...do a video on the Learn to Speak Kid fan page. We're, of course, we're Bonnie and Thomas
Liotta. Today we're talking about like why do your children, you know, come in
front of you if you're in a conversation and they're doing this and sometimes
they might even hit you or start screaming or something like that, acting
out for attention. We might look at these kids and go "oh my gosh, they're
broken. Like, why don't they just listen and do
what I want them to do? "Let's go." "Put your shoes on." "Put your seatbelt on." "Be quiet."
You know, all this stuff. If they would just listen life would be a lot simpler,
wouldn't it, Tom? Oh, you'd think. Mm-hmm... so why do kids hit their parents, fall on
the floor, scream out looking for attention? Why is that is that? Is it because
they're broken? Could there be another reason? Well, it just sounds like one is a
monkey-see monkey-do, and two they're doing it because it works. Right, because if we go
way back to when your child was actually first born, you know, when they were like
so cute and sweet and you just wanted to snuggle them and love them and they were
your newborn baby. Remember that? Yes. And they were born
instinctively, instinctively knowing only one language. Mm-hmm...that's right. It was
just called cry. Mm-hmm...and you remember the
guess what the cry means game? Right? "Get the bottle." "Pick me up." "Put me down."
"Give me my favorite toy." "I'm tired." We used to play that game. Now, if the
kids haven't been upgraded as far as using their words, or manners, or missing
life skills on how to communicate more acceptable in society, then we're still
playing the guessing game. Exactly. Right? And, so, when the child becomes maybe
eight months old; nine months old; ten; fifteen months old, right in there and if
we have developed a habit of "Oh, baby cries, here you go." Oh, baby cries. He can't
reach the toy. "Here you go." And then, the child is beginning to want to be more
independent, like, do things on their own and they start reaching out and
getting into things. Right? They become curious and then what do we do?
Usually? Wow, well, what I observe is a parent sees a child do something that
they don't like — running in the house, getting their hands in something, putting
something in their mouths, or whatever it is...they see something they don't like —
they feel like negative or no and then they actually share that message. "No! We
don't touch!" Okay...yeah. It's communication. Lots of the time. How does the child feel when
they're being told no, don't, and won't on something that they see the world
completely as a kid's brain of like "Ahhhhhhh look at this!! And, they're excited and
that's the first thing that someone says to you? Well, uh...the term terrible twos
comes to mind that I heard people say. And I'm like: I'm like you, you're like me if
somebody told me what I thought was cool sucked,
I'd be like "screw you too." Doesn't mean I'm a terrible two. Make sense, right? Yeah,
exactly. So, the other day we were walking down
the street and this mom was talking about her toddler. He's about two. And, Mom
says, "Oh, as soon as I realized that he's boss, everything works out really nice
and smooth." All right I want... I'm sorry, I have to just laugh at that because
listen, I mean, do you put the cart in front of the horse? Do you put the kid as the
driver in the car? We're talking about leadership here. Who is the leader? Right? Who decided
to have kids? Who's the older one? Who creates the environment in the house? Who
has 20, 30, 40, 80 years of life experience of how things work? When somebody's new;
first day going
"Oh, I'm going to run the business." Hey, well, slow down there turbo!
Let's show you how things are working and then we can start from there, fair
enough? Because a child who is the leader in the
family is pretty smart. They don't know how to do anything, but they can look
around and go "It's broken, Daddy. It's broken.
Fix it." Or, "Mom, I'm hungry. Cook. So, their leadership role is nothing more than to
find other people to do everything for them. But, there's a job there. Our job, or,
knowing our role as a parent is to teach them a set of life skills. So, from zero
to 18 they can do be and have everything they're supposed to have they're just
missing the skill. And if we keep doing it for them, why would they ever step up?
Just like why would you buy the cow, if you get the milk for free? Okay, so a little
short story for you. This short story is about this really wealthy prince that
was born in a foreign land. This prince was catered to. I mean, everybody
in the land, you know, brought him gifts and toys and made his clothes. In fact, by
the time the child was ten years old, he had never dressed himself. He had people
who bathed him, dressed him. He never left the house. They wanted to
protect him; keep him safe for his whole life. So, when at the age of ten, he was outside
and the gate was left open. He was so excited to go explore his world. He
ran out of the gate and ends up like running across the street. He got hit
by a car and he died. And, so, as much as we want to love our kids and protect our
kids and go out of our way to make them happy and always find a way to either
just distract them or keep them entertained — don't we feel like we're the
entertainers — we have to do all this stuff for the kids, the more that we
do, or the more that we try to make them happy, the more that we try to protect
them than the less life experience and struggle they actually experience on
their own. We have to let our kids live their lives, but what's the best way to
do that? So, okay, so, we could be talking about a 15-year-old here. We could be
talking about a school-age child. But, see, the transition usually begins or we
should begin it, you know, when they're toddlers. When they're, you know, going
from one - two...so. if you have a teenager, just use this
example for something teenagers do. You know, they want to go over to their
friend's house and sneak off to a party. I mean, what is it that teenagers do? This
is the same process to go through and we're going to use a plan in advance,
rather than react with punishment or angrily. Seeing that our kids need to
learn where to bang a glass on a glass table; seeing where our kids need to
learn where they can run; where they can yell, and all these great things. So, let's
take the example of the child sitting on Mom's lap. Mom's having an adult
conversation. The child's going like this, maybe like a four or five-year-old going
like this, and Mom doesn't pay attention. She's in conversation. Then, he just slaps
her in the face. And then, she doesn't want to cause a scene so she gets up,
picks him up, and does what he, what the toddler, what the young child wants to do.
