonna show this kid who's boss. And good luck with that because they're fight-or-flight kids.

They may fight you for a while, create more division in your marriage, and then eventually they'll just shut down and not do anything. And you're going to be like, well, we'll just do consequences. You're like, they don't care about it. And so one of the other parents, you may have swung too far the other way and you're too sweet and now your child doesn't listen to you. They actually don't respect you sometimes. And...

It just doesn't work. And you find yourself kind of getting run over. So how do you strike that balance? We don't want to be authoritarian, but we don't want to be too soft. So that is what we're going to discuss on this really important episode of the Calm Parenting Podcast. Welcome. This is Kirk Martin, founder of Celebrate Calm. You can find us at Celebrate Calm. If you need any help, reach out to our strong-willed son, Casey, C-A-S-E-Y, at CelebrateCalm.com.

Tell us about your family, ages of the kids. What are you struggling with most? We get together as a family. We discuss it. We reply back to you personally and usually very quickly with some very practical tools because that's what we do. And this is a really hard mission. So,

Many of us were raised in authoritarian homes. My dad was career military, kind of that my way or the highway colonel who only knew how to do relationships based on rank. His four boys were his enlisted soldiers who he commanded and scared through fear and intimidation. Some of you were spanked

abused, beaten down verbally and emotionally. You learn to be good, to keep from getting yelled at or hit, and to earn your parents' approval, right? Or to keep from getting yelled at all the time. Now look, there were some good aspects of how we were raised back in the day.

Now, some of it was society was different too because we had lots of freedom to be outside. We didn't come home until the streetlights were on. We had time and space to fail and make mistakes. We were very independent. We also learned how to figure some things out by ourselves. Now, some of us were abandoned, so that was too far, but a lot of times, some of that was very good of giving us space to figure things out, and we did.

But I don't want to conflate or confuse that with the damage that was also done. Quite simply, I learned to listen to my father because I flat out feared him. I feared the look in his eyes, his disapproval, his loud, intimidating voice, the sneer on his face, his physical intimidation.

I behaved well for him, but I didn't ultimately respect my dad. And my dad went to his grave, never really learning how to connect with his four sons and never really earning our respect, just our fear. So look, when I became a dad, I gravitated to what I had seen modeled for me. I yelled at Casey. I stood over him. I shamed him. I tried to change him.

until I finally realized I was the one who needed to change 'cause I couldn't even control my own emotions even while I was telling him, "You need to calm down." I was yelling that at him.

And I finally learned the only person in life I could ever really control is myself. I hope you will work on that because it will change your entire life. And I learned that by changing myself, I could change my interactions with my son, how he responded to me. And that's when I made the transition from authoritarian bullying to an authoritative leader.

And I want to start to define that in this episode and give you some tools of how you can do that. Now, some of you are a lot wiser than me and you said, hey, no way am I visiting that pain on my kids. And you ran from anything resembling the authoritarian approach of

Others have had the same instincts, but you may have swung too far in the other direction, and you're sometimes too sweet, too soft, and you find yourself getting walked on. So first step today is let's define exactly what we want and what we mean. So let's define a good authority figure because I don't want to throw out things like, oh, authority figures are all bad. Now, I have a natural bias. I'm strong-willed. I don't like authority figures. But

I want to define there are good authority figures in our lives. So here's how I define it. A good authority figure is curious, asks questions, listens well, provides wisdom and perspective to lead kids, to lead others, employees, to healthy solutions. A good authority figure treats other people with respect. A good authority figure doesn't take things personally.

They welcome questions. They're easily approached. They respond with patience. A good authority figure provides clear, consistent boundaries. Good authority figure can control his or her emotions and words instead of trying to control other people. Notice that nothing in these qualities leads authority figures to abuse their power. Neither does it lead them to get walked on.

Also notice a lot of us have a very skewed view of authority figures based on how we learned about God. And I'm addressing that in a totally separate kind of little venture. It's at the alternativechristian.com. There's a podcast where I'm kind of addressing that because it really bleeds into your parenting. If your parent or a church leader was abusive, abusive,

very authoritarian, well, that's going to affect your life. And I want to kind of deconstruct and unwind that and then reconstruct this in a very healthy way.

