Social Skills & Sibling Squabbles #1
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So do you have kids who struggle to connect with kids their own age, their classmates? Do you have kids who sometimes dominate conversations? They get bossy during playdates or with siblings. Some of these kids will isolate themselves. How about kids who get anxious about going back to school or going to summer camp?

How about kids who fight with their siblings? Look, this is all very normal for our kids. And I want to give you some tools to help your kids and to help you. So that's what we're going to discuss on today's episode of the Calm Parenting Podcast. Welcome. This is Kirk Martin, founder of Celebrate Calm. You can find us at CelebrateCalm.com. Look, I just want to jump right into this. I have a lot of ground to cover. I think I'm going to do this in two parts. So this is part one.

Number one, let's look at why our kids do struggle sometimes with social skills. Many of your kids have something called asynchronous development, asynchronous, out of sync. So intellectually, they're kind of up here, a little bit advanced. And that's why they have amazing talks with adults. And they're very good in the adult world.

But emotionally, socially, sometimes they're a year or two behind. So you'll notice they're often really good with younger kids. Younger kids are kind of drawn to them and they naturally connect. Or some of your kids are really good with animals. But who do they struggle to connect with? Kids their own age. Who do we send our kids to school with for basically the first 20 years of their life?

Only kids their own age and that's very arbitrary and unnatural. It doesn't happen after school. None of you work at a company where it's only 37 year olds, right? That is very unnatural. And so what happens is our kids have a natural weakness, not a disorder, just a weakness in that area.

And now it's exacerbated because we put them in this arbitrary situation And now it starts to blow up and we got all worried about it. And then it's once again,

It is you as the parents of a neurodivergent, strong-willed child, maybe a child with ADHD, who then is put into the position of becoming defensive and thinking, oh no, now I have to get another specialist to work on yet another problem. And what I want to encourage you with and even warn you about is this.

I want to work with our kid's nature, not against it. Look, you're not going to turn your child into a neurotypical child. And I don't want you to because neurotypical kids have all kinds of issues. We just don't label theirs, right? We don't label them with energy deficient disorder or risk aversion disorder or, uh,

or say they have a, or focus their whole childhood on, you know what, you're not very creative thinker and you're not a very good strategic thinker. That's going to limit your career options. And we don't say they have a compliance disorder. We don't do that to other kids, only to our kids. And I want you to be strong and confident because look, we can work with our kids' nature. Just think about this. Our kids are uniquely good at relating to other adults.

What are we raising our kids to be? Not children. We're raising them to be adults. And they're very good at that so we can work with their nature. I don't want you spending your child's childhood trying to get them to be normal or like all the other kids. Your kids are already normal. There's nothing wrong with them. They're just different.

If you change the situation, then our kids have the unique advantages. The advantages of, say, being able to hyper-focus. You put them in certain jobs. All of that energy is extremely helpful. So, look, my heart in this is...

I don't want our kids to begin to internalize from a young age, something is wrong with me. Well, I have attention deficit. No, not really. You can hyper-focus. You have an advantage. Well, I have hyperactivity disorder. No, you don't. It's just being measured against...

an arbitrary standard of sitting still in a classroom for seven hours a day, five days a week, listening to someone talk about something you're not interested in. There is no job in the world where you have to do that every single day, all day long. You choose your job and your industry anyway.

I don't want our kids to internalize. Now it's one more thing as a parent that you think you need to fix. Well, now we have to do social skills group and we have to get a special therapist for this as well. And what happens is you will get to the end of your child's childhood and realize that

You spent 80 or 90% of your energy trying to fix things that largely don't need to be fixed. And meanwhile, we didn't show our kids all of their advantages and put them in situations in which they would thrive. Because if you don't do it the right way, your kids are going to shut down and become defiant and angry and not have confidence.

But if we do it the right way, we can raise really confident kids who are aware of their struggles, have tools to overcome some of those weaknesses, but who walk around knowing, no, I have a good brain and I've got advantages and I can't wait to use that. So...

One of the other reasons that your kids may struggle, some of your kids are on a spectrum and it's a spectrum and some kids who are way down the line on that spectrum, well, they're going to miss a lot of social cues and a lot of these kids are very bright kids. And so they're very much up in their brains because they're always thinking about things.

Well, when you're that internally focused, you miss some social cues and you might be one step off from the other kids your own age. A lot of our kids struggle with anxiety. Well, if I have anxiety, I'm going to be very internally focused because I'm just trying to hold everything together and I'm so worried about like just doing everything right like this. Well, I can't relax and look outside of myself. And so your kids become a little bit awkward and that's pretty normal.

Another thing that happens is this: your kids tend to be very independent. And that's a really good thing! It just means that they're not always going to want to do group projects with other kids and collaborate. I hate collaborating. I'm not a good collaborator. You know why? I don't like other people's ideas all the time, and I want to do it my way.

