How to Stop Power Struggles With Your Child and Parent With Confidence

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Hey, parents, have you ever noticed that the same battles keep happening in
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your house at almost the exact same time every single day?
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Maybe it's getting your kids off electronics. Maybe it's homework time.
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Maybe it's bedtime or getting out the door in the morning.
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Maybe it's sibling fighting. It's just constant. Maybe it's after school attitudes.
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Or your teen's just shutting down the second that you ask them a question or
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how their day was. And every time it happens, you think, why are we doing this again?
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Like, what is going on? We literally just talked about this.
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They know better. And honestly, sometimes you probably feel defeated before
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the interaction even starts. You just know it's going to happen.
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You already know how it's going to go.
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Maybe you're avoiding it. Or maybe you prepare. Maybe you remind them.
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Maybe you explain or give warnings or you try to stay patient.
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And somehow it still turns into whining. arguing, stomping, eye-rolling,
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yelling, slam doors, disrespect, all the things.
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Maybe it's even a complete emotional meltdown and total chaos.
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And if you're not careful, you can start believing that the problem is your child's reaction.
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But honestly, a lot of the stress in families comes from what happens after
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the reaction starts. Because when your child gets emotionally activated,
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you get emotionally activated too.
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And now nobody's actually leading the moment when we're both emotionally activated.
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Welcome to the No Problem Parenting podcast, where you learn to lead your home
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with more confidence, clarity, and steadiness, even when behavior feels exhausting,
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emotional, or completely overwhelming.
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Last week, we talked about preparation and follow-through.
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And I told you that this week, we talk more specifically about what happens
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when your child still pushes back after you've prepared.
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Because this is where so many parents get thrown off. You think,
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I prepared them. I reminded them.
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I got my poop in a group. I'm okay. I explained the expectation.
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My kid knew what was coming. And then your child still melts down.
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And in that moment, it becomes super easy to panic internally.
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And you start thinking, this clearly isn't working. Or my kid's getting worse.
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Or maybe I'm being too strict. I'm doing it wrong.
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And maybe this isn't worth the fight. Maybe I should just let go and just give in.
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And then before you know it, you're over-explaining, negotiating,
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threatening consequences you can't even follow through on, or you're rescuing
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or yelling or defending yourself,
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Or emotionally, you're joining in on the chaos. And what I really want you to
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hear today is your child being upset does not automatically mean something has gone wrong.
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That's a huge mindset shift, parents, because somewhere along the way,
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many of us started believing that our job was to keep our kids emotionally comfortable
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all the time instead of helping them become capable over time.
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Dr. Leonard Sachs talks about this in The Collapse of Parenting, his book.
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He talks about how many parents have shifted away from being confident leaders
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in the home and into becoming emotional managers for their kids.
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And honestly, you can feel that pressure everywhere now.
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Pressure to explain every decision, pressure to negotiate everything,
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pressure to avoid disappointing your kids, pressure to rescue frustration immediately,
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or to prevent every uncomfortable feeling, and to let your kids lead the way. But here's the problem.
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When you become afraid of your child's emotional reaction,
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their emotions slowly start controlling the emotional climate of your home,
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not because your kid is bad, not because you're weak,
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not because anybody planned it that way, but because kids naturally push where
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leadership feels uncertain.
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And this is where No Problem Parenting shifts the conversation completely.
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The goal is not to stop every meltdown. The goal is to stop feeding the problem.
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That changes everything.
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Because many of us unintentionally feed behavior by matching the emotional intensity of the child.
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Your child gets louder, so you get louder. Your child gets disrespectful,
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and now you get defensive.
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Your kiddo spirals emotionally and suddenly you're spiraled in the emotion too.
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And now the entire family is emotionally revolving around one moment.
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Listen very carefully, parents, because this part matters.
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I am not saying ignore your child and I'm not saying feelings don't matter.
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And I'm definitely not saying become cold or disconnected.