So one of your most difficult challenges in making this transition healthy is unraveling and deconstructing what you may have learned as a child because that becomes deeply ingrained inside of you, right? Like how many of us were raised like, well, if you don't use the rod, if you don't spank or correct that child, he's going to grow up and be defiant and you're weak, right?

If you let him get away with things, and you're going to wrestle with that because that's deep inside of you. If you don't let him get away with things, he's going to be rebellious and you're going to reap the whirlwind. And some of you are going to have to struggle with this because your parents disapprove of how you're parenting now and you're getting judged by your family. And that's always going to happen with a strong-willed child because they just don't understand how hard. Look, we already know what was harmful and destructive about that. Using fear and intimidation to get good behavior is...

You're just getting good outward behavior, but you're not building connection. You're not building a relationship. You're not building trust. And you're ultimately not teaching the child anything except don't do this or you get the belt or you get in trouble and consequences. We're not really teaching them how to be successful. The harsh words, the harsh physical punishment, it just doesn't work in the end. Look, there's a difference here too.

With a more compliant child, you don't even have to really do anything. You just look at them and then they want to please you. And so everything kind of works. But we're talking about a strong-willed child whose spirit can be crushed. And these are sensitive kids who are also very tough kids. So you're going to have to take a different approach. And one of the worst parts of that old authoritarian model was...

That it broke down any communication. It taught kids you're not allowed to speak up. You're not allowed to question anything.

And so it created an entire generation of kids who bottled things up and who never learned how to speak up. You know what it also did? It created a generation of kids who got abused by the church in many ways because, well, we were afraid to speak up against an authority figure because, oh, we're going to get sent to hell for that. Or it raised a generation of girls who grew up who didn't know how to speak up, and so they married controlling men.

Look, I guarantee you at least 40% of you listening to this made that mistake and you didn't learn to speak up. You don't know how to and you're caught in this whole, in this vicious cycle and it's literally, it can ruin people's lives in the long run. Now here's what was helpful and constructive and we mentioned some of this. We had space to fail. We had space to be mischievous as kids and figure things out.

Look, our parents weren't overly involved with grades and overly involved trying to fix our spots with our friends. We figured that out ourselves. And so we didn't have all the pressure. Sometimes us being very connected with our kids equates to our anxiety about their future dumping all over our kids. And they're under so much pressure from a young age about getting good grades so you can get to the right school and the right college. That's not good.

Our parents did not walk around obsessed with our happiness. Just think about this. I had three brothers. We went out in the summer and even after school. You went outside and you were gone.

They didn't even really ask like where you were going because it was safe back then in many of our neighborhoods. So we got on our bikes and we rode. We came back. At the end of the day, I don't remember my mom who was the sweetest, most compassionate, awesome mom the world has ever known.

I don't ever remember her saying, oh, guys, honey, what did you do today? Did you have fun? It wasn't that she wasn't interested. It was this. She respected us enough to know that with that kind of freedom that we had, we would figure things out and we would create our own fun. So it took the pressure off of our parents because they didn't have to

to create fun for us because we were allowed to create it ourselves. Now, look, some of that is different because your kids can't just get on bikes and ride wherever they want. Most of your kids can't do that. I wish they could, but they weren't obsessed with our happiness. I'm going to do a special podcast coming up next couple of weeks on not being responsible for your child's happiness or your spouse's happiness. It's a huge trap for you.

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So when trying to strike this balance, we're going to constantly, you're going to look, you're going to constantly second guess yourself. You are, are we letting the kids get away with stuff? Are we being too soft?

If we spanked our kids, would they be still doing this? Are we doing this wrong? You're going to wrestle with this and that's healthy. It means you're finding the boundaries that work for you. And having a strong willed child complicates this because the easy compliant child will just naturally respond to like anything.

They like pleasing others, so they're going to do what they're told, but the strong-willed child is going to push back on just about everything. They want to do things their way. They're not going to listen or be obedient the first time, and they're probably not going to listen the 14th time, but they will be independent thinkers. They're going to touch the hot stove in order to figure it out, and they're going to drive you crazy in the meantime, but that's where you have to control your anxiety and your own control issues first.

Just know that they have to push those boundaries because they want ownership of their choices, and that's a really good thing in their lives. I encourage you, if you do have the Calm Parenting program, go through the Strong Willed Child program first in there. It's essential to understand these kids. So here's the caveat.

