Transcription
[Music]
Let's go to Michaela in Washington. What's up, Michaela?
Hi, Dr. John. How are you doing?
I'm fantastic. How about you?
I'm doing great. I'm so glad to be talking with you today.
I'm glad to be talking with you. What's up?
Well, I'm calling to ask your advice. Hey, do me a favor. Do me a favor. Can you talk directly into your phone?
Oh, yes. Yeah, there we go. Perfect. Okay, so I'm calling to ask your advice on how to stop yelling or raising my voice at my kids and for tools on how to help my kids learn to listen to my voice when it's calm, instead of them waiting until I've raised it.
Oh, that's a good question. Why do you want to quit yelling?
Um, well, I was raised in a really wonderful home, but both of my parents would resort to to yelling.
Okay, so let me, let me reframe something, okay? You were raised in an abusive household, and there were some really fun moments, and your parents did love you. Yes. Okay. Yelling is abuse, and that's an unpopular sentiment, and I don't care. Okay? So, okay, I want to reframe your childhood for you, okay? What you experienced as a kid was you felt the responsibility of regulating your parents' emotional well-being because if you did a thing, they set off, right? Yeah. And so the abuse comes, the trauma comes from a child having to carry their parents' emotional well-being, and children are not that strong. They're not designed for that sort of weight, right? And so, okay, that's what you've done your whole life, and then, like most of us, you parent the way you were parented, right? So tell me more.
Right. Yeah. Um, well, I, I've listened to you for a couple of years now, and I, I've heard you just tell parents that you just stop. If you want to stop yelling, you just stop. And at first, I was like, oh, how do you even do that? And then I heard you one time compared to, like, if you were to want to stop hitting somebody, you would just stop hitting. You wouldn't say, "I'm trying to stop." And that, that was really, um, impactful to me.
I don't even remember saying that, but that's pretty good. I like that.
Well, I, I just, it hit me because I was like, oh my goodness, that I have no excuse. I just have to stop. And so I talked on your phone, talking to your son, and yeah, sorry, I keep moving away. Um, I've been working on it, and I feel like it's been really good lately. I just, I don't, I don't know how to to get my kids. I've, my two oldest are pretty good about listening the first time, but the youngest are, you know, it's harder for them, and I just don't want to have to resort to raising my voice.
Okay, so I'll, I'm gonna comment on one thing you just said, and then we'll circle back. You never have to resort to raising your voice, ever. True. You never do. That's a choice. That is a nuclear option. It's a choice. I will put one caveat. My kids running into the street and they don't see a car coming, I'm gonna scream my head off. If I walk up on a group of kids beating up one of my children, I'm gonna get real, real, real loud. Okay? Um, little Timmy doesn't take the the trash out, and I've told him four times, I'm not yelling. I'm not gonna say, "All right, that's enough, adult. Now it's time for me to act like a child." I'm not gonna do that. Um, so, okay, so circling back here is, um, and I got this from James Clear, I think. It's just, it's been a shape-shifter for me. So I want you to start with the identity in mind, not the tactics and the goals and the strategies, okay?
Okay.
The identity is, "I am a person who never yells, period." That's just who I am. I don't yell. The same is like, I don't, like, I'm just a guy that doesn't get drunk. I don't, like, I just, I don't, I don't even like feeling drunk. Too. I don't like it. I don't feel good. I'm just that guy. I'm a guy that takes care of his body, so I like to exercise, right? Whatever, whatever the thing is. So you are, as of today, I'm a person who never yells. And so what I have to do now that I've established that identity is backfill that with actions that make that possible. Okay? "I am a person who never lets my kids have control over my emotions. They're not strong enough to do that. I'm not going to give them that power because they're kids. They don't have permission to hurt my feelings or make me mad." I can choose. And this is the language I use in my house. "I am choosing to be frustrated right now because I want my kids to never think that they have the strength or power to make me frustrated." I'm not going to give them that.
That's good.
Yeah. Okay. I'm not going to give that to my neighbors. I'm not going to give that to politicians. I'm going to choose. If you say something that's objectively offensive or ugly, or I think that's going to get the whole country killed or something, I will say, "I'm choosing to be really pissed off right now. I'm choosing anger," but not because I'm choosing this, not you. You know what I mean?
Yeah. Yeah.
