Feeling Judged By Family? 10 Quick Tips With A Strong-Willed Child
27:37 Share

Want to shop Walmart Black Friday deals first? Walmart Plus members get early access to our hottest deals. Join now and get 50% off a one-year annual membership. Shop Black Friday deals first with Walmart Plus. See terms at walmartplus.com.

Thank you.

with a crunchy oat streusel topping made with care for the sweet tooth and the savory tooth. With Ralph's, fill your table with love and watch as your guests' hearts get as full as their bellies. Ralph's, fresh for everyone. So how many of us as parents of Strongwell kids feel misunderstood? We get second-guessed and we second-guess ourselves because most of the typical advice out there is,

tends to backfire on our strong-willed and neurodivergent kids. It just doesn't work. And so everywhere we go, sometimes it's teachers, it's school, it's our own family members. Some of you, it's your own spouse judges you and second guesses you.

And now we're entering in this season for like the next six weeks all over the world. Families are going to be getting together to celebrate various holidays. And a lot of times that just means a lot of extra judgment because your family members often have really strong opinions about what you're doing wrong and why you just need to discipline that kid more and you're coddling that child.

but you know inside that those typical approaches don't work with your kids. And in the last podcast episode, I went through an example kind of around Thanksgiving dinner. If you haven't listened to that, I think you'll find it very helpful.

But during this time together, all through the holidays, I want to use this time to be constructive, to start to change this dynamic. And that is what we are going to discuss on today's episode of the Calm Parenting Podcast. I want to give you 10 different tools to use with your family and maybe even with your spouse to change this. So welcome. This is Kirk Martin. I'm founder of Celebrate Calm.

You can find us and the final week of our Black Friday sale at CelebrateCalm.com. So number one tool, be confident.

I'll come back to this, but I want to sow that seed. Your confidence is critical in these situations because you know what? Your kids will even pick up on your confidence. And I mentioned in the last podcast, there were times where I think for Casey, it felt like I was throwing him under the bus in order to salvage my own ego and not be embarrassed. So I want you to know, if you have a strong-willed child, a neurodivergent child, always,

All of these situations are typical. It's difficult. You didn't do something wrong. And there's nothing wrong with your child. They're just different and it's hard. So ignore that nonsense you hear from schools and family and society. Number two, I want you to set your child up for success proactively. Look, you've heard me say this. Our Strong Will Kids program

They're just not always that great in the kid world. They're not always great as kids, but they're usually very adept at managing the adult world. They're kind of very good in the adult world, but not in the kid world. And everything we ask them to do is kind of in the kid world, but we're not raising our children to be kids. We're raising them to be adults and they will crush it in the adult world. So,

Think about this. What are your kids good at doing? What are their natural gifts, talents, and passions? Is it building, cooking, creating, making things, arguing with you? Good, because it shows they're good thinkers, good critical thinking skills. So think about this.

When is your child most content? When other adults tend to brag about your child to you, because you've seen that, what are they usually saying or bragging about? So what I want to do during the holidays, during these get-togethers is, let's give your child an opportunity to do those things he or she excels at over Thanksgiving.

Ask a grandpa or grandpa, grandma or grandpa, or an aunt or uncle to actually give your child a specific mission when they come to your house.

Hey, Benjamin, I've heard you're really great at doing X. Do you think you could help me with this project? See, it's a great way to build a connection over your child's strengths and let relatives see your child shine. See, put your child in a position to succeed, to excel, to accomplish

to shine. Some of you have kids who are awesome with younger kids. So maybe they help babysit or take care of the younger kids.

to give your sister-in-law a break with her kids. I just want the other adults in the room to see your child at his or her best. Giving your child a mission will also focus their energy and boost their confidence. See if you can find two or three different projects your child can take on throughout the day. And don't be afraid to ask them to do adult-type jobs.

Look, they may be awesome at cooking a part of the meal, carving the turkey with a homemade hatchet that they made, or handling some grown-up responsibility. Let them do it. See, just saying, "Hey, go play with your cousins,"

or beyond your best behavior won't work. So put some thought into this ahead of time. And you may even ask your kids, hey, what do you want to do? Because this is just good preparation for real life. You put yourself in a position to succeed. Okay, number three.

Plan some time away during family visits. And this includes all vacations and time, any time with big groups of extended family. On week-long summer vacations, we always took a day to ourselves or ate dinner one night by ourselves just to get away and decompress.

On Thanksgiving, plan a run to the grocery store. Now, check ahead, make sure they're open, or actually, who cares if they're not? Just volunteer to run, get that one last minute thing from your OCD relative that they forgot and they're freaking out about.

