Tough Talks with Kids: Stealing, Sneaking Things at Night, Vaping, Porn
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So what do you do if you have a child who is sneaking food or electronics late at night? Or you've got a child who's stolen cash or credit cards from your purse or wallet?

Older kids may be experimenting with vaping or downloading porn, and this will likely freak you out. But don't, because on this episode of the Calm Parenting Podcast, I want to give you a process to go through and scripts to get to the root of the issue and prevent this from happening again. So welcome, this is Kirk Martin, founder of Celebrate Calm. You can find us at CelebrateCalm.com. Quick housekeeping note, for those of you who have our Get Everything Package

I am updating the Calm Couples program this weekend with new insights and strategies and that will automatically download to your app. It's kind of like how software downloads to a Tesla so you don't have to take it into a dealership because they don't really exist.

And so then I will revise. The next thing I'm going to work on is the Discipline at Works program because I've got some new ideas to add to that. I'll just keep updating the programs and they'll just automatically show up in your app. So thank you for that. By the way,

Just before I hit record here, I just got another email. And again, from a dad. I'm getting a lot of dads, so thank you, who write these emails. And I guess what just hit me was,

There's this, we don't know what to do. We've been trying and we feel helpless. And a lot of dads are like, I feel like I failed my child. And I want you to know you haven't failed your child. These are tough situations. It's hard stuff. And so it's very humbling to be on this side. I thought, you know, to be honest, and I'll probably rerecord this because you don't care about this. But when I read that email right before I clicked record, I thought,

What a sweet thing that a parent would feel. I don't know if it's that desperate or helpless at times and need help that you'd email a stranger because you don't know me and tell me all your backstory. And then it's the end. It was, I appreciate you even reading this long email. And we want you to know we honor that, that that affects us. It touches us.

And it's very, very humbling on this end. So thank you to all of you who, as parents, are working so hard at this. We do honor that. So let's get to some tough stuff.

I know the feeling that you get in your stomach, right? When you discover your child's been lying to you and you're like, oh, child's lying. We've tried to model and talk to our child about integrity and what is next? How can we ever trust them again? Are they're sneaking things or stealing things?

or hiding a vaping pen or secretly watching porn and it's like your world inside comes crashing down and it's perfectly natural for you to be angry and afraid and furious and bewildered and so many other emotions

Because you have worked really hard to teach your kids, you know, the right path. And you may beat yourself up for a bit, but don't. Unless you don't listen to what I say next and you mess it up again. Then beat yourself up. I'm kidding. And so you're going to want to really lay into your child with long lectures and punishment, but don't.

And this is hard because as modern parents, you're going to have to deal with things your parents didn't have to. Easy access to porn, screen addictions, earlier onset of puberty now. Your kids are learning about sex at a very young age, well before I did.

Right? Vaping. There's more. And the larger goal for me is to make sure that you become the trusted resource your child feels comfortable talking to about all these issues. Because if you overreact, you lecture, you shame, you pretty much guarantee that your kids will find out all kinds of awful and wrong information from their friends who don't have good advice from social media and just illicit websites.

So here's what I do not want you to do. Do not go in with that harsh, accusatory, old school approach. What were you thinking? How many times have we told you? Why would you do something like this? Do you know how upset we are? Explain why you did that, young man. And what are we expecting from saying, well, dad, my hormones are raging and I'm socially awkward, but there are these videos of naked women online and it's free. So I just thought I'd check it out.

You had to sneak around looking at magazines behind your friend's shed when you were a kid, but I can pull this right up from school. And I was embarrassed to come to you and ask about it for obvious reasons. Right? So look, none of this is helpful. It's counterproductive. It merely reinforces shame and will cause your child to get better at hiding things from you and doing things in secret. And when your child really needs help,

he or she won't be able to come to you. Look, I also don't want to use that overly sweet voice and just say, "I know it's really hard, honey," because that sounds patronizing and weak, like you're excusing the behavior.

and consequences are necessary, but they're not the ultimate solution. Consequences are irrational, and most of this behavior is driven by deeper needs. Look, if consequences worked, none of us would eat unhealthy food, drink too much, smoke, or all kinds of harmful behaviors that kill us. There's almost always something deeper inside driving the outward behavior.

