We all know better but we don't always know what to do. How to be a better
parent and stop yelling. Our most popular video so far has been how to get kids to
listen to you without yelling. We get trapped in this sometimes as parents. And
to understand why we do it, let's go back to our basic model of parenting. This
pits control against maturity. Control meaning control over your own life. It
goes from zero, down here at the bottom to 100%, up here at the top. You can have
all the control or none of the control or somewhere in between. That is true of
your children as well. Down here on this axis, we have maturity. Meaning, how
grown-up you are. Maturity starts on this end. If we were
to start with age, for example. At birth, how much control do you have over your
own life? Yeah. Hardly any. It's not zero because you can
make a big noise in a big stink. But it's not very much higher than zero. Let's put
a dot right there. How about on the other end of the maturity spectrum? Let's call
this adult over here. As an adult, how much control do you have over your own
life? Now, as an adult, I know you're thinking about all of the small print.
Yeah. Let's just set that aside for a minute.
When I ask teenagers how much control do the adults have, they're quick to answer.
"A hundred percent." Right? Well, they've got something to learn. But let's just go
with what they're saying. And say that as an adult, you get to have a hundred
percent or somewhere close to it. So, we'll put a dot clear up here. Between
birth and adulthood, we have this line where we increase in maturity and that
gives us more and more control. So, the more mature you are, the more control you
get to have. Now, the next thing that's important is to
realize it's not about age. I'll just take birth and adulthood off of the
equation here. It's not about age, it's about stage. And for that, we break our
model into 3 stages. Now, I honestly think that this is more of a continuum
than it is discrete stages. But that's okay.
The model helps us to talk about it. We have stage one, stage two and stage three.
Each stage is progressively more mature and you get to have more control. So, it's
stage one, not much control down here. This part under the line by the way, is
the part that we get for our self. This part over the line is the part the
others take including parents for their kids.
So, at stage one, there's not much self-control down here. All of the
control is in the other category. At stage 2, it's kind of shared. At stage
3, it's mostly self control with very little parental control. Now, let's tie
this back into yelling. As parents, we are the others that get to step in and take
control in our kids lives. How much control we take depends on what stage
our kids are in? So, a quick review of the stages. Stage one is selfish and
self-centered and demanding and manipulative. At stage one, we whine and
scream and holler and fight and... Well, this is sounding fun isn't it? Notice
that that's typical of little babies. But if our teenagers are doing that, that's
not much fun. They're capable of it but it's immature for someone who's older.
Stage 2, we stop fighting and start cooperating. We're willing to negotiate
and work something out that looks more like a win-win kind of a solution. We
want to keep the peace. We don't want any trouble at stage 2. Can you see that as
a parent? If your kids are at stage 2, they're taking more control over their
life. You can back off a little bit. You don't
have to. Stage 3 is the most mature. Stage 3 is all about responsibility
and ethics and morals and values and initiative. Where we see what needs to be
done and we just do it. Guess what? If your kids are doing that, you can back
way off as a parent and you don't have to take much control or do much
discipline because it's all self discipline at that point. Now, that's a
quick overview of a model that we've talked about on other videos on this
channel. Go to the positive parenting playlist. And you're going to see a lot
of different titles there. You might want to look up one especially called
teaching kids responsibilities. Positive parenting. That's where we go over the
model again. You'll get more input there. Now, go back to the yelling for
just a minute. Yelling is a stage 1 kind of a behavior. If you're yelling,
you're out of control. You know I say that with an
understanding that we all do it. I've done it too. When we're yelling, we're out
of control. When we're yelling, we're not as mature as we need to be as parents.
See as a parent, we got to be on stage 3 and have our own stuff in a pile
so we can come up here on the top end and take up however much control we have
to for our kids. Why do we yell? Think about it. It's
because our kids are misbehaving. It's because our kids are on stage 1. And
they're demanding and manipulating and fighting and quarreling and arguing,
right? That gets us frustrated as a parent because we have no idea what to
do with stage 1. If you knew exactly what to do with stage 1, you wouldn't
have to yell. Stage 1 for me is a game. And here's the key, alright? This is the
number 1 take home from this video. On stage 1, your response as a parent has
to be tied to consequences. Not communication, not reasonable, rational
discourse. No, that doesn't even happen until your kids are more mature. Has to
be consequences. And a specific kind of consequence.
Consequences at stage 1 have to be the kind that do not require cooperation.
Why? Because cooperation doesn't even kick in tell stage 2. If you're trying
to get your kids to cooperate with you and they're refusing, you're going to feel
like yelling, right? Yeah. Notice that. Because you're not getting
any cooperation. If you pick the kind of consequences that do not require
cooperation, there is no more need to yell. We just solve the problem. So, how do
you become a more positive parent without all of the yelling. You figure
out how to deal with stage 1, you've already got stage 2 and 3. Those
are easy. If kids are cooperating with you, you're not yelling at them, are you?
No. It's when they slip down to stage 1 that we have the problem. So, we're
going to focus on consequences. They have to be the kind that do not require
cooperation because you're not going to get it until stage 2. So, let's take a look
at that really quickly. What kinds of consequences do not require cooperation?
It has to do with what I control as a parent. And that list gets kind of short
sometimes especially for teenagers. You don't control a lot about what they're
doing. Get back on to what you do control. What I provide is huge, okay? What I
provide? What services I render? What access I allow? Okay, I control those
things whether or not my kids cooperate. We can get into some more of the
specifics and we do. Vicki and I put together the Parenting Powerup where we
get into some specifics about this. You can link to it in the description down
below or on the end screen. Watch for the little link there where you can get tied
into that. Because as part of your parenting team, we want to help you come
up with some really specific strategies about what you can do here and keep
watching the channel. We've got all kinds of different topics here in the
Positive Parenting Playlists to help you be a more positive parent without the
yelling. Those frustrations that have a us yelling start to melt away as we learn
these strategies. We've got an entire course set up just to support you as a
parent. It's called The Parenting Power-Up. You can connect to it right over here.