Volunteer to go do anything. Just get out of that house with your strong-willed child. Go for a drive. Go stop at McDonald's. Play in a park or some woods somewhere. Look, getting good sensory pressure and exercise before Thanksgiving dinner is really helpful. Look, you're already going to get judged. Why not at least get out and play and laugh together for an hour and then come back fresh?

Number four, show and tell. Is there something your child made or created or did recently that you can bring to Thanksgiving, to the get-together? Some way to kind of go on the offensive and change the narrative a bit from feeling defensive. Can you show family a video of something they created or just bring something that they built? Oh man, I can't wait to show you what Kira did.

Look, everybody else is likely coming in and talking about their wonderful child and how they made the honor roll again and has all straight A's and is gifted and how teachers rave about them. And that's wonderful for those kids.

But I don't want you having to compare your child on a playing field that isn't level. I want you showing off your child's gifts and talents. Did your child donate money to a homeless person on the streets?

or volunteer at an animal shelter? Did your child start a little side business, making money, working on a robot or some creation? Take apart something complex and not put it back together. Kidding. But take about, right? Because a lot of our kids take things apart in our homes and then don't put them back together. But sometimes they'll take things apart and rebuild it like a future engineer.

And just by the way, if they are good at that, you likely have, there's a grandparent, an uncle, an aunt who's really good at building, making things, taking things apart. Set that up ahead of time. Remember we talked about that idea of going to a thrift store and buying old stuff to kind of put together, to take apart, to see how it works, to rebuild things.

Take that to the family get-together. And you may end up having family looking at your child saying, like, wow, that kid's got a lot of energy. Maybe that child doesn't always get the best grades. But man, that kid is phenomenal at that. That's what I really want for your kids because they are phenomenal at things.

In our society, we just don't tend to show that off because we're so focused on good grades and good behavior. And remember we talked in the last episode about giving your kids a different report card. See, bring that along to the get-together because everybody else is going to show off their child's report card for school. And you can say, hey, you know what we started doing? We're creating a report card for life.

Look at all our son or daughters Life skills and how they're gonna crush it in the real world and we talked about giving them a new name So say that in front of your family up here comes my junior Steve Jobs. Oh here comes my daughter That's super creative. Hey, what have you been thinking about lately? number five related to that is let's take back control of the narrative and

And if you will allow me, I want to begin with my snarky responses to your relatives. And this is mainly just for fun because it's cathartic. And these are things that maybe you've always wanted to say to your family, but you can't always say it. But there's some truth in here you can extract

and use. But here are some things I always wanted to say to our well-meaning relatives, we'll give them the benefit of the doubt, who are concerned about you and your child and the job you're doing raising your child.

And so I always wanted to say, and I did say this sometimes because I am a little bit more oppositional, but it could sound like this. Oh, so you're still raising your children to be good at being, well, just children?

Well, how quaint. See, we're raising Malik to excel as an adult, which he's already doing. Because everywhere we go, literally everyone tells us how helpful Malik is. Once a week, he cooks us a full meal. He helped an elderly neighbor clean out his gutters, and he actually cleaned it out using a special stick that he invented. He just started investing his own money that he made from his own little side business. He's already making some great investments researching different companies.

And we know he's not that great at doing kid things, but man, he's going to kill it as an adult. He's already started. So tell me more about how your son is doing so well memorizing information for children's tests. Again, snarky, I know.

But you can leave out some of that to be a gracious person. But do not shrink back from giving perspective here on what you're trying to accomplish. You are not raising your child to be good at childhood stuff, which is largely arbitrary in nature and which you don't have to ever do again when you're an adult. You're raising your child to crush it in the adult world.

So here's one more. Oh, you're still raising your child to be a compliant rule follower? How sad in this day and age when what's necessary in the adult world is a take-charge leader, an entrepreneur who's not afraid to take risks and push the limits. Your little Sarah is such an adorable people pleaser. I'm sure she'll find an excellent mate who's controlling just like you did.

Now, I know you can't say that because it's not gracious or kind and you wouldn't be invited back to the house next year, which might be a bonus. So you can't do that. But you can, in a confident manner, give perspective. Hey, we've thought a lot about this and we've challenged ourselves asking, what do we really want?

We have second-guessed ourselves. We have asked, are we letting our child get away with things?

