There’ll be times people say, “Oh, I bet you your family is so great and so peaceful,” and I’m like, “Mine? Not so much, not so much.” But again, it’s what I practice now. So I have six kids, but the twins are eleven. All the kids are out of the house, but the twins are here, and they’re constantly battling. They’re at that age; they’re starting hormonal stuff, and it’s a boy-girl twin with constant bickering. They’ll have hours of best friends, and then they’ll bicker and bicker. And so here I work with other families, and I’m like, thinking, it just dawned on me. I’m like, “Why am I just sitting through this and going through the pain of this? Why am I not doing something as if this were a client?” And so all of a sudden, I came up with a strategy just off the top of my head, and it’s working.
So I tell them, I say, the minute they raise their tone or like, shut up. So what I need to do is take that tone, take whatever they need, go to their room, and not come out until you find a solution. Do better. So they come out, “I got a solution, I got a solution.” I said, “Okay, what’s the solution?” They said, “I need to take a breath before I tell my sister this or before I tell my brother that.” I said, “Okay.” And then all of a sudden the tonality rises. I’m like, “No, go to your room; find another solution.” And I said, “This time, find a solution. You’re going to follow through on.” It has been the last 24 hours that have been the quietest between those two that I’ve had in months.
But I said to my husband, “You got to follow through on this, buddy. Like, as much as it’s going to be tough in the beginning, I promise you, we will reap the rewards as long as you and I can stay on the same page, aligned with this. And then every time they’re rude to each other or rude to us, we’re like, “Go to your room,” because we have created their room as our safe space. First of all, we don’t say you can’t be mad. You can’t be sad. You can’t be like this. You could feel your feelings. We want our kids to feel their feelings, but do it in your room because it’s a safe space for you. And when you’re ready to come and be a part of the family where there’s nice love and kindness, that’s when we want you to step out and give us the solution of what that’s going to look like that you’re going to follow through on. And I’ll be damned if it’s working. I’m like, but I’ll tell you, because this is what most families go through. They don’t realize that they have the power and the wisdom in that moment.
Listen to the full episode here:
“Fueling Passion: Navigating Learning Differences and Parenting Strategies” with Todd Hartley
For more parenting content, visit my Podcast Redefine Parenting Show: