Messes, Sibling Fights, Whining, Defiance: How to Tackle Your Triggers #476
24:13 Share

So you've heard me talk about my mom. She had MS and so many health challenges, but she never stopped sacrificing for her four boys. I wish she would have had access to proactive health tests like the ones you can get from Function Health. I think it would have made a real difference for her.

Function Health is the all-in-one health platform that helps you take control of your health through data. Instead of guessing what's happening inside your body, Function helps you know for sure, providing access to 100-plus advanced lab tests that include insights into thyroid function, hormones, autoimmunity, heavy metal toxicity, immune system, and more.

With Function, your first set of tests helps establish a baseline that makes it easy to spot even subtle changes and address them proactively. Function Health is the best way to care for you so you can continue to care for your kids. And to celebrate moms, Function Health created an illustrated book honoring moms that I think you'll find encouraging.

Download Long Live Moms for free today at functionhealth.com and learn more about how Function Health can help you take better care of you. Get Function Health's Long Live Moms book for free at functionhealth.com.

No one really understands how many details moms and dads have to manage every single day. That mental load can be exhausting. With Skylight Calendar, you can relax knowing all the details of your family schedule are visually displayed in one place with different colors for each family.

family member. That brings peace of mind knowing there will be no more last minute surprises that trigger your kids. Skylight Calendar syncs seamlessly with all of your calendars. You can manage events, chores, and grocery lists on the go with the free Skylight app. That means less stress, no more worrying about forgetting something important.

And your happiness is Skylight's happiness. So if in 120 days you are not 100% thrilled, you can return it for a full refund. No questions asked. Moms, get this for yourself for Mother's Day.

Right now, Skylight is offering our listeners $30 off their 15-inch calendars by going to skylightcal.com. Go to skylightcal.com for $30 off your 15-inch calendar. That's S-K-Y-L-I-G-H-T-C-A-L.com.

So what does trigger you? Is it messes, sibling fights, kids not listening, whining, complaining, tantrums, silliness at bedtime, kids talking back, procrastination, kids moving slowly when you need them to move more quickly? Could be all of these common things.

Some parents say, I spend hours making our home a peaceful, organized place to live. And within three minutes of getting home, all my work can be undone. That would trigger me as well. Here's one of mine. I hate when my kids procrastinate. What sets you off?

I want to give you specific action steps so you can preserve your sanity, overcome your triggers, and stop the reacting, yelling, and lecturing. So that is what we're going to discuss on today's episode of the Calm Parenting Podcast. Welcome. This is Kirk Martin, founder of Celebrate Calm, and you can find us at CelebrateCalm.com, where we have our Mother's Day sale going on to honor the moms out there. So welcome.

When I asked parents on our Instagram page what their biggest triggers were, here were common responses. Just the noise. The constant noise. Kids squabbling. Being silly at bedtime. Not listening.

This one, why won't my kids just get with the program and move? For many type A parents like me, it's the dawdling and moving too slowly, especially when we're trying to rush them because it always costs them to go more slowly. It irritates us.

Of course, many parents mention whining, tantrums. Those are pretty common ones that trigger us. A lot of parents get triggered by messes. A mom wrote, my trigger is the messes my kids leave. I don't need my house to stay overly spotless, but I need a decently tidy home like I need it for my sanity. I can go from zero to 100 pretty fast when I walk through and see a trail of mess.

Picture this, moms and dads, school books out on the table, lunch plates, crumbs, snack wrappers, dirty clothes on the floors, one shoe in the hall, one in the entryway, blankets all over, and don't get me started with the kids' bathrooms. Look, mom, I want to pay someone to come and do a deep cleaning or organizing for you sometime. Here's another honest reply from a good mom.

Messes trigger us to anger because we both grew up with lots of messes and clutter and it makes us frustrated. Ah, we've got some generational childhood things going on.

So I'm going to use messes as the primary example in this episode, but then I will apply the action steps to kids not listening, sibling fights, kids talking back, whining and tantrum silliness, kids moving slowly, all those things, because they all have similar roots and similar solutions.