So, that said, I want to give you some options. Let me do a tougher approach first, and you're going to have to decide which approach to take based on your individual situation.

The tough, no-nonsense approach is a legitimate one for certain situations. And I'll give you an example. I was working with a mom who, on the first day of school, thought she saw a vaping pen in her teenage son's backpack. And she mentioned it. He was like, oh, no, it's something we use for our computer to transfer games on it.

And he denied it, he lied about it, and she didn't react. But later that night, she went into his room and said this, and forgive me if you find this offensive, but she said, "I'm not an effing idiot. I know what it is.

That's not an option in my home. So you need to be done with this experiment. I expect you to take care of this yourself because if I have to get involved, you're not going to like it. Now, some of you may recoil at that and that's okay, but I love what she did because she was kind of nipping this in the bud and clearly communicating her expectations. And I like her saying, I'm not an idiot to let her son know,

right? She means business. She's been around. You can't fool her. And there are times when you must provide this kind of clarity and decisive action. And it worked in this case. Now, I don't think that approach will work for kids who have already gotten into porn, vaping, or developed a habit of sneaking and stealing. So here is the process.

I would encourage you to go through and you're going to notice some common steps here. Number one, normalize it. It's what we do with anxiety. Of course you're anxious. You're going to a new place where you don't know anyone. You don't know what to expect. Your stomach should be a little bit upset.

In this case, it's normal for a child to look for ways to escape, to try things that may seem dangerous, to try to do things so they fit in with their peers, especially your kids who struggle with social skills. That's perfectly normal.

So to be able to say to your teenage son or daughter, look, you're a teenager with raging hormones who's naturally curious about sex and you have access to free porn right on your phone in private. It makes total sense that you would be curious about this.

Look, I'm not excusing it. I'm not saying it's good. I'm just saying that's pretty normal. See, at this point, no lectures about all the harmful effects, ties to human trafficking, none of that's going to matter right now.

Here's another one. Of course you would be tempted to vape. So many of the kids your age do it. It's not like smoking when I was a kid when you smelled like an ashtray and people looked down on you. That nicotine hit is real and it's probably relaxing for you. Hey, it's pretty normal for a kid to sneak video games or an iPad in the middle of the night. Who wouldn't want to play something that fun?

Normalizing isn't excusing. It doesn't mean I go buy weed and get high with my child. It simply recognizes that this is pretty normal behavior and you're not shocked and you're not creating all this shame. I can't believe that you did this. Now, obviously, all of these are followed by an even matter-of-fact statement. Hey, I understand why you'd want to do this.

But you know this is unacceptable in my home. I know you know that's dangerous to use and you're not going to do that anymore. That's understood.

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Then I want you to be curious and discover the root of this behavior. Why is your child seeking these things out? Instead of an interrogation, why would you do that? That just elicits an offensive response. Be genuinely curious. Look, I know this is hard, but this is why you have to learn how to control yourself, not to overreact, to control your own anxiety. I know inside you are freaking out about this, but don't.

because I want you to come alongside your child and help your child. What happens when we react out of fear and anxiety is we come in hot and heavy and we stand in a doorway and it's me against my child. I can't believe that you would do this

And now there's separation between us. Look, the way I see this, a child is stuck in this. A child has started to make some bad choices, has gotten addicted to screens or to porn or to vaping, and they need someone to come alongside them and free them from that.

And so it's a little bit different. It's harder, but I want you to learn how to do it. It was something that I learned to do really well in the teenage years. I wish I learned this when Casey was a lot younger. It would have saved us a lot of power struggles. So be that detective. You're coming alongside your child to help him or her not punish or entrap them. Hey, so I'm curious, what exactly do you get out of vaping? Hey,

Why do you like sneaking things in the middle of the night? How does that make you feel? And you can lead the discussion. You can say, "Hey, when you vape, does it calm you? Does it help relieve your anxiety? Is it stimulating your brain? Are you doing it just to fit in because other kids are doing it?" Same with this. Look, we kind of know why kids download porn.

right that's a pretty easy one to understand but for some kids it's because they're shy they're socially awkward and they don't know how to approach girls so here's an example for kids who are sneaking and stealing things i ask this hey look when you get up in the middle of the night it is it kind of like a huge rush for you to do something you know is against the rules do you

Do you like the excitement of trying to get away with it? Because you get to use those strategic thinking skills to sneak downstairs, to open the cupboards, to get into everything and to outsmart us. See, if I know that, I can provide lots of alternatives to get that same brain stimulation in a positive way.