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What I'm saying is you do not have to join the emotion in order to lead through the moment.
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That's what matter-of-fact parenting actually means.
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I teach this all the time. Matter-of-fact parenting is steady.
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It's predictable. It's clear. It's confident.
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It sounds like, you know what, kiddo, I hear ya. Yeah, that's disappointing.
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I see you're upset. The expectation still stands.
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We'll talk when your voice is respectful. You know what, buddy?
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You're gonna figure it out, and I'm here if needed.
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I'm not debating this. Or it sounds like we're gonna put this on pause and try again tomorrow.
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Notice what those responses are not doing.
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They're not escalating. They're not lecturing. They're not emotionally chasing
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the child, and they're not trying to win an argument.
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We're not explaining or over-explaining or shaming, no shaming,
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no panicking. They're simply steady statements.
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And honestly, many kids today are surrounded by emotional intensity everywhere they turn.
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Whether it's social media, their peers, the stress at school,
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the constant stimulation, the constant opinions, emotional reactions.
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Many kids are just craving steadiness.
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Too much stimulation, TMI. They're not looking for perfection or a perfect parent.
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They're looking for steady leadership. And sometimes that means you allow your
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child to be temporarily upset without making it your emergency.
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And that's hard for many parents, especially if you grew up around anger or
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chaos or criticism or rejection or emotional unpredictability yourself.
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Because now when your child gets upset, your nervous system immediately wants to fix it and fast.
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You want the noise to stop.
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You want the attitude to stop.
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You want the discomfort to stop. But sometimes your child simply needs practice
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moving through disappointment instead of watching everybody rearrange themselves around it.
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And that's how resilience develops. Not through avoiding the hard feelings,
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but surviving the hard feelings.
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And honestly, one of the biggest parenting traps right now is believing that
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every emotional reaction needs a giant emotional response. And it doesn't.
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At No Problem Parenting, we give problems only as much attention as they deserve.
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Not every behavior deserves a 30-minute lecture.
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Not every eye roll deserves a power struggle. And not every complaint deserves a negotiation.
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Nor does every meltdown deserve the entire family stopping everything they're
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doing to emotionally process this meltdown for hours.
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Sometimes less attention to the behavior actually helps the behavior shrink faster.
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It doesn't mean ignoring serious issues. Of course not.
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But many everyday battles get accidentally confused and fueled because too much
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emotional energy gets poured into them.
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Kids learn very quickly what controls the room. And honestly,
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many kids today have too much power emotionally in the household.
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And again, not because you're bad parents, but because you're exhausted and
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you're afraid of making things worse. So we kind of skirt around our kids' behaviors.
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But here's something important I want to share. Your child's temporary discomfort
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is not proof that you're harming them.
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Disappointment is a part of life. Frustration is a part of life.
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Waiting is a part of life. Being bored is a part of life and boundaries are a part of life.
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Responsibility is key and teaching
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that in a confident way helps our kids become capable of hard things.
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And a lot of battles in your home are also a lot more predictable than you think.
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You probably already know the moments that usually fall apart.
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You know your child best and you know they struggle in school or maybe they struggle after school.
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Or you know bedtime becomes messy when everybody's overtired.
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You know that transitioning away from electronics is hard. And you know that
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your kid melts down faster when they're hungry.
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Or maybe you know that sibling conflict in your home ramps up during boredom.
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And you know that your teen gets mouthy when they're overwhelmed.
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But many of us keep walking into those moments hoping that, well,
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maybe today, magically, something will go different.
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And then when it doesn't, you feel blindsided all over again.
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But preparation, step two of no problem parenting, preparation means stop acting
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surprised by the patterns.
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And start asking, hey, what usually happens before all of this falls apart?
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That question changes everything.
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Because often the behavior started long before the explosion itself.
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The bedtime battle might have started two hours earlier, and now they've got
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the tired sillies and they're all amped up.
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Or the homework battle might have started because your kiddo never decompressed
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after school and they didn't get a break.