If you go too far the other way, if you're too sweet and too soft, these kids will take advantage of that because you're going to talk too much and you're going to try to reason with them when they don't need to be convinced. They can't be convinced. You have to lead them. So I'm going to go through these different ways. I want to teach you how to be kind yet firm.

I want to teach you to be understanding, yet always moving to problem solving. How to hear them, but still lead. How to let them vent without you reacting. So let's go through. I'm going to go through a couple examples so I can demonstrate kind of the old school authoritarian, maybe where we swung too far now as modern day parents. And then where do we find this right in the middle place?

We're authoritative. We're good authority figures. We listen. We connect. We do all those things. I'm going to try to demonstrate this. Now, here are three things, no matter what you do, I want you to really to work on, encourage you to work on. Number one, you have to learn how to control your own emotions so you can end this constant feedback loop. You've got to work on yourself in being able to do that because if you are reactive, you're

It doesn't matter if you're reactive. It doesn't matter whether you're authoritarian or too sweet. It just doesn't work. If you or your spouse cannot control your mouth, your words, your reactions, your body posture, all of that, it won't work. I encourage you work through that 30 days to calm program because we go through all of your triggers regularly.

so that you don't get triggered all the time. And your triggers are yours to own. I know they don't exist for your child to exploit them and push them, but your kids, strong, well, kids are a gift to you. And I'm not saying that like, oh, they're just a gift. All children are gifts because I know they're hard, but they are a gift because they're

The compliant child is not going to push any of your buttons and they won't cause you to grow. But that strong-willed child is going to push every little button. They're going to push buttons you didn't know you had. And you get to say, you know what? This is an opportunity for me to grow up and work on that. I'll add this working on your emotional health. Some of you had traumatic childhoods. And so you've swung too far because think about this. No guilt, no blame.

When you seek to comfort your child, sometimes you're actually trying to administer the comfort you never had as a child.

So your child gets upset or struggling and you want to comfort that child because you never had that comfort as a child. But then you get entangled emotionally with your kids and you can't provide proper separation or boundaries. And I'm going to do an entire podcast. I think the next one's going to be on parenting with a trauma background.

But for right now, let's work on controlling your own emotions, your anxiety, your control issues. It's foundational. Number two, practice different body posture. I'm not going to go a lot into this. This one's easy. I tend to sit. I come alongside. I don't stand over with my hands on my hips because it creates a defensive response. That's why a lot of times when I'm talking about...

and I'm giving you practical things to do. I'm walking alongside. I'm sitting and playing Legos with the child. I'm playing catch. I'm going for a walk. I'm saying, hey, I can tell you're frustrated. Listen, you want to go? I've got to go to the store. You want to come help me grab something? We're driving next to each other because it doesn't create that defensive response. And I'm not using eye contact when kids are upset, when I'm upset, because that tends to inflame things.

Tone of voice, critically, critically important. And that, to be honest, is the reason I probably will never write a book on this because I like people listening to our programs because I can model the tone of voice. I can model scripts to use. Tone of voice is probably the most critical thing that you can do. It's why I do the podcast.

it's extraordinarily effective because the tone of voice can have a huge impact on deescalating your child. I heard on a recent podcast that I listened to, I may have mentioned this before,

There's something about this tone of voice that actually changes, neurologically changes the person that's listening to it. They're not even aware of what's going on in their own body, but by speaking in this tone, I can create a calming effect on their nervous system. It's cool.

So we don't want the yelling and threatening voice, but we also don't want the really sweet, overly sympathetic or empathetic voice because that sounds condescending and weak to a strong-willed child. And I'm asking you to get outside of, look, this is hard. Those of you with a trauma background, get out of how you hear it, what you want to hear and understand what your strong-willed child, how they see the world, how they hear things.

because to them, it sounds condescending and weak and I don't want that. So look, we get this, parents will send in like, oh, I wanna send you a video of our interaction of our kids during an emotional upheaval. And much of the time, here's what strikes me. And there's no blaming guilt in any of this. I just want us to change what doesn't work. I watch the kid and I'm like, yep, looks like good meltdown to me. Totally get what the child is doing. It's not throwing me off at all. Kind of expect that.