Look, I know what you're doing. So in the middle of the night, I totally get that. There's something fun or there's something good to eat downstairs that we won't let you have. And human nature says we always kind of want things that we don't have. And so you use those strategic thinking skills. You figure out when we go to bed, you know our patterns. And after we go to bed, like an hour later, we get up and we use the bathroom because you are really good at seeing patterns and observing things. And you're usually up late at night.

and so then that's when you sneak downstairs look I totally get the appeal of that that makes sense to me the downside is you're just going to keep getting in trouble and it doesn't lead to anything good but I also know you have a big heart and you love money so why don't we put that energy instead

into starting a couple little businesses in the neighborhood. Then you can earn money. You can even give away some of it to help kids with cancer, 'cause I know you have that big heart. And look, I'll even match part of the amount you invest and part of the amount you donate to charity. See, now I'm understanding

What's really going on? And instead of being a lot of shame, it's like, well, of course you would want to do that. It's negative. It's not going to lead to anything good. So let's find a different positive way to meet those same needs.

Okay, step number three. I would encourage you to identify with your child if appropriate and talk to them one-on-one. Some of these things, it'd just be awkward to have both parents sitting you down. These kids are already defensive. They feel like they're being teamed up on. So you may share with your child, and you know we like having talks while we're in the car, while we're going for a walk so it's not this heavy, "Sit down, we need to have a talk about your behavior."

but you could share with your child how you struggled with certain temptations as a kid or even as an adult how you've dealt with them look when casey was a teenager i talked to him very openly about the struggles that not just young men all men have with our hormones and our testosterone almost look if you just look through history

Men, this is how men mess up their lives by not control being able to control that aspect of of themselves and so we talked about different ways that I had dealt with that throughout my life so that it normalized it and I was giving him specific strategies and

And there is something about talking to him in a very casual, open way. And I encourage you to talk to your kids about their bodies and start at a very young age about puberty, about sex, like casually talking about it, like you're talking who their favorite rap star or pop star is. And so when I did this very plainly with Casey, when he hit puberty, it just wasn't so awkward because we were just having conversations and

And look, the beautiful part is you're giving your kids insight and you're clearing up confusion, which is huge for kids. Because look, when kids get to puberty, they're so self-conscious about their bodies and social media magnifies this. So normalizing it is huge. And I would encourage you, this starts when your kids are very, very young.

So, look, I don't have a program that I've ever created on this. So I actually looked for one. I found one. It's called How to Talk to Your Kids About Sex. So I contacted them and I said, look, I'd really like to review your content. And they were nice and they sent me the program.

And as I was going through it, I was like, oh, this sounds like the way we would talk about it, right? It sounded just like ours of they normalize it, they use scripts, and they give a lot of great conversation tips. So look, I'd recommend, no pressure at all, check out their page. If you go to vmtherapy.com and

And slash calm because you'll get a discount if you do that. Just check it out. I think it'll be very valuable for all parents. And I'll put that in the show notes. So in situations like this, do try to talk one-on-one because I think that helps them. And then just talk in normal terms because it just...

You know what I'm saying by that. It just makes it a normal part of life and that's what it is. I think it was just, you know what I struggle with? Our parents were so awkward or they didn't even talk to us about this stuff. So I think this next part is really important for context.

Number four: come alongside and teach. Protect, don't punish. Think about this, and this is important to me. When our kids were toddlers, our instinct was to protect them, not punish them. See, when you were two or three, and this is what I may tell my child, you explored everything you came upon because everything was new to you: spoons, shoelaces, bugs.

But now you're 10, you're 13, you're 17, and you have access to this huge world of good and bad things right in your hand on that smartphone. So it's normal that you'd be curious. See, my job when you were two or three was to make sure you didn't bump your head too hard or run into the street or fall off of something and hurt yourself. And back then, I gently lift you up and redirect you to safety.

