POD 80. The Most Underused Parenting Strategy === Happy New Year! It is a brand new year, 2024, and I hope you are feeling excited and energized about the new year ahead of you. I am actually recording this episode the week before Christmas because I am preparing to take a couple of weeks off to spend time just enjoying my family over the holidays. And I hope that you have had opportunity to spend a lot of time with your family and your loved ones over the holidays as well. And while my brain is having a little bit of trouble wrapping around a whole new year to come when we haven't gotten through the holidays yet, I really am looking forward to 2024 with so much anticipation. I am so excited about what I have planned for the podcast in the coming year, but I'm also really, really excited about some changes that are coming to my Enjoy coaching community. Since I started that community a year and a half ago, it has grown and evolved and become something so much better than anything I ever could have imagined when I started it. There are so many incredible resources in the community now. There's a whole library of parenting tools. There is a year and a half worth of workshops and trainings. There are bonus workshops and classes and series, and it's just full of everything you might need along your parenting journey. But one of the things that I've realized is that parenting is not just about knowing the information. It is the skill set that has to be practiced. We have to practice these skills over and over until we develop them. It's like a muscle that we have to work over and over so that it gets stronger and stronger. And so for 2024, I'm actually introducing a year long curriculum inside of the Enjoy Community, where we will be building those skills as parents and learning how to teach those same skills To our kids so that they can be emotionally healthy, so they can be confident, so they can be resilient, so they can have healthy relationships throughout their life. Not just now while they're in our home, but for the rest of their lives. So if you are already in Enjoy, you are in for such a treat in the coming year. We are gonna have so much fun building these skills together, and by the end of the year, I hope you will see a complete transformation of who you are as a parent. And if you are not in enjoy, now is the perfect time to join because we are just getting started. Anyway, I'm just so excited about the opportunity that I have to continue to support you on your parenting journey this year, whether in Enjoy or on the podcast or in the Facebook group. I am so grateful for the work that you are doing to strengthen your family. And I'm just so honored that you trust me enough to let me be on this journey with you. Speaking of your parenting journey. If you are like most parents, the biggest struggle that you have is trying to get your kids to do what you want them to do. Can you relate to this? Most of the questions I get from parents are, what can I say? Or what can I do? Or how can I motivate this child to do the thing that I want them to do? Obviously, these things are for their own good. They're all good things that these parents want their kids to do. But they want to know what they can do to get their child to do what they want. And I have spent a lot of years trying to find the answer to this question for myself. How do I get my kids to do the stuff I want them to do? I am certainly not immune to kids who don't want to do what I ask them to do. And I can tell you having six kids, they all respond differently to the same kind of request and the same kind of words and the same kind of actions that I might take. The kids all respond very differently to that. But I have found that there is one thing that consistently drives my kids to do what I ask. I was reminded of this recently because of an experience I had with one of my boys. And I have been thinking about this ever since it happened. December was a crazy month for us this year. My husband and I were traveling for one of the weeks of December and so our Month felt like it just went by so fast and there was so much to do and so little time because we just weren't there for all of it. and it just felt a lot more chaotic than normal, and so I had to ask a lot more of my kids than I normally do. We had just gotten back in town and I was trying to clean up the house and organize gifts and get some baking done and prep a meal for a friend that was sick, and I was just trying to do a lot of things and my counter was a disaster. Everybody had put their stuff on the kitchen counter and I was trying to use the counter and it was just, I was, losing my mind. And my son was sitting on the couch playing a computer game and my daughter who was Responsible to clean off the counter and wipe it down had been gone the night before so she hadn't gotten to it because she got Home late and she was still asleep in the morning. So I asked my son Hey, can you come help me clear off the counter and wipe it down so I can finish doing all of these tasks that I'm trying to do and he kind of gave me some pushback. And while at first I was pretty frustrated by this response, I decided to use this opportunity to reinforce a concept and teach a concept to him that I think we as parents don't take full advantage of. It's probably one of the most underutilized tools that we have in our parenting tool belt, and it is probably the most effective way that I have found to get your child to do what you want them to do. I told him, you don't have to clear the counter. It's not your job. I'm just asking for your help. There's no reward if you do it. There's no punishment if you don't do it. I'm not going to be mad. I'm not going to yell. You can absolutely sit on the couch and continue to play your computer game, but I'm just asking you a favor. I'm asking you to do something for me, because you value our relationship the way I value our relationship. When you come to me and you ask me if you can do something or go somewhere or if I'll get you something, I often say yes, not because I have to, not because there's a consequence if I don't, not because there's a reward if I do, but because I care about you. Because I want to invest in our relationship because I value it. And so of course I want to help you. And of course I want to do things that are going to lead to your happiness. And whether or not you come and help me clear the counter, I'm going to continue doing those things because I love you, because I care about you, because I value our relationship. And I hope that you value our relationship in that way too, that you want to do things that will help me out just because you love me too. It was like watching a light bulb switch on in his brain, this connection between, I don't have to do this, but I could do this because I care about the person that is asking me to do it. And he stood up and he set down his laptop and he came over and he helped me clear the counter. Now, just because we had this conversation and this light bulb moment happened doesn't mean he has just jumped to and done whatever I've asked every time ever since. He hasn't. He absolutely hasn't. But I've been thinking about this and noticing how often my kids do what I ask when there is no consequence and there is no reward and there is no expectation. It's just me asking them to do something and they do it willingly and happily. And I think it comes down to this element of relationship. I haven't always had this kind of a relationship with my kids. This is something that I have really developed in the last few years, and It has been worth every effort and every sacrifice and every bit of time and energy that it has taken. It doesn't seem as clear cut as a transactional relationship where if you do this, You get this. If you don't do this, you don't get this. That's so clear for our brain, so it feels so concrete. And building a relationship with our kids where they respect us and we respect them. And there's this mutual appreciation and love. feels much less concrete. And I think that's why we don't utilize it as much as we could. But especially when our kids get to be teenagers and as they get to be young adults and as they get to be adults, we are not going to be able to use leverage to get what we want from them. At some point, they're going to get sick of the guilt and the shame and the coercion and the manipulation. And they're just going to be out. They don't want that kind of relationship. We need to invest in relationships that feel good to them. So they want to serve. So they want to contribute. So they want to give back. That is how we get our kids to do the things we want. That is how we influence them. We don't demand. We don't coerce. We don't manipulate. We don't guilt them. We don't shame them. We love them. We show them through our example that when we love someone, we do things for them out of love. We serve them. We support them. We help them. Not at our own expense, but because we feel that love for them. There are no magic words that you can say to get your child to do what you want. There is no magic consequence that you can have that will get them to stop doing the things you don't want them to do. There is no magic reward system that works every time. If this relationship piece is not the foundation, None of that works. And even if it seems like it's working right now, it doesn't work long term. I want you to have this kind of a relationship with your kids. I can tell you from experience that this is the most rewarding way to parent. It doesn't just create better behavior, but it feels better. feels more fulfilling and you get to see a side of your children that you will never see otherwise. While this podcast is full of tips and strategies and ideas that I hope will help you with your teenager. If you don't invest in building the skills that you need to build a stronger relationship with your teen, None of the things I share here will help you. But those skills are exactly the ones that we are going to be building and strengthening throughout the coming year in Enjoy. So if that is something that you want in your life, you want the kind of relationship where your kids want to help, where they want to serve, where they want to do things because they love you. And where you have the opportunity to do all of that for them as well, you need to join us inside of Enjoy. It is going to be an amazing life changing year, and I hope to see you there.