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And they're just in overwhelm. And maybe the meltdown in the store happened
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or started because everybody was rushed.
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Hungry, just overstimulated at the end of a long day and emotionally overloaded
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before you even got to the store.
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Prepared parents stop focusing only on the behavior itself and we start paying attention to the setup.
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And then comes the really important part, preparing yourself too.
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This is huge because if you already know your child struggles with transitions,
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then you do need a plan for how you're going to respond when the pushback starts.
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Not if it starts, but when it starts.
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Because you know it's gonna. You decide ahead of time. I'm not gonna match the
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attitude. I'm not gonna lecture.
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I'm not gonna threaten things I won't follow through on. And I'm not gonna keep
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repeating myself 10 times.
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I'm just gonna stay short, clear, and matter of fact.
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That preparation, parents, is gonna really change everything because emotional
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reactions usually create more
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emotional reactions. But steadiness creates safety and trust, am I to add?
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Kids actually feel safer with adults who can handle hard moments without completely
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unraveling themselves.
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And this is where many parents finally start turning behavior problems into
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no problem, not because their child suddenly becomes perfect overnight,
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but because you stop feeding every emotional moment with more emotional energy.
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You stop personalizing every reaction. You stop panicking and chasing and over-explaining.
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You stop emotionally collapsing every time your child is unhappy.
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And instead, you lead them.
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You're steady, predictable, and as I like to say, matter of fact.
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And over time, your child starts to learn.
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My emotions do not control everybody else. The expectations still exist even
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when I'm upset. and my parents can handle hard moments. I can survive disappointment.
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That creates emotional safety and again, builds trust with your kids and it
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creates respect. It's not fear-based respect. It's not harsh control.
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It's steady leadership.
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Your kid learns that you are capable.
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Your kid learns you can be trusted. You can handle the hard things.
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If you need to hear this, I wanna give you permission. You are allowed to stop
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emotionally chasing every meltdown. You're allowed to pause before reacting to it.
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You're allowed to let your child be temporarily unhappy without making it your
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emergency. And you're allowed to stop feeding every moment, every emotional
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storm with emotional energy.
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That's not mean. That's leadership.
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And next week, we're going to talk even more specifically about how changing
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the conversation changes the behavior.
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Because sometimes it's not just what you say, it's how you say it or when you
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say it and how much emotional energy you bring into the moment.
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All right. Now, before we end today, I want to say something that might completely
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change the way you look at your child's behavior. What if the problem isn't
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that your child is too emotional or too sensitive or disrespectful or too difficult?
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What if the real problem is that nobody ever taught you how to lead through
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big behavior without reacting to it?
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You were taught how to stop behavior, how to punish behavior,
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how to control behavior, or to fix behavior.
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But you weren't taught how to understand it without feeding it.
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The Becoming a No Problem Parent training will help you understand why the same
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fights keep happening in your home.
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Why consequences sometimes stop working or don't work at all.
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Why yelling makes things worse and why your child melts down more with you than
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anyone else and why you keep feeling emotionally exhausted trying to hold everything together.
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The training helps you stop taking behavior so personally and start seeing what's
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actually happening underneath it because once you see behavior differently,
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you respond differently.
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And when you respond differently, your child often starts responding differently too.
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Parents tell me all the time, and my child didn't magically change overnight.
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But when I changed, the whole feeling of our home started changing.
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We had less yelling, less walking on eggshells, less emotional chaos.
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Much more confidence, steadiness, respect, and connection.
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Not because I became a perfect parent, but because I finally stopped feeding the problem.
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I understand the root of the problem, I'm prepared for it, and I'm changing
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the conversation in my home.
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So if you're tired of feeling like behavior controls the emotional climate of
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your home, the Become a No Problem Parent training was created for you.
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You can learn more right now at noproblemparents.com. It's practical,
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it's short, it's easy to apply in real life, and it helps you become the confident
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leader your kids crave you to be. All right, we'll see you next time.