But I watch the parents trying too hard. They're trying too hard to be understanding and to problem solve. And they keep talking and talking and talking because you're told, well, you just need to problem solve with your child and ask them lots of questions. And I like being curious and ask questions. But there's a time when we just need to be quiet and let the child process what

Because the child in this moment, when I'm watching the videos, I'm like, please just stop. You're irritating me. You're trying too hard. Sometimes you need to learn to just stop talking and to lead or just leave them alone to process.

what they're feeling and lead them to a different place. So here's kind of how it sounds sometimes. The old authoritarian approach, my dad's was wipe that smirk off your face, yelling, threatening. If I have to tell you one time, it's demanding, I'm gonna get the belt, all those things. And what's really the worst part of that is I'm completely out of control when I'm doing that. And so now I've lost control, the child's in complete control.

The sweet tone, too sweet is, sweetie, mommy can tell that you're really struggling with your emotions right now. Do you want to identify your emotions? Look, all I can tell you is the strong willed child, here's what they hear. It just sounds like weakness. It's like, no, it's like when you're told someone tells you, oh, you just need to calm down. That sounds kind of condescending. It makes us angry.

And it's just, it's like we get sucked into this thing in this sweet tone where it's like, let's live in this life where we just talk about our emotions and we live in it too much. And I'm going to show you how to do that differently so we can talk about their emotions, but we help them know what to do with their emotions. Because we've, I think we've been told a little bit of a lie of, well, let's just sit and talk to our kids about their emotions. That's annoying.

And it doesn't lead to anything except like those of you who've done therapy for 10 years and nothing's really changed because you just talked about stuff the whole time and that's not effective all the way, always. So the authoritative voice and what we like is, oh yeah, if I were you, I'd be frustrated too. See, that's a statement of truth.

I'm identifying with a child. Let me play this out now. I'll go into it a little bit more. So remember the goal we have here with raising a strong-willed child. I'm not going to use with disciplining because it's too loaded, but remember the word discipline means to teach.

My goal as a parent is not to discipline my child. It's to teach my child so he can be or she can be self-sufficient later in life and have tools. So my goal, build connection and relationship. Number one above everything else. I want to build connection and relationship with my child because that changes behavior and changes everything more than anything else. And I want to empower the child to

or teach the child, I don't like buzzwords of empower, but teach the child to be his or her best. I don't wanna just change outward behavior. And I even just, I get it out sometimes, well, we just wanna change their heart. I wanna give kids tools so they can learn how to handle tough situations.

Because sometimes that even that very Christian thing of like, well, let's just talk about your heart attitude. That's so like, no, I'm not trying to change your heart. That's not my job either. I want to give you some tools. I will eventually soften my child's heart by the way that I interact with them. I create trust that changes their heart, but I don't try to change. Here's the difference. This just hit me.

My goal isn't to change their heart, which then changes their behavior. I'm changing my relationship with them. That in turn changes their heart. But the goal isn't just to change them. So think about this. The old school authoritarian approach changed outward behavior, but it tended to ruin the relationship. Don't want that.

The too sweet approach, well, at least we've got the connection, and I love you for doing that. You've got the connection, but the child doesn't always respond, and we don't always give them tools to change. We're just being overly sympathetic. Now, the authoritative approach, calm approach, is, well, I build the connection and I'm

I train, teach the child and give him the tools to be his best. So let's use this example. And I've done this before, but I want to break it down. So anxiety, kids would struggle with anxiety. You have a child, probably strong-willed child who struggles with unknowns, things that are out of their control, things that cause them, things that are out of their control, cause them anxiety. It's why little things going wrong, trigger meltdowns, why they're bossing, controlling, why they cheat and quit and change rules at games. They're just trying to control the outcome of the game because unknowns trigger anxiety.

And we have a huge advantage now over our authoritarian parents because they didn't understand any of this. They didn't have parenting books. Right? So...

It's time for that new taekwondo class you're taking your child to and you call to your child to come downstairs to go in the car, do all that. And he or she resists, begins making up excuses. And here are the three examples, examples of three different ways to deal with this. Now, here's the old school authoritarian. It's an angry parent who stood on the stairs or in your doorway and barked, yelled or demanded. I'm not going to ask you again. You get in the car. You get your butt in the car now or I'm going to tan your behind.

I remember my dad saying it. I didn't know what that means. He was going to tan my butt, right? Enough. And if you were smart back then, you obeyed and you kind of went sobbing to your class, except when your dad was like, wipe those tears up. I'm not raising the, all those things, right? Because you don't want to make your mom or dad angry. You don't want to get the belt. Obviously not a good option.