And if you follow this action plan, it will release you from so many triggers and so much frustration, anger, and resentment, partially because many of you are breaking generational patterns of reacting to these triggers. And you're dealing with stuff from childhood that you learned from your parents. So number one, expect it, normalize it.

When you signed up for marriage, you forfeited your right to do what you want all the time. When you signed up to have kids, you forfeited the right to expect to have a non-messy home, a quiet home, a home free of sibling fights, and kids refusing to do exactly what you want.

Just because your home is messy and noisy or your kids act out doesn't mean you're a bad parent or that you're doing anything wrong. This is all normal. So change your expectation of yourself and your kids. By the way, some of you have parents like mine that enforced all this stuff, but at the cost of our independence and your relationship, it's not worth it. Just know this is all normal. Number two.

Next, I want you to take a bold action step. And this is going to challenge you. And you won't like me for this one. I want you to sit in it without fixing it yet. Practice this. Sit in the midst of the messes in your home. Physical messes. Emotional messes. Relational messes.

look around I'm not saying you're going you're not going to do anything about it or remedy these things

But I implore you, encourage you, even dare you to do this. One day, just sit down in the midst of the mess, in the midst of the sibling squabbles, the kid's silliness and noise, your child dawdling, without fixing it right away, without lecturing or pushing or trying to make it better.

Think about and even journal this. First identify what are you feeling in your body? Does your heart race a little bit? Do you feel short of breath? Does it give you a headache? Does it hurt your heart? Next, identify how this makes you feel inside.

Why does this trigger you so much? Does it feel overwhelming to you? Do you feel guilty over letting it get out of control like this? Do you feel like you've somehow failed because your kids are slobby? They're not kind to each other. They don't move with urgency. They don't appreciate you. Do you fear your kids will grow up and be unable to be organized and live a chaotic life? That they will procrastinate and they'll miss out on opportunities?

Do you have a fear like I just did that I messed up all those words, but I'm trusting that you understood what I said because I am practicing imperfection. I really want to rerecord that, but I'm purposefully not.

I'm sitting in it without fixing it so I can model this. Is it just plain irritating because you work so hard for five hours to keep the house organized and then your kids come in and mess it up within five minutes? Or maybe a spouse does. Do you feel resentful towards your kids? Do you take the messes, the talking back, the sibling squabbles personally as disrespect towards you?

Were you raised in a home that was messy and chaotic, and so you fear you are replicating that negative pattern in your life? Did you grow up in a home where you were required to keep it spotless, and so now you feel the judgment of your parents? How could you let this happen to your home? Didn't we raise you better than this?

Or maybe the one way you learned to get your mom or dad's affection or approval was to be clean and organized or to move quickly and to do exactly as you were told. Maybe you weren't allowed to be silly or noisy, so it's deep inside you. Do you now sound like your mom or dad as you rant about the messes or kids procrastinating and fighting each other?

Look, you're breaking generational patterns, so this is hard. But I want you to release yourself from these false expectations because otherwise you will drown in them and you will end up yelling and it will hurt your relationships.

So take some time to think through the origins of your triggers. If you need to work on this a bit, listen to the March 9th, 2024 episode, Three Ways to Break Childhood Patterns and Reparent Yourself. It's actually March 9th, 2025. A whole year has gone by.

So then for the next few days, and this is days, not weeks or years, I want you to sit in the midst of the physical and emotional messes without fixing them. Make peace with this inside. It's not going to cause anyone to die. And don't give me that BS that if there's a fire, your kids won't be able to make it out of their room because they can make it out of their room if they want video games or food. Sit and normalize your breathing. And here's a bonus tip.

When you do this, read a book or listen to some music while you are sitting in the midst of it because the rhythm of the music, the order of reading that book or even doing a crossword puzzle, it'll help you.

Want a short-term win? Sit in the midst of it until it doesn't trigger you viscerally. It doesn't mean you don't want your kids to clean up their messes or stop being silly and squabbling. It just means it doesn't trigger you viscerally. Because when you get triggered, you tend to lecture, yell, repeat yourself 14 times. And when you do that, it makes you sound and feel powerless and weak.