Does that hurt me sometimes? Yeah, I'm sure I could have a much bigger platform if I just collaborated with all kinds of popular people. But I don't want to. And I want to do, I like the way I do things. I don't have, look, I don't do podcasts the right way. I don't have bumper music at the beginning and an announcer to come and introduce me. And I don't want all that.

And so your kids are very independent. By the way, when I was in college, you know what I did? I didn't want to collaborate with other kids because I didn't want my grade to be dependent on theirs on these projects. So from my freshman year, when we got together, I'd say, look, here's the deal. I'm very conscientious. I'm going to work really hard. I'm a very good writer. I'm going to do this project and we'll all get good grades together.

but I don't want to meet with you four or five or six times and waste a lot of time. And inside my real motive was some of you aren't that bright and I don't want my grade depending on what you did. Now, I'm okay if you judge me for that because I know some of you are great collaborators and that's a great skill to have.

But so is being independent. Look, you know what else? That also hurts with siblings because it makes it harder to connect with siblings at times. Some of your kids are not very good at sports. Most of the kids that came to our camps back in the day, just not good at sports. Well, sports is a very common place that you connect with other kids. And our kids tend to be more, do independent things like gymnastics and rock climbing, martial arts,

Many of our kids, how many of you have kids who would be much happier down the street talking to a 60-year-old guy about electromagnetic currents rather than kicking a ball around with a kid his own age? Many of us have those kids, right? And so here's what we often see with our kids. They are bossy. Sometimes they dominate conversations, and I want you to know why. It's not that they're just being jerky.

It's that when you struggle with anxiety, anxiety is caused by unknowns. And conversations can be scary because some of these kids have auditory processing issues. So hearing things is harder for them at times. And if someone asks me a question, that requires a response. But if I dominate the conversation, now I eliminate that unknown.

some of your kids will act silly in class or they'll do something mischievous and bad to be the bad kid. Why? Because it's just an immature and quite honestly, it's a sad attempt to get other kids to like me because I don't know how to connect with them. But if I act silly in class or I do something bad in the boy's bathroom, then the other kids will like me, right? And so

Another thing that happens is they get very possessive of their friends. And what's happening inside, they don't know this is happening, but I want you to know so that you can help them with it, is this.

It took a lot of emotional energy for me to find one friend in my class. And this kid, he doesn't make fun of me and he's a little bit different like I am. And so I'm going to cling to that kid because I don't have a lot of other options. Look, your kids are naturally just very, just naturally good with other kids and the cool kids in class.

Everybody wants to be friends with them. They have 20 different options. Some of your kids have like two options in class. When they find that person, oh, they lock on to it. So these things cause our kids to struggle, cause them to not get invited sometimes to the birthday parties. And I know that hurts you.

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Next step I want, or really first step is this. We're going to get to tools probably next session, but here's the first thing. And you know, in our programs, we always go with you first, parent first. Moms and dads, do not impose your social norms

preferences or needs on your child. Do not project your feelings onto your kids. Look, I know this is hard to watch when your kids are left out and they don't have a lot of friends. And it comes naturally to you and you derive maybe a lot of satisfaction from time with your friends, but

So then you project and think, well, my child must be unhappy because he or she doesn't have a lot of friends. That's absolutely not true all the time. Some of your kids just prefer not to.

And just because you get fed by that doesn't mean your kids do. You like a lot of friends. They may not. I will tell you, I don't want a lot of friends. I want a couple good friends because I don't like small talk and it's not my preference. I would rather have a couple friends and go deeper, right? Fewer but deeper friends than a lot of friends. Otherwise, that's kind of overwhelming. So...

So I encourage you, you have to control that impulse because inside you're going to be like, but all kids should have lots of friends. No, they shouldn't. That's your preference. And don't impose that on your child.

otherwise your child will begin to internalize or keep internalizing. There's something wrong. My mom, my dad keep talking about that. And now I realize I don't have a lot of friends. Your kids are already aware of that fact and they probably already struggle with it. And so the next step is going to be really cool. Look, there's a couple more parts to this, but look, some of you have kids, say middle school kids, they're kind of loners right now.

And they're in a hibernation stage because middle school kids are they're not like little kids anymore But they're also not like high school kids and they've got all the hormone stuff going on It's an awkward stage and I would rather you rather than trying to get them to be well Why don't you go out for that team? Why don't you be friends with them? I'd rather say of course it makes total sense that you would hibernate a little bit during this phase because you're trying to figure out how

who you are and you're trying to figure out the land the social landscape look this is just a hard time of life it's awkward you're going to be fine see i want you ha you having those conversations with your kids reassuring them that they're going to be fine so here's a really important step in fact probably maybe more important than giving your kids tools

to do better with their social skills and make friends is this: I want you to normalize it. I want you to normalize this and let your kids know you're perfectly fine as you are. There's nothing wrong with you and you don't have to be like the other kids. So here is a fantastic conversation I would encourage you to have with a child who is one of your asynchronous kind of kids.

