Simon: G’Day guys. And welcome to another episode of The Mindful Men Podcast. I’m your host, Simon Rinne, and today we’re getting mindful about fatherhood and parenting and in particular children’s behaviour.

And joining me today, I’ve got Kimball Lewis from Florida USA. How you going Kimball?

Kimball: I’m good. Hey, thanks for having me, Simon.

Simon: No worries. Thanks for coming on. I’m really excited to have this chat. I think for all the parents out there who struggle with children’s behaviour, and I’ve got a, a three and a five-year-old, so we are right in the midst of it at the moment. so, I’m really keen to hear your insights into how we can, better manage that and, and better manage ourselves as parents as well.

 Kimball, you’re a CEO of empowering parents and empowering parents provides parenting and coaching programs for parents who struggle with severe defiance and constant arguing from their children and children’s behaviour. So, I’m sure every parent that listens to this show is glued to their podcast or to the YouTube channel as well as we speak.

So, thanks so much for joining me. I’d like to start off with finding out a bit more about you first Tell us a bit about childhood and I guess some of those, key life events that kind of led you towards, empowering parents.

Kimball: Okay, so I’m, I’m not originally from Florida, very few people who live in Florida are from Florida. Everyone, everyone moved here from somewhere, but I’ve been here for almost 10 years. But grew up in New England to the northeastern part of the United States, and, about an hour outside of Boston.

So, I was in the, in New Hampshire actually, but, but right outside Boston. And I went to school in New York, and so I stayed most of my time. I lived in Washington, DC for a while, so I jumped around the northeast. And then, I’d say about 10 years ago, we, we were living in Maine. We were living on the up way upper right, and it was cold and dark in the winter, and I didn’t like that.

And I suffer from seasonal effective disorder. So, so I’m smiling now, but in the wintertime, I, I’d have like a just permanent frown. you look at pictures of me in the wintertime and like my, like seriously the muscles in my face, like they droop. And I didn’t like it. So, we ended up, we ended up moving to Florida and it was, it’s turned out pretty good for us.

So, so I like weather being outside.

Simon: I’m on the sunny coast and we are exactly the same. Like, there’s a lot of people that live on the sunny coast who are from here, but there’s a lot of, people from elsewhere and colder climates in Australia that have moved up to the subtropics.

So, I could feel your pain there.

Kimball: Yeah, I know. It’s tough. I go back on a regular basis. My mothers still up there, so like I’ll go back in, in a couple weeks, fly up there and everyone, they’re okay now cause it’s, it hasn’t been winter that long up there, but, but in like three months after it’s been, dark and lonely for all that time, everyone just looks miserable.

Simon: And, and you’ve got kids.

Kimball: I have two kids. I have two boys, they’re in, university now. we are newly empty nesters about a year and a half ago.

So, so my wife and I now live without our kids and our, expectation is that they’re really not going to move back. So, and that wasn’t my idea, but, but a couple weeks after they left the house, my wife cleaned out their rooms, put everything in their boxes, called one a guest room and made the other one into her office.

And my kids came back from, from, school like three weeks later. They didn’t go to school very far away, but there, but they’re living on campus. They came back to like, what, where, where are our rooms? And she’s like, you don’t, live here anymore. So, I mean, they’re welcome to come back and stay for a bit, but, but the expectation is that they’re adults and they’re learning to be an adult and, and when done with school, they’re going to, move on.

Simon: and thinking back to day one of parenting, and now that you’re a newly empty nester, like, can you think back to when you started, your parenting journey and what it meant to become a dad for you?

Becoming a Parent

Kimball: You know, I’m going to call him my nephew. He is not technically my nephew, but, but he’s I think 26 or 27. And I’ve known him most of my life. He just had a baby. And two weeks ago, and I remember commenting him that the day before you have your first child and the day after, that day before, it feels like a lifetime ago.

Like you, your whole life is upended, your priorities all change, everything. Like, like you’re not really a different person. I mean, you kind of get back into your old habits again. But, but like, life is just really different from that, from that point on. You have, you have different responsibilities.

And for me, for me, it was kind of an oh crap moment. My wife and I agreed that we really wanted her to stay home and focus on, on raising the kids in a household. And I would go up and try to earn the income, but I was in no place to do that at that point.

So, so my panic was like, how do I support a family? So, and that was the hard, that was actually the hard part.

Simon: so how did you do it?

Parenting Self Help books started my career

Kimball: so, I think one of the things that I look back on that I thought was pretty good was, and actually explains how I got into empowering parents is I always like, read a lot of self-help type books and stuff.

And I remember how it started. My dad was a psychologist and, he had this pop psychology book from the seventies called The Road Less Travelled. And it was very popular in the late seventies, early eighties by a guy named Scott Peck. And I read it when I was like 19 or 20, it was always lying around the house.

and I go, what’s this book? And he goes, oh, you read it. You, you should read it. You might like it. And it was the first sort of, Psychology type book that was a bestseller. So, I want to call it pop, but it wasn’t, it’s a serious book. And that kind of got me into it.