And notice your instinct then wasn't to punish your child for being curious. It's important. See, son, daughter, you didn't even know I was doing that for you. I did that countless times when you were helpless and little. So my job now is to help you navigate this new world you're exploring without getting hurt in other ways.

And you could even say, "Look, I feel a little helpless because so much of this is out of my control." But the stakes are higher now. See, when you were a little kid, you would have just bumped your head. But now you could get addicted. It could change the course of your entire life. And it's so readily available and acceptable now. See,

When you're doing this, you are your child's parent whose primary role isn't to punish. It's to protect. It's not about you just being frustrated and angry. Because look, I'll be honest, when these things come up,

When Casey was little, it was like I was frustrated and angry because now he's making life more difficult. And now it caused me anxiety and I had to wrestle with all these different things that were very difficult. But when you look at it this way, you're coming alongside to help your child navigate his or her way through life.

So then you can come to the final step. You problem solve. And by all means, impose a severe consequence if you wish. Take away the phone for a period of time. Take away the apps. Throw away the vaping pen. Restrict your driver's license. Impose a curfew. Take away screens. All of those things. Have a child work hard to pay back any money that they've stolen. That's all necessary. But just realize this.

It won't solve the underlying issue. Do not equate giving a consequence with actually fixing this. Because what I really want to do is find constructive ways that meet the internal needs that the child was trying to meet by engaging in that activity, right? By building friendships and building confidence, a sense of purpose, finding positive ways to stimulate their brains, right?

to relieve anxiety and stress. That's a big one for your kids. They're going to, look, they're not a lot different than we are. How many of you, if you were honest, some nights after it's been a long day, you have a glass of wine?

Why? Or a drink because that just relaxes you a little bit. You are self-medicating. You are using alcohol to relieve stress. And I'm not saying that to judge you. I'm saying we sometimes do this with our kids. And I know they shouldn't be doing this. They're not old enough, all of those things. But it's pretty normal. And with kids now having easy access to this stuff, it kind of makes sense to me that they do it. So,

Now I can start brainstorming and problem solving with my child and say, look, you know, I can't let you do this. You know, it's not good for you. It's expensive. So what are some positive, healthy ways that you can relieve that anxiety and stress?

through exercise. I'll even exercise with you because I'm getting a little bit of a gut on me now and so I could use that myself. You could even develop a training program for me and you could become my trainer. I love doing that with kids because it gives them some measure of control over something. You do it by normalizing, by prioritizing, by perspective. Look for some of your kids it might be meditation or some of your kids it might be going to a youth group. That helps with all those things.

If your child struggles to fit in socially, that can drive him or her to take risks or do activities to appear cool. So I encourage you, listen to two podcasts. I did these back in July on social skills because that will give you a lot of tools to help your kids connect with friends. I'd also try to get them, look, sometimes this is from boredom and they're just trying to like, I'm bored. So I think I'm going to try these new things.

Finding, especially as your kids get older, we call it the mission of mentor process where we get your child using their natural gifts, talents, and passions in order to help or serve others, right? Because many of your kids are great with younger kids, with animals, with seniors.

So we get them using their gifts, talents, and passions. What are they good at doing? Are they good at playing? They love soccer and they love younger kids. So they go and they start helping a coach teach younger kids. Are they volunteering at an animal shelter? Are they feeding the homeless, visiting old people in a retirement center, service projects, starting a business, doing special jobs for teachers or elderly neighbors? All these things are very helpful and

This gives your kids practical tools to form positive friendships, relieve their anxiety, and develop a higher purpose. So look, I know this is really hard. The most important aspect of this is that connection builds relationship. Connection tends to change behavior. Connection breaks down walls. And I want your kids to learn this. Hey, you know what?

I did do something wrong. My parents didn't freak out. They listened to me. They didn't shame me. So I know next time something comes up, I can talk to them about anything.

So this is a huge opportunity to teach your child how to deal with the inevitable struggles of life in healthy ways, to problem solve, to build a closer relationship so that your child can trust you to help them navigate through life. So I know this stuff is really hard, but I encourage you,

Go through these steps, practice this, use the scripts, and let us know how we can help you. Thank you for listening. Thank you for working so hard at this. Thank you for all your comments on Instagram, for sharing the podcast with others. We really, really do appreciate it. Okay, love you all and respect you all very much for working so hard at this.