Our parents got us to the car and to the class, but at the cost of trust when bigger things came up. Huge, huge point. I'm reading a book about Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia in the late 1700s, who had a horrible childhood. And what she realized later in life is when you were really tough with kids like this and too hard on them, they learn not to speak up. So when there are things that are going on in their lives,

They won't come to you and speak up. Fortunately, she had a governess at the time who took, she had gone through the Calm Parenting Program, 1700 style, not downloaded to an app that you get so you can share with your spouse and your family. But anyway, she knew how to draw attention

Catherine out. And so Catherine became a more balanced person, although she was authoritarian because she was the Empress of Russia. But so that authoritarian approach, we don't want that.

Now, the overly sweet response doesn't work either because you might come in and sit down next to the child on the bed. Good. I like that. But then sometimes we begin to frown with a sad face. So we're commiserating. Oh, honey, I can tell you're really upset. Would you like to talk about your emotions? And your child's like, no.

And then you'll begin to talk endlessly, asking the child all kinds of questions about his or her feelings, right? Like, what are you feeling right now? I don't know. And then everybody gets really kind of frustrated right then. And then we may, as that parent, try to make it all better, sometimes try to bribe the child, sometimes even convince them that they don't have to feel upset or they don't have to feel anxious, right?

And then we try, well, what if we leave now? We stop here and then bribery doesn't work. And so finally, sometimes we give in and we're like, well, I can tell you're really upset. So let's just stay home tonight and we'll start next week. Now, I'm not saying that's always wrong. But when that becomes the mode that you do all the time, then the child, we don't end up giving them tools to face hard things.

And then it creates this entanglement of emotions and I don't think that's healthy. So what's the authoritative approach? What's the calm approach, which I think is in the middle of there. So I hear that resistance.

And instead of reacting, I whisper to myself, okay, control myself, slow my world down. I wanna get to the root of the issue. I've got a child who doesn't wanna go to Taekwondo. We're on a time limit. I don't wanna be late because I get triggered because when I was a kid, if you were late, you were in trouble.

And I don't like that. I don't like to disappoint people. And I don't want to walk in at the end and be a bad parent. All those things go through my head. And I have to control myself first. So I walk into the room. Sometimes I sit. Sometimes not. And I ask, hey, is your stomach a little bit upset?

and I get the little head nod. Well, of course it is. Look, you should be a little bit anxious, you should be nervous. You're going to a new place where you don't know anybody and you don't know what to expect. Look, I feel exact same way when I go to grownup parties, when I've got meetings at work or I do presentations with clients. My stomach's always a little bit upset. So watch what I've done. I've just normalized the child's feelings instead of endlessly trying to figure them out. See, the child doesn't really need to identify his emotions.

He needs to know what to do with those emotions and to know that they're completely normal.

See, when I use that tone and I get to the root of it, I'm the adult. I have a pretty good idea of what my child is going through. So I can identify and say, oh, of course you're feeling that. Stomach's upset. That's usually anxiety. Perfectly normal thing. And so I've normalized it so he or she doesn't think there's something wrong with him or her, right? I don't want them to think there's something wrong. And I'm not trying to convince the child that

that there's nothing wrong and that everything's okay. And I'm also not dismissing it like the old authoritarian. You know, when I was a kid, I didn't worry about those things. You just get your little butt in the car. Okay. And I'm, so my tone is even and matter of fact, and I please, I want you to hear this. I know it will sound cold to some of you.

But it's not. It is so encouraging. It is so reassuring to a child. It shows that I'm not thrown off by their emotions and their behavior. It shows that I'm an adult and I can handle this. See, when you're yelling and threatening, all that conveys is you can't handle someone else's misbehavior or moods.

It just shows that you're powerless in that situation. And I speak to the guys here, like, I want you to know, you think it's like, well, I just need to let them know that I'm in charge. It shows the exact opposite.

You're not in charge because you can't even handle your own emotions, your own voice when someone doesn't do things the way you want them done. It's the exact opposite. It actually ruins your authority. They don't respect you because now you're freaking out and you're 35 or 40 and they're seven. And the overly sweet tone, and I want you to hear this, please.