And so, I’ve always read self-Help types books, and there’s an expression that, that, smart people learn from their mistakes really wise people learn, can learn from the mistakes of others. They don’t necessarily have to go through all those things. So, if you, if you look at what people have, have come before you have gone through, you can, you can solve yourself a lot of pain.

That’s actually what we do at Empowering Parents. we help parents provide them with information as to what other parents in your situation did and have been through it already. And they know what’s successful, what’s not. So, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time. So anyway, so I was, I was kind of into the whole self-help thing and one of the things that I, that I, sort of thought ahead of time and I, I talked to someone who I really respected.

They, they said that if, if you really want to, have your wife be able to stay home with the kids and take care of the home front. You can actually do it, but you need to focus on your career. And one person really focusing on it can do really well. And sometimes it’s harder to juggle with two. so, it can actually be a financially beneficial, I wasn’t there at the time, but, so we had this plan that for the first 5, 6, 7 years, I was going to just focus on work and, and in our, viewpoint, young, young kids, they need mom more than dad in my opinion.

I mean, people can disagree with, with that or whatever, but they need mom, 90% of the time if they got mom. But when they become, especially if you have boys, when they become 7, 8, 9, 10, they need dad around. So, my plan was to like do whatever I could career-wise for the first six or seven years and then, and then come back around and if I could downshift, make life decisions around the fact that I want to be able to raise my boys when they’re boys, when they’re toddlers and infants.

I, it was, it was kind of fun to have them around, but I wasn’t as important as it was to have mom be being a nurturer. So that’s how we, that it’s a very traditional viewpoint. That’s not why we did it though. We did it because it felt between the two of us, it felt practical. Like this seems like a very practical way to like division of labour and, and we’ve been blessed along the way and, and it, it’s worked out pretty well.

Simon: Yeah. and you’ve mentioned the word plan a few times. We often have the best plans, but they don’t come to fruition. No. And they don’t really happen. Has there been any challenges along the way for you in navigating that parenting life and particularly in those early years and that balancing act of one, stay at home parent and one going to work as well?

Controlling your emotions as a parent

Kimball: Yeah, I think the, the hardest part to, to deal with for me, and, and part of it is tied to, like living up north in that seasonal effect disorder and all that other stuff is, is, I was just miserable in the wintertime. Like, like not a happy person, probably clinically depressed. And that affects everything.

It affects your, you have a short fuse. You, get angry easily. All those types of things. So, I started realizing that controlling my own emotions was like an important part of parenthood and stuff, because it’s stressful, especially when kids are really young and they’re toddlers.

It’s like 90% work and 10% joy. I think that turns around as they get older. So, I tell people like if you, if you’ve got two-year-olds and three-year-olds and four-year olds running around like where you are now. It’s freaking stressful. You can’t even have a normal meal. Like, you can’t even like go for a ride because then you got to put, you got to get ’em, you got to put ’em in the car seat.

You got to get them in the car seat. You got to get ’em dressed. They can’t get dressed on their own. If it’s cold out, you got to put boots on them. But like, everything is an ordeal. And it just wears on you after a while. So when, when my kids got to be a little bit older for me, and it was way better, like, I thought it was way easier.

So, my wife loved it when they were like little kids because, because, she cuddled with them and she got all the nurturing and, and they didn’t talk back to her at all. And so it was, so that part of it was, that part of it was good, but it’s hard. It’s, it’s work.

Simon: you’re a bit further advanced than I am in my parenting journey. I always hear like the teenage years are really difficult. what was the teenage years like for you guys at your household?

Parenting through the different stages

Kimball: I’m going to say that we had pretty easy kids.

 in my household, I was the third and I was probably the more difficult one, a little bit defiant. I had kind of the crazy friends. my parents actually went through divorce when I was, 17 years old, and I took full advantage of that. mom didn’t know where I was.

Dad didn’t know where I was, the, the family was a little bit in chaos. I didn’t know they were going to get divorced. I felt like I had a fairly normal childhood, but when things were, were breaking up. So, I was a little bit of the wild child in the family, and my wife was too actually, to be honest. But our kids made it fairly easy on us. I want to say it’s because we were great parents. I don’t think that’s true because, and we tell this for people that come to empowering parents, for our services is that so many parents have two kids that are pretty easy and one of ’em is just tough.

And it’s having nothing to do with the parenting or whatever. It’s just like, these kids are tough. They would’ve been tough. And you usually know they’re a tough kid by the time they’re two. Like, you know, it’s different. They’re wilful and it’s, it’s just, they’re born that way.

Dealing with defiant children

Kimball: And when you have a defiant kid, you can’t parent them the, the way you could a kid who sort of figures things out and expect the same results. So, you have to adjust what you’re doing. and not everyone’s prepared for that.

 maybe my wife and I were prepared for that because we were kind of those kids, so it was a little bit easier for us. what I really am is an evangelist for this guy named James Lehman. James Lehman founded something called the Total Transformation Program, and he was a psychologist for 30 years who, who worked in what in the United States they call group homes, which are kids that have been removed further their homes for some reason, and very often dealing with heavy defiance issues.