And we've asked these questions and with our daughter, look, this is how she's made. We want her to be her adorable self. She's happy. She gets along with everyone else. She's like a little mayor. She gets good grades and that's who she is. And with our son, he came out of the womb intense, fighting and clawing for what he wants and what he believes in. And that strong sense of justice is

And we made the mistake of fighting his very nature for the first eight years of his life because we thought he was just so difficult and because we listened to the judgment of others.

until we realized much of that resistance was created by us because we have anxiety and we have control issues. And look, you could even point out, look, that's in our family DNA, but we're starting to learn how to use that intensity to our advantage and to his advantage. And then you can share some examples.

of him asking questions, being a good critical thinker and inventor. See, that's good perspective that you can provide for your family.

So we were just away from home for a couple weeks and we noticed something interesting. We both had stuffy noses, but after being home for a few days, we're breathing more freely again. And I think that's because of our Air Doctor air purifier. See, the indoor air that we breathe can be up to 100 times more polluted than outdoor air.

That's why we rely on our Air Doctor, the air purifier that filters out 99.99% of dangerous contaminants so your lungs don't have to. Air Doctor comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee. So if you don't love it, just send it back for a refund minus shipping. Head to airdoctorpro.com and use promo code CALM and you'll receive up to $300 off air purifiers.

Our podcast listeners also receive a free three-year warranty on any unit, which is an additional $84 value. Lock in this special offer by going to airdrpro.com and use promo code CALM.

So we have a nephew who's a sensory kid like many of yours and clothes can be a real battle. We sent him MeUndies Kids for his birthday and now, like your kids, it's all he wants to wear. Why? Because MeUndies Kids has the softest kids undies on the market thanks to four-way stretch fabric that feels three times softer than cotton. MeUndies Kids have no irritating tags and my nephew loves the fun prints.

Ordering is stress-free. Not happy with your first pair of undies? It's on MeUndiesKids. Check out the brand new MeUndiesKids line today. To get 20% off your first order, plus free shipping, go to MeUndies.com slash CalmPod and order now.

and enter promo code CALMPOD. That's meundies.com slash CALMPOD, code CALMPOD for 20% off plus free shipping. MeUndies, comfort from the outside in. Number six, let's keep on this theme. Educate, give perspective, and this is going to require a little more specificity. If you have our programs online,

Listen to the ADHD University program because it will explain exactly how your child's brain works differently and why our kids do certain things. And then you'll be able to use brain science that makes sense. And it'll help you feel more like an authority on your child's brain development and function. And that kind of helps your relatives see you and your child in a different light.

so you give perspective about your child's life. Share some parts of their day that your relatives may have never considered. Hey, have you ever noticed that Dylan connects really well with older kids and little kids and adults?

but struggles with kids his own age? That's rough because you basically spend 12 years in school with kids your own age, but that never happens after college. Now it's ultimately great because you spend most of your life as an adult,

But it just makes it harder to be a kid. And sometimes he kind of ends up sitting alone in the cafeteria. Have you ever noticed he's not always great at sports? Well, that makes it hard at recess. And he's got an extraordinary amount of physical energy. And his body craves that sensory pressure. So that's why you see him climbing trees. And he loves martial arts and bumping up against things. And if you asked him for help, he'd go outside right now. He'd shovel mulch and dig holes for you.

and he'd do a great job, but it just makes it harder at certain kid things. So he's not always great at team sports and he feels alone at times. See, it's not a sympathy play. It's just helping family and friends see your child as a human, not as just a difficult kid.

And you can give life examples from your own larger family. Hey, to your brother-in-law, hey, remember that job you had that just wasn't a great fit? And remember how miserable you were working for that company until you quit and found another job?

Well, Grayson feels the same way. It's like school doesn't capitalize on any of his strengths, but it exposes all of his weaknesses. That's kind of why you were unhappy in that job. They didn't take advantage of the things you were good at. But see, he can't quit or change teachers whenever he wants.

You could say, hey, I was thinking about how much I miss Uncle Bob being here. He was always so quirky and he always wanted to do things his own way. Remember that? He never really cared about fitting in with the way everybody else did things, but he was always the happiest guy. And he was an entrepreneur. He ran his own business. He actually made a lot of money. He was happy at it.

Even though his siblings had all the advanced degrees, he ended up being the most successful and he loved his life.

That's what I see in our daughter. It's just a tougher road to get there. See, you're drawing them out to see the wider perspective. Now, here's a tough one for you. Maybe number seven, ask for help. Be vulnerable and ask, hey, I could really use your help.