Missing life skill; MLS. If you're going to label your child, give them the right label —
missing a life skill. Now, you got to go back and think of why would a child go
to sleep "Oh what can I do to really piss off Mom tomorrow? What could I do to
really piss off Mom tomorrow?" and wake up and go do it? Mmm hmm. It's not what happens.
Just like bees don't sting people. Yes, they can, but it's in a self-defence or a
panic mode. Yeah. So, think about it this way, when a child is introduced to a
parent, that's their life connection. That's there do all, be all life force.
Mmm-hmm And, here's a mom with like a little... little guy. Always, Mom was always there.
Everything I needed come from that mom. All of a sudden "whoop, whoop!!! Intruder,
intrude!" The child is starting to see that this other figurine; this other big
person, "Well, I'll be damned if they're going to be taking my life force from my
mom. I have exclusivity rights here. I get all of that." Heaven forbid they're
on one of those phone things. Mm-hmm.. Right? so the child is actually coming at you
as an alert of someone stealing "Hey, that's mine." Now,
without knowing how to swim, you kind of jump in the water and you just start
flapping. You know your head has to be above water. You know you got to secure
that connection. So the child is doing nothing more than protecting what they
feel is theirs. Hmm...and if we approaches it in that way if going "Oh my gosh, I
never really thought to take the time to say "Hey, I know it's always been me and
you, however, a missing life skill is called sharing. Have you taught
it? Because right now either the child
doesn't know how to do it, or they don't want to. If they actually knew how
to share Mommy's time, would the child really come up and do this goofy stuff,
and even smack them or do whatever? Yelling? Tugging? Yanking? When they knew
it was a missing life skill called taking turns, where the child would
actually stand — maybe at an attention stance — wait for Mom to acknowledge the
child and then they could ask what it was it was important. Where's the power
struggle when you know the life cycle of how things truly work? She never took any
time to teach him, who are we to ridicule and label a child as being disordered, in
some fashion, when if they knew what to do and they practiced it and knew it, they
would do it. And were motivated to actually learn it. See,
there's different pieces to the puzzle. They don't know how to do what
your expectations are, usually. We think they do because they can talk and
they're little kids and they're, you know, they're saying stuff and doing stuff. We
think they can talk, we think they can understand us with words, but honestly,
Driving a car...we could tell you how to drive a car, you know, just use one foot.
Put it on the brake. Put on the gas. Go slow. Stop at the corner. I mean, we can say
things with words, but how do you really learn to drive a car?
It's when you actually experience, you get behind the wheel in driver's ed. You
put that seatbelt on and you stall the manual car a couple times. Right? Because
you're going to fail a couple times. Your child's going to fail a couple times. But,
imagine if you do what Tom just said to do. You took the leadership role, and
you stepped up and you said "If it is to be, it's up to me. And, I'm your mom and if
you're ever going to learn how to attract my attention, I have to teach you
exactly what my expectations are. So, you would role play with your child.
Right? You'd say "Look it, when you want Mommy's attention..." and this would be at
home when you're all alone. It could be playtime. Kids love playtime. "We're going
to play how to get Mommy's attention time right now. This is what it
looks like." And, that's what Thomas teaches is the attention stance. "When you want
Mommy's attention, I will give my full attention to you when you do this." and
you actually show them what it looks like. Attention stance is arms at the
side, eyes straight ahead, and you stand there. You practice, and so your child
does this, and you stand straight ahead, and you practice — maybe ten seconds just
standing. Ten seconds to begin with. Awesome! Ten seconds every time before
breakfast, lunch and dinner for like a whole week and your child will have that
skill down pat. Every time you're at a party, he'll come over. He'll go like
this, and he'll wait 30 seconds; a minute. I think Zac waited one time up to, what
was it five six minutes or something like that the very first time we were in
public? We had been practicing this at home. He wanted to show off his skills.
"Look at how respectful I am. look at how great I am." and he was ODD and ADHD, the
worst case the psychologists had ever seen. This was after about a month or
two of practice time with him, with different things and whatnot. But, he was
motivated because when he actually engaged, you know, and did what we taught
him to do, he got the most amount of reward. You know, the most amount of movie
time or the most amount of television time that day or whatever. So, you are
totally in control of your environment. We can never control another human being.
We can never control another person, even if they are our children. You know this.
You try all the time. Why do I have to tell them ten times to put their
shoes on? I'm so frustrated! You know, we do this so...so, when we stop looking at it
like they're doing something to tick us off or they're doing something wrong or
they're acting out. We start looking at it like "Oh my gosh, she's missing the
life skill of how to get my attention when I'm in public." "Oh my gosh, they're
missing a life skill of how to do what they want because they we haven't taught
them to just ask first. It's a habit too!
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