And it caused you to complain and you try to bribe and plead and go on and on. And eventually you just yell and nobody takes you seriously because it becomes this irrational drama you create. It's just like with regular discipline. I want you to do it in an even matter of fact manner.

That's when your kids will take you seriously. Otherwise, they know this and they will have power over you. So sit in it. It'll still irritate you, but it won't just trigger you so much. Number three, stop the drama.

Stop giving this and your kids power over your emotions. Some of you constantly talk about these things to your friends. You are giving this power over you. I know you want to hit me right now, but it's true. Look, I'm with you. I'm a neat freak. I have a very high need for order on the outside because I struggle with anxiety and

and feeling a little disorderly in my brain. I'm also highly sensitive to noise. So when we had 1500 kids in our home, I had to wrestle with this and work really hard at it. So I like things to be quiet and in order. But the truth is you're giving this power over your emotions and over your relationship with your child and yourself. It's robbing from you, it's stealing from you. So resign from your job.

of always being upset about messes and sibling fights. You're not denying that it bothers you, but you are saying, I'm not going to be bothered by it anymore. Stop giving it energy and power to change your mood. I release you from having that power over me.

This is somewhat related to this. At times in my life, I have been triggered by other human beings, sometimes justly and sometimes because I'm just a jerk.

What releases me is doing something kind or thoughtful for them. So look, they still bug me, but I'm not giving them power over me or my mood. I'm taking back a little bit of control over that.

So when I'm anxious about finances, I purposefully give to others to break that hold on me. It's like we do with our anxiety. When I'm in a rush, I purposefully slow down.

I would bet that without even all the other tips we're going to go through, you will change 80% of the issue just by controlling and changing yourself. You don't have to react. You don't have to. Now, as you do this, have compassion on yourself because some of these things come from trauma in your childhood. You had a chaotic family life growing up and you swore you'd never allow that kind of chaos in your home.

If things are not in order, it triggers feelings of trauma and that's real, that's hard, but you still have to overcome that and make peace with it. Okay, step number four.

Moms and dads, you and I have kids who love to build stuff and figure out how things work. What if you could feed your child's engineering brain or creativity with a new fun project to build each week this summer? KiwiCo delivers awesome science, engineering, and art projects right to your door with everything you need to complete the project. My nephew and I just built the KiwiCo delivery robot together.

And I love the confidence and curiosity that these KiwiCo projects spark in him. I signed my nephew up for the KiwiCo Summer Adventure Series, which is why I am his favorite uncle. Your kids will receive six hands-on project kits over six weeks.

And we're most excited about the archery set because he gets to build his own bow. Plus it gets him outside, off screens, using his natural skills and learning new ones. And KiwiCo offers summer programs for kids of all ages from 2 through to 10 years.

Build the best summer ever with KiwiCo. Get $15 off on your summer adventure series at KiwiCo.com slash calm. That's $15 off your summer adventure at K-I-W-I-C-O dot com slash calm.

I can say without a doubt, one of the best things we ever did was teach Casey how to manage money from a young age. It has made a huge difference in his daily life. That's why I'm excited that today's episode is sponsored by Acorns Early. Acorns Early is a smart money app and debit card for kids that helps them learn the value of money. You can even set up the Acorns Early chores tracker in the app and automatically send a weekly allowance to your kid's account.

your kids can spend what they earn with their very own debit card. You know your kids are going to love this sense of independence while you have parental controls to watch their spending.

Using Acorns Early is a fantastic practical tool to show your kids how to delay gratification and manage their own money. Head to acornsearly.com or download the Acorns Early app to help your kids grow their money skills today. That's acornsearly.com slash calm.

Acorns Early Card is issued by Community Federal Savings Bank member FDIC, pursuant to license by MasterCard International. Terms and conditions apply. Monthly subscription fee starting from $5 per month unless canceled.

What can you control in that moment? Because what gets us so triggered at times is when things feel like they're out of our control. So think about what you can control when this is bothering you so much because you can't always control other people or situations.