It says, "I don't know what to do either, but I know that I don't want to be harsh, so I'm just going to be really sweet. I'm going to pepper you with questions and say everything's okay." See, that also communicates that you're not in control of yourself and you're not the leader that they need. But see, this tone that I use, it's a confident tone. And you've got to practice this because it doesn't sound emotionally sweet. But I implore you, talk to your strong-willed child differently.

I'm normalizing the anxiety. I'm saying, I've seen this before so that me, the adult, I'm a source of help here. Instead of a source of pity and empathy, which often conveys you can't handle this. And now I lead. Hey, you know what I found in life? I found when I'm anxious, if I get there a few minutes earlier, I've got a mission to focus on, really helps me out. Listen, I'm going to go grab my coat. Why don't you meet me in the car in five and we'll come up with a plan.

I can add to it, hey, I know this is hard, but also know you're a courageous young man, courageous young woman. You can handle this. You're going to have a great time. I don't have to add that, but I kind of can. But that's kind of short and sweet. I'm not dismissing the child's emotions.

I've acknowledged it. I just didn't leave the child there wrapped up in all of those emotions. I'm leading with confidence. I'm giving some space. I really like, instead of telling the child what to do right away, I've imparted some wisdom. Hey, here's what I found when I'm anxious. If I get there a few minutes early,

I just gave him an idea. And now I said, I'm going to grab my coat. I'm giving the child some space. I'm not standing over him. Make your choice right now what you're going to do.

And I'm also not just laying there with him, right? Kind of leaving him there and like, I know this is really hard. I'm leading that child because I do want to teach kids how to deal with hard things in life. And this is a hard thing in life that they are going to struggle with. See, now I gave them a tool. Hey, listen, here's what I found. I get there a few minutes early. And if I have a mission and you know, my long-term mission,

My solution for anxiety in this situation is to have the Taekwondo instructor give your child a job to do and say, oh, I need your help. Every week I need you here five minutes early. When you get here, you're going to help me rearrange the cones, set up the mat. You're going to help me out because you're a good helper and I need that help. You up for that? Most of your kids...

are going to do that. So next week when this happens, it's, oh yeah, of course you're anxious. Remember, hey, your instructor, remember he said he needed your help and now they'll go. So I gave them a tool for the rest of their lives for dealing with their anxiety and I've led them. So let me give you one more example of how to handle this. If you want more, definitely download all the programs to the app and work through this with your spouse and your family.

On that app, we're going to give you dozens of scripts and specific action steps. If you need help financially with our program, just email Casey at Celebrate Calm. He'll help you out. So let's do this quickly. A child's getting mouthy talking back to you. The old school approach was to shut that down very quickly. Wipe that smirk off your face. You say another word, you're going to get the belt. Why do you have to be so difficult and defiant?

None of those are helpful. They're all hurtful. They ruin trust. They guarantee your child can't speak up for yourself. And then they end up marrying a controlling spouse. They're going too sweet is the other way. You know, honey, that hurts mommy's feelings. We don't use those words around here. And you know what your strong-willed child is thinking? Yeah, well, I just use those words around here. What are you going to do about it? It's too syrupy sweet.

That hurts mommy's feelings. They know it hurts your feelings. That's why they did it. And now you're putting your feelings on them. Not a huge fan of that because now we're getting all entangled again and we're trying them to do things to manage our emotions for us. And that gives them too much power. Your child already knows it's wrong. That's why they lie about things. They already know what they said was wrong.

It just leads to more endless discussions and talking and it's counterproductive and you end up getting walked all over. And I want you to hear this, even if this is hard for you. Sometimes with a strong willed child, when you go to like, you know, we don't use those words. We don't talk like that. You know what they're really thinking? Seriously? You're talking to me like that? Like I'm a baby? Come on, talk to me like I'm an adult. Even if they're four, they're seven, they're nine. They're like, come on, talk to me like an adult. I already know what I did was wrong.

The authoritative, connected, calm approach. This is what I would say to Casey. Hey, Case, listen, when you talk to me like that, it just tells me something else is going on. Usually you talk to me like this and have that tone when you're anxious, when you're frustrated, disappointed, or you're hungry. So if that tone's not going to work with me, you're going to end up losing all the stuff you enjoy in life. Look, when I give consequences, it's not my main thrust. That's why there's no energy behind it.