Look, we can do this dance for many more years where you guys are concerned and offer suggestions where we get defensive and none of us agree on how we're raising this strong-willed child.

but I know that you genuinely do care and you want to help. So here is how you can do that in tangible ways. Now, one thing I'd ask, which I know is a little bit self-serving, but it's also just practical and free. Hey, would you listen to a couple episodes of this Calm Parenting podcast?

It's by a dad who strikes a really good balance between that kind of old authoritarian approach and the approach that's too sweet. And we're trying to learn how to be calm, calm, assertive, confident, authoritative leaders who understands and gives our kids tools to succeed. It's a middle ground we're trying to work on. And we could use your support.

That's a simple ask. Maybe point them to a couple episodes that you found particularly helpful or relevant about their nephew or their grandson. And they're going to be skeptical, of course, and that's normal. But maybe some of your relatives will listen and come alongside you to help. Look, if you don't have our programs, well, get them now. You can order right while you're on the way to Grandma's House Online and get them as instant downloads.

but you can share them with your family and even your child's teachers.

And so that way, look, I want you to know, you all have access to our programs forever. They never expire. And whenever I update programs, I just updated the dad's one and there's a marriage one, it automatically downloads to this app. So forever, I'm always going through and updating content and you'll always have access to that. And all you have to do after your order is email us your family members email,

email addresses, teachers' email addresses, and we'll send them right to them for free. So number eight, enjoy your strong-willed kids. Accept them as they are. And I know that sounds simple, but it can be hard. It's also important because once you really understand why your child does these things,

and you make peace with the fact that it's difficult, and you accept them as they are, your attitude towards your child will change, and your family will pick up on that. Number nine, get on the same page as parents and be unified as a couple.

Remember that scene I painted in the last episode with the mom being judged and the dad overreacting, trying not to act like a soft dad who makes the entire, but we know that makes the entire situation worse. That was us. That was me. And it made us look so weak and ill-prepared.

In some ways, my family was judging correctly. It was no wonder that Casey was emotionally volatile. Guess where he learned that? From me. And our family just heard us always being defensive.

And I'll say this, this is for both husbands and wives, for the men out there, your wife and kids need you to learn how to model being a calm leader in your home. There's no blame and no guilt here, but there's no way around this. Either you get control of your own emotions or nothing will change in your home, except that it will get worse. And mom, same thing.

You've got to get rid of that guilt and anxiety. Break those generational patterns once and for all. And once you both calm your own anxiety and control issues and reactions, then you can get unified on how to discipline and motivate your strong-willed child.

But even if you aren't there yet, go into Thanksgiving and Christmas and the holidays unified with the above plan. Encourage each other. Stand next to each other as you say the above things to your relatives. Your confidence will

will, will make a difference. So I'm going to end on that. Number 10, be confident. This is perhaps the most important step. When your relatives are making comments and your child is acting out, you'll naturally want to become defensive and apologize. And it's hard when you're surrounded by all these other people, but I don't want you to apologize for your child or yourself or be defensive. I want you to be confident, even if you're partly faking it.

I want you to have that perspective we talked about above. Your child is going to kill it in the adult world, even if he isn't always awesome at doing the arbitrary kid things. His brain or her brain does work in different and even better ways in certain areas. You are doing the right thing by teaching and problem solving and taking a different approach to

I want you to feel confident. I want you to feel confident in front of your kids because that will cause fear.

family, your kids to see you in a different light and trust you and see and understand your perspective. So let's do this moms and dads. Plan ahead. Create some successes upon arrival wherever you're going or if relatives are coming to your house. Let's have uncles and grandparents and aunts give your child specific missions they're naturally good at doing and

and praise your kids for doing those missions well. Let's plan for some short breaks away from family to decompress and laugh a little bit at Uncle Frank's self-importance. And your Strong Will kids will probably do a fantastic impression of him. So, look, bring your own meal for your Strong Will kids. Who cares? Who cares if they eat mac and cheese on Thanksgiving while everyone else is gorging on carbs and desserts?

and prepare some of those snarky, I mean, educational talks with your family. Walk in there with confidence and know that you're doing the right thing. Happy Thanksgiving from our family to yours. If you need anything, reach out to Casey. We'll probably even answer on Thanksgiving. All right. Love you all. So much respect to you as parents of these strong willed kids.

Thank you for sharing. Enjoy this time together and use this as a model for the future going forward. We're going to put our child in positions to succeed and shine and show off their natural gifts and talents because that builds their confidence. So take some stuff there for them to build and put together or let them take apart your grandparents' bathroom. Anyway, okay, we'll talk to you later. Love you all. Bye-bye.