So have a go-to activity that brings you peace and a sense of order. Look, it's perfectly fine to clean the kitchen sink or organize a closet, complete a crossword puzzle, create or make something, listen to music. Look, when I get frustrated, I go right to my Excel spreadsheet. Why? Because

I have control. I input numbers into there and it all adds up. It is so orderly because most of my day is

is handling really difficult questions that drain me emotionally. So I count things. That's another one for me. My steps, the amount of vertical hiking I have done, how many vertical feet we have hiked for the year. I love all that stuff. My receipts for business. I love all that stuff. Why? It's concrete. It's divisible. It's orderly.

as opposed to all those hard questions or all the messes relationally and emotionally and physically that you're dealing with. I'll give you a weird tip. So when we had all those kids in our home, that constant noise ate away at my peace. So I began, I would kind of just gently ball up my fists and then I would bump them against my thighs and I'm doing it right now in a rhythmic motion.

Because what was happening was that rhythmic motion would counter the disorder of the discordant noise. And I would focus more on that kind of vibration that's happening in my body rather than just being irritated because the kids couldn't keep quiet and they're always arguing. So what is one area in your home that can be a refuge for you? I'm not talking about disappearing for hours.

But I almost just said like curl up in your cozy earth sheets and blankets. And I really don't mind that idea because you counter disorder with comfort. I'm actually wearing my cozy earth pullover right now. Why? Just because it's comforting. It's soft. And I'm in control of it. Okay, number five, be...

Be assertive and ask for help. If you have done too much for your kids and now you're resentful because they won't pick up messes or listen to you, then you can apologize to them for setting this expectation. And then you can begin asking, requiring them to do more. This is a really hard pattern to break, but it's crucial to do it.

Some of you have a spouse who comes home and complains about the mess, the kids being loud. Look, in my experience, engineers, project managers, people in IT, accountants often struggle when there is disorder in the home. See, at work, everything is fairly organized, and if you're a supervisor, you can tell other people what to do.

And most men and women have a much easier time at work because the office is usually organized and neat and colleagues, for the most part, aren't crying, screaming at you, wailing away on the floor and calling you stupid.

See, at work there's a comforting consistency. But when you walk through the front door of your home, there are Legos on the floor, messes in the kitchen, kids are running around and making noise. And that's hard because it messes with your own internal sense of and need for order. So you begin barking consequences or yelling or complaining about the disorder.

But then the other spouse has to manage your emotions, the other spouse's emotions, and try to make everything just so. And that's not healthy or right or sustainable. So you may have to be very even, matter of fact, and direct with this spouse. Hey, if this bothers you, then I need your help, not your complaints.

And I'm not going to be the mediator between my spouse and children anymore. So here's exactly how you can help when you come home. And then lay out two to three very specific missions your spouse can carry out that would help you and connect with the kids. So here's a kind of a cool tip if you struggle with this.

Treat your kids, talk to them like they're a colleague or a young person you're mentoring at work. Because at work, we tend not to yell at, criticize, or demean them. If you do, you're kind of a jerk, right? We pull them aside and say, hey,

"Hey, the last project, on that last project you did, that's not your best work because I've seen what you're capable of. Hey, why don't we grab lunch and I'll help you make some adjustments." You teach and you problem solve. You train them. You give them new skills and tools. So do this with your kids.

One of the hardest things for some women is being assertive and speaking up for yourself, especially when you've been dismissed or if you married a controlling man. It can be intimidating and hard. Some of you have always been passive, but this is the perfect opportunity to learn new skills, to break those old patterns, and demonstrate that you respect yourself.

because people won't respect you if you don't respect yourself. So learn how to be assertive. I've gone through that before. Remember, being bossy is telling other people what they have to do. Being assertive is telling people what you're going to do.

Being assertive is letting people know how they can help you. Okay, number six. Let me give you a sneak preview of what we'll get into in the next episode by showing you how sitting will actually help some of the issues that drive you crazy now.

If you have younger kids, they'll often feed off of each other's energy at bedtime. They'll begin to act silly or they'll just get plain wild. And if you get triggered, which is understandable because this is the time of day when you're exhausted and have had it and you just want them in bed so you can have some peace or time with your spouse or time alone to complete the 83 things that are left to be done before collapsing yourself into bed.