So decide you will never, never, never yell, and then create a lifestyle that backs up the identity. So here's how you do that. You find the moments when you're about to yell, and you're gonna think it's about the issue, and it's usually not. Usually, it's about a period of nobody's paying attention to me, my husband included, yeah, or I'm exhausted, or I have a set of values, and y'all, it's not about, um, it's not that you're not, you're not, um, taking your food off the table. That's not the issue. The issue is, "I've been working here on dinner for four hours, and then I made it, and then I cleaned it, and you don't even have the decency to walk that thing nine feet to the sink." You know what I mean? There's a level of injustice that rises up, and what happens is the kid who's nine goes, "Good God, it's a plate and a sink, lady." Yeah. And then you feel crazy, and that makes you even more mad. Yeah. And so what we want to do is we want to identify the moments when I'm about to yell, and it's, if I want to stop eating gummy candies, I want to stop smoking weed, I want to stop grabbing an extra drink, an extra drink, I'm going to look for those moments that that push me over, and I'm gonna be really, here's the magic, I'm gonna be curious about it, not judgmental. Okay? "Why is my body feeling like it has to get this loud over a knucklehead nine-year-old who didn't take the trash out?" Why? And it might be because that's just your, your brain's default there because that's how you were parented, and that's how your parents were parented, and then here we are, right? Yeah. Get to the root of why you're angry or why you're hurting, why you feel like you have to be a volcano, yeah. And all of that backs up identity. So here's how this, I think I've talked about on the show, I'm not sure if I have. Here's the thread I pulled from me, um, on Sunday afternoons, I was unpleasant to be around. I wasn't mean, I was just, I was radioactive. I was just an energetic presence that just sent the messages to my family, "Y'all need to seem to be away." I just felt it, and my wife brought that up because I then my family would not want to be around me, and then I would overreact to try to get, "Like, why don't you want to be around me?" And then I started poking and messing with the kids, which made them not want to be around me more, and then I'd get grumpy, and then everybody. So I just, I created a centrifuge that made it people unable to be around me, and then I got hurt that they weren't around me. And so my wife brought that up, and I was like, "Oh man, I don't want to be that guy." And so I started pulling the thread on, "Why am I grumpy on Sundays?" I like my work. I like going to work. I don't mind. I mean, I'm tired because I stay up too late on Saturdays when I'm watching the fights all the time or going to concerts or whatever. I don't like getting up at seven o'clock to go to church, whatever, but I like going to church and I like seeing my people, my friends there. So I had these different, like, I like exercise. So what was the thread? And when I pulled it back, you know where it started? Friday night. I'd get home from work after a week of eating right and exercising and work, work, work, work, and then I would murder an entire large pizza myself, and I'd have two or three beers, and I would be all bloaty and gassed out and all carved out of my mind. And that's not a beautiful picture, I know. And then I would sleep in an extra hour on Saturday instead of getting up, and then I wouldn't lift, and then, and so I started a chain reaction on Friday that culminated in an exhausted, grumpy mutt on Sunday. Yeah.
Makes sense.
So you know what really stinks? I had to quit eating pizza on Friday nights, and I had to commit to getting up early, no matter what, on Saturdays and going to exercise. And that has begun to shape-shift my Sunday afternoons. Okay? So I tell you that, I was a journey of curiosity. "What about this?" and "Well, what about that?" and "Maybe it's because it," right? But all of it was a backfill of, "I am a guy that my kids want to be around on Sundays." Yeah. "I want to be a joy to be around." And, yeah.
Me too. Everything works better, right?
So can we commit? Will you commit together?
Yes. I will never yell. I will never give my kids the power to affect me emotionally like that.
Yeah. Yeah. I want to do that. I'm no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm going to do that. There we go. I'm going to. Yes. You can.
Well, and that helps having that, um, like you said, to pull that thread because I think that's probably where most of it comes from is my own frustrations with, who knows what, but not, but being out of touch with that, and something just sparks it, you know?
And can I tell you what? I'm not listening. A common one with young children is a sense of powerlessness and a sense of, "If they're not doing what I say, it is representative that I'm failing as a parent." And if you're a stay-at-home parent, that's my only job, and I'm failing at my job. They are my walking scorecard, and I'm failing. I want to free you from that. That's not the case. Nine-year-olds do nine-year-old stuff, okay?
One thing you've heard me say this a million times, I'll and I'll keep saying it. It would really be helpful if you created a set of family values. One of them is, "I don't yell." You need to get in front of your kids and say, "I've been handling this wrong, and I'm sorry. I'm going to make some changes in my life, and when I do yell, y'all call me out on it."
Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's good.
Sit down and tell me, "Listen, we're going to make a series of family values. I'm going to hang it on the wall. This is who we are." And listen, when they don't take the trash out, you call them in and say, "It breaks my heart that you chose to fill in the blank, consequence. I hate that you chose to not go fishing this weekend. I hate that because you love fishing. I love taking you fishing, and you chose to not by not doing that." Yeah. They own the choice. I don't have to yell. They're owning the consequence.
But mama, dude, you chose that. That's a strange choice. Fishing's way more fun than, I mean, it's, it's, it's five hours of fun versus eight seconds of taking the trash out, but that's what you chose. It's strange, but you see what I'm saying? I'm holding that so loosely. There's no reason to yell. None. None. None.
Yeah. Yeah. I know. That's that's good. The choosing. I think I've been using on my five-year-old. I heard you mentioned that before, and I've been like, "You know, when she's having those heart is like, you're choosing this consequence right now because you're not." You have been using those words, but I don't use them on myself. And, yeah.
So let me hold the mirror up. You are choosing to yell. Yeah. Don't make that choice. You're choosing to do things upstream or experience things upstream or to not have hard conversations with your husband or your extended family or whatever these challenges are coming up river. You're choosing to not, and you're taking it out on your kids at the bottom of the creek. And so hear me say this as sternly as I can. Yelling is trauma. Don't.
Okay. Yeah.
I believe that you're committed to not.
I am. Cool. Yes. Because I know that. Yes. Absolutely. Take back control of the emotional regulation and make that an adult thing, not a kid thing. Cool. Okay. Cool. Hey, sounds good. You're here's what you're doing. I don't want you to miss this. You are changing your family tree. You are healing family trauma and creating a new family legacy. This is hard. You'll stumble at it. You'll mess up, and you're going to come away with scars, and it's exhausting, and it's frustrating, and it's worth every minute because you're going to have grandkids that you have not met yet. They're going to have parents that handle their idiotic eight-year-oldness differently because of the work you did. You're changing family trees, and I'm proud of you, and it's hard, and you can do it.