Here's what it starts. You know one of my favorite phrases is of course of court of course You don't want to hang out with kids your own age. They talk about stupid stuff. They're not that interesting They're they're kind of boring and they're always one upping each other and they're kind of immature of course that makes sense that you wouldn't want to hang out with them and

But you know what I know about you? You're an old soul. And so it makes sense to me that you'd rather be around at times older people. Why? Because you're really curious and you love to learn. And those are such fantastic qualities. And with older people, you can have such great talks and you can draw out their wisdom. And older people are settled. They're not trying to prove anything. They're not kind of competition for you.

And so that is a great skill to have in life is to go and be around older people and ask them questions because you can learn from their life wisdom that is so mature of you.

Can you imagine for some of your kids who from the time they've been born have felt inside, I'm different, I'm the black sheep, I'm the one kid that got kicked out of preschool, everybody's taking me to therapists and to different people and I feel odd. For you to look at them and say, you know what? It's really mature of you. I think that's really smart of you.

Because the other thing is they're going to spend most of their life as adults. Here's another one. Of course you like hanging out with younger kids. Why? Because they're drawn to you. They look up to you. You connect well with them. And that's a great gift because there are a lot of jobs, satisfying good jobs online.

that you can have that draw on that passion. You could be a teacher, an occupational therapist. You could be a camp leader, right? Same thing with animals. Of course you want to be with animals. You have a gift with them. You walk into that veterinarian's office and those animals calm down in your presence. You could be a veterinarian. You can volunteer at the animal rescue at the shelter.

See, you can begin to normalize it for your kids so they don't feel odd and you put them in situations in which they can thrive. Here's another great talk to have. Hey, listen, you don't have to have a lot of friends in life.

It's sometimes better to have fewer friends but deeper friendships because now you've got really loyal friends that you know really well. And the likelihood is you probably don't even want a lot of friends. There's nothing wrong with that. Just have one to two really good friends that you can count on. Good two-way relationships. I've shared this a lot. My best friend is 74 years old. His name is Mike.

I like Mike because Mike has a lot of life wisdom and he's not trying to impress anybody. And I can say, Mike, what is it like when you turn 70? What should I begin doing now? What are the mistakes that you regret making that I could maybe avoid? And we have such great talks and he's interested in me. It's a two-way relationship. So teach your kids that that's okay. Okay.

Share your life experience. Share your struggles. Look, if you're like me and you're like your kids, that'd be so great for them to hear their mom or dad say, look, I have to go to these corporate mixers, these corporate get togethers after work and have small talk. And I hate those things. I struggle walking into big groups. So here's what I do.

I go to one of these events and I pick off one person. You know why? Because I'm really good talking one-on-one with people, but in a group, I feel awkward, I kind of get lost, and I feel left out. But when I pick off one person that I have a common interest with,

man, I really enjoy that conversation. So now you've just normalized that not everybody is supposed to be good at walking into a group and having a great discussion and telling the funny jokes. Look, whenever I'm in a group and I'm 58, I've traveled all over the world. I've had a lot of experience in life. But when I try to tell a joke in front of a group, well, one, I don't do it anymore because my experience in life is I would tell the joke and then everybody would be like,

Okay. And they look at me. And so I don't, I try not to put myself in positions that, that, um, that, um, what would the word be that, that, um,

that expose my weaknesses. Now I have to be in them sometimes and I can navigate that, but I tend to put myself in a position where I have one-on-one conversations with people. So I want you to do that. Now some people ask, "Hey, what about doing social skills groups with our kids?" Look, I don't have a firm opinion on that. I would ask around with friends. I can tell you there are some really good ones, but there are some that just aren't good.

And what happens is your child gets put into this social skills group, once again trying to be fixed. And the truth is, he or she just may not ever be really great at it. And that's okay. And so you're trying to force it and force them to once again be like the other so-called normal kids. When we had all these kids at our house, we called it Lego camp.

I didn't call it social skills camp. Who wants to go to that? But all the kids wanted to come and build with Legos. And they didn't know we were working on teaching them social skills and how to handle frustration and impulse control. So you have to make that determination on your own. But in the next episode, I'm going to give you some tools that I think you can use that will be helpful that maybe you don't have to do that.

So, hey, thank you for listening. I'm trying to keep these short to honor your time.

In the next episode, I'm going to get into giving your kids some very practical tools to help with social skills. And we will dive deeper into the sibling issue as well. So thank you for listening to the podcast. It takes time to do so. Thanks for putting up with the ads and listening. I think I make one and a half cents worth

Per per ad that you listen to I appreciate that and it's more so it's just kind of gratifying to know We did like 400 episodes before we had any sponsors and thanks to you listening Well now advertisers want to come and advertise so I know it's annoying But I hope what you see in the bigger picture. It's like listen to the ads at 1.5 speed and

right? It's just, it's a minor irritant. And I hope what you get out of our podcasts and our Instagram reels is a lot of practical information encouragement helps. So subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss. I think the next one will be coming out on Wednesday morning. So thank you for listening. We'll talk to you soon. Love you all. Bye-bye.