If you do that, you'll react and threaten the kids. You know what? If you guys don't stop right now and go to bed, no fun tomorrow, or we're not going to read our bedtime story. And now they may stop running wildly, but they'll start crying and melting down wildly.

If you try to chase them down, they'll see it as a game and run faster. But I bet if you lie on the floor, just make sure your kids aren't going to jump on your head or back. But if you were to lie down and begin reading something or doing a puzzle or laughing with your spouse without giving the kids any energy, your kids will come and join you. See, by leading and controlling yourself, you change their behavior more quickly. It's really cool. Number seven.

Get perspective. Think what the messes and noise represent. Just do this for 15 seconds. Sit on the stairs. Quiet yourself and look around you. What do these messes represent? Instead of just thinking these messes represent your child's ingratitude and disrespect towards you or your failure to train them properly, consider this as well.

These messes and noise represent normal family life. There is life here. There are children here. You have a living, breathing home and family life. It's not a moral issue. It's just irritating, but it's not life altering. Picture your life 10, 15, 20 years from now. You will be thrilled when your kids are gone at first. Your house is going to be so clean and tidy.

But then one day, you'll miss what that represents. You'll miss that teenager who just opens the fridge and stands there for way too long, letting the cold air out, and then grabs something to eat and leaves the wrapper on the counter. You will one day miss that. Right now, it's just irritating. So, number eight. Here is an option for perhaps a certain room or several rooms.

And I really mean this. Just happily clean it. Just happily clean it up yourself while listening to music or a podcast and go about your day. No drama, no complaining, no talking to your friends about it. I'm not saying this is what I recommend. I'm saying it's a really good option for many of you. It alleviates your stress and drama and you get what you want.

cleanliness, order, without lecturing or yelling. Now you've got a neat home without any negative feelings.

you slip into your child's bedroom and tidy it up like the little cleaning elf right for five minutes don't say a word everyone's a little happier and it's just not worth the fight to go through everything else by the way if you need the dishwasher to be loaded a certain particular way then

then just be the dishwasher loader and don't let anyone else near it. Just handle it. See, it's unfair to ask other people in your home to do what will never please you. Because if they can't please you, then you have to relinquish that right to yell at them and then just do it yourself. You and everybody else will be much happier. Number

Number nine, you could pay someone to clean up. It's an option. You could even hire, watch, this is a weird one, but I guarantee if some of you do this, it is brilliant. Brilliant's a little too strong. It's a really cool idea.

You could hire someone else's kid to clean up at your house. Hire someone else's kid who's like yours, who won't even clean up at their own home, but they would be thrilled to help at your home because you're not their mom or dad. And then you don't have to pay a kid as much as you have to pay a professional cleaning service. Think about that one. Number 10, rent.

realize you are breaking generational patterns so your kids don't have to struggle with the same things when they have relationships. As you practice, and it is practice, as you practice sitting,

in the midst of chaos and messes until they don't trigger you viscerally. You are modeling for your kids how to control yourself, how to overcome things that bother you. That is the best discipline you can give your kids, modeling this.

because they are literally watching you change right in front of them. And science tells us that you accomplish this by what? By repeated voluntary exposure to that which causes you anxiety. So practice it.

celebrate the fact that you are now 5% more comfortable with it than you were a couple days ago. And soon you'll be 15% and then 25% more comfortable. And if that means you stop reacting and yelling and lecturing 25% less,

That's a huge win. If you have our programs, go through the 30 Days to Calm program first because it details how I went from being reactive dad to the calm guy. It's in the Get Everything package. It's with the Mother's Day sale.

In the next episode, we're going to go through how to motivate your kids to clean up, to reduce the tantrums and whining and sibling squabbles so that they can handle their own physical, emotional, and relational messes on their own so you don't have to follow them around taking responsibility for that. This is such a cool thing that you're doing in breaking these patterns for your kids and

It relates to that idea I relayed on a recent podcast about having a trigger board in your home. So let's do this, Moms and Dads. Sit in it. Don't fix it. Super proud of you. Thanks for sharing the podcast and we'll talk to you soon. Love you all. Bye-bye.