I'm just, this is not going to work for you. There's no energy in that. But see where the energy goes. Here's another option. I know you're frustrated. Something's going on. So I'm going to go do X. I'm going to grab some chips. You grab some salsa. When you're ready, come grab me. We'll go for a walk. We'll eat a snack. We'll go for a drive and I'll help you out. So that business-like tone that may sound cold to you is actually very comforting. It provides a lot of security because I'm acknowledging that there's something else going on. I'm not dismissing that.

without getting too deep and wallowing there. But I'm also giving clear options. I'm giving an invitation of, hey, I'm the adult. I've seen this before. I did this before as a teenager. And so they're reacting like, I can't believe that you would talk to me like that. Or, you know, when I was a kid, if you talked to my parent like that, you would have gotten the belt.

Instead of doing all that, I'm secure in this. Hey, I did this before. It tells me there's something going on. And so if you continue doing that, it's just not going to go well with you. And I'm not going to get drawn into a big argument with you. I'm not going to get walked all over because my tone says I don't need to get walked all over. I have an answer for you. I have a solution.

And now when I say, and this is for another podcast, but hey, when you're ready, if you want to come grab me. See, now I gave him ownership over his choice of when he or she comes to me. And then that helps calm down. And then I walk away and I give a little bit of space and I invite them. See, I'm not like, go to your room until you think about your actions. You can talk to me in a good tone.

Go into the room. I'm not solving anything with that. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's not the highest ideal here. I actually want to, a good authority figure draws people to him or her. Why? Because I don't need anything right now. I don't need you to be nice to me. I don't need you to talk to me in a nice tone. I'm letting you know that tone doesn't work ever. And you know that.

right? You know that. See the tone here? I'm treating him like an adult. You know, if you talk to me like that, it's going to, it just, it's too syrupy and the other approach is too harsh because we shut everything down. Look, Case, I'm willing to have a grown-up conversation here. You talk to me like that, things aren't going to go well. They just don't. It doesn't work for you in life. When you talk to a boss, when you talk to a spouse, when you talk to your kids, when you talk to anybody like that, it just doesn't work. You know that. But

Take a minute to process. I'm going to be over here. I'm going to go grab some chips. I'm going to go for a drive. When you're ready, come get me and I'll help you out with whatever you're struggling with. And I give him some space to calm down. And when he comes down and talks, now I can say, okay, so what's going on? And we can have a great discussion. So this week, let's practice this. Let's practice. For some of you, you're going to have to start with the basics of just learning to control your emotions, learning not to react. Work on that.

And that's practice not yelling, but also not being too sweet. You're connected. You're firm. You're kind. Just about everything we do, every podcast, all of our programs go through how to make this transition from authoritarian to authoritarian to authoritative. I hate these words. Calm, connected. Let's just call it that. Calm, connected, problem solving. So,

Love you all. I know this is hard, but let's practice it. And as you practice it, it becomes easier. It becomes part of who you are and your responses get easier. If you download that app, just download it. Look, if you're doing this for your spouse, your husband, i.e. your husband,

Just download onto his phone or I'll send it directly, the dad's program. That's it just to begin so he doesn't get overwhelmed with stuff like, oh, we have 12 new programs. We have 30 hours of parenting materials to listen to. We're going to change our entire parenting paradigm.

It's too much for a dude. We check out. Hey, hubby, I'm going to listen to these 12. You just listen to one. Internalize it. Then let's talk about it. Let's wrestle with this because can I add this? Some of you may need to say this. Hey, you know what? I know I get on you because you're overreactive and sometimes you're too harsh and too tough and you yell too much. But you know what I've realized?

Sometimes I'm too soft and too sweet. And so I think I do that to counterbalance you being too harsh, but you may be counterbalancing me being too soft. So could we go through this program? Could we go through, I'll even listen to the men's program and we'll go through that, dad's program. We'll go through that and I'll learn a better balance myself.

And you learn a better balance. And maybe we can meet in the middle. See, that way it's not like, you know what? You stink as a parent. You're doing this all wrong. I read all the parenting books and you don't. That's a nice collaborative approach with a husband that says, hey, it's not all you. I sometimes go too far the other way. So if you're willing to work on your part, I'm willing to work on my part. I bet we could meet with a healthy middle ground where we are healthy.

authoritative leaders in the home who build trust, who build connection, and it ultimately changes everybody's behavior in this home. Anyway, I love that a lot. I'll talk to you soon. Love you all. Bye-bye.