And he worked with those kids and learned a lot of good techniques. And what he did was he, he wanted to empower parents, hence the name, empowering parents with the basic tools that he had in dealing with defiant kids. What’s effective, what’s ineffective? Here’s how you handle it, basically a, a how-to manual on dealing with defiant kids.

And it was very helpful. You don’t have to go get a master’s degree in social work and psychology in order to deal with a defiant kid. What you need is some concrete skills, management skills that you can learn in about a two-month course, which is what we offer.

and James Lehman himself was in and out of prison when he was a young kid. He was that defiant kid. So, he seen it all. He, he knows exactly what the mindset is when they’re going through it and, and what works and what doesn’t work. So,

Simon: thinking back to your childhood and then when you said your parents, divorced when you’re was 17 or so.

Yeah. how much of your parents have come out in you as a parent as well? Like, have you taken on some of the traits or have you tried to, to steer away and, and pave your own path?

Kimball: that’s a good question. I considered my parents good parents.

Their divorce and marriage are a different issue altogether, which I actually don’t know a lot about, to be honest. And I’m glad I don’t think that if you’re getting divorced, that the kids need to know what’s going on. And I don’t really want to know the whole story because I value my, fathers passed away, but I valued my relationship with my father and my mother.

I didn’t want to get in the middle of that. And I really appreciated that they didn’t have me get in the middle of that. I was very close to my dad and he told me once that, he viewed fatherhood as it’s a job. Like you have a responsibility and you have to do things your kids aren’t going to like all the time.

Like, you just, like you owe it to them to raise them in a certain way and require certain things they’re not going to like, but that’s your job. He goes, you have a job to do and you have to do that job, and there’s no one else who’s going to do that job. and the other thing he said was to be mindful.

Be mindful of. if you want to do certain things, you have to do them because the clock’s ticking. And, if you’re gone the whole time while they’re age five, you don’t get the age five back and then age six and, and it goes by pretty quickly. You’d be surprised. So, if you have, if you have these ideas about what, what you’d want to do as a parent, that type of stuff, you got to, you got to be mindful and set aside the time and make sure you’re doing those things.

Simon: was that important for you, for your kids growing up? That you were there for their, school sports or, after hours, activities and weekend stuff?

Cherishing the younger years

Kimball: It was, so for the first six or seven years, I was working late, like almost every night. But I would roll into the house 7 30, 8 o’clock at night, and I usually wouldn’t eat dinner.

The first thing I would do is every single night I did bedtime with the kids and we read together and it was, it was so much fun. my kids are only 18 months apart, so they’re kind of that same age. And we, we would read board books, read other books, and probably spend like an hour or so in bed.

 We had a dog that, it was always myself, the two kids and the dog, like right in the middle of the whole thing.

And every single picture you have of us, like, we have tons of pictures. My wife took the dogs in every single picture. So, so for me, spending that bedtime time, I, I came home, the kids are all excited and, and I would do that sort of reading time and then I would decompress after that. I would then go grab something to eat or whatever.

So, but I wouldn’t see them in the morning. I’d see them for that hour or so. Yeah, that’s when they were a lot younger. But when they hit age like seven or eight, I made sure that there were certain goals I had in terms of like, spending time with my kids that, that I, I sort of had in the back of my mind I wanted to do.

And I made sure I did those things.

Simon: So, what’s some of the, I guess, some of the fondest memories of, of growing up with your kids like did you do camp? Did you any hobbies together or anything like that?

Kimball: we always grew up around lakes, so we were like water people. And my kids need to know how to swim. I want to not worry about it. So, so I, I took it upon myself to make sure that my kids knew how to swim and I taught them how to swim. And that was a weekly event all year round.

Even in the winter, I made sure from a, an early age they knew how to swim. I never worried about them in the water, which was key. Otherwise, I’d be freaking out. So, I made sure they were competent in the water. One of ’em loved the water from the beginning, the other one didn’t like the water at all.

So that was actually a bit of a challenge, but, but it was, it was awesome to see him overcome his reluctance to do water stuff and become perfectly comfortable. So, and I mentioned that to him as, as you’re getting older, see, remember you didn’t like water and now you’re, now you’re a fish. Like you’re a little fish.

So, you, all those things in life, like you might not be comfortable at first. So that, and then the other thing that we did was I did one-on-one trips with my kids where I would take just one of them and go somewhere for a weekend. Not both of them, we didn’t have to do things as a family.

And it was great I took my one son to Washington, DC once I worked in Washington, DC for about three years, so I know the city and I took ’em down there just for a weekend and we went to see all the sites. And then when I, when I moved to Florida 10 years ago, I still go back to see my mother for holidays.

And I would take just one of them, not both, but I’d take one of them on holidays, back and forth. So, we did all this traveling, like through airports and other stuff, just together one-on-one.  It was great bonding for the two of us, but it was also ended up being bonding for the one that stayed at home with mom.

Because they ended up doing something special. So that one-on-one time was actually kind of cool.

Becoming a child behavioural improvement professional

Simon: Awesome. And so, what made you get into child behavioural improvement? you’re, you’re an expert in this now. how did you get into this line of work?

Kimball: So, I want to be careful about the word expert.

It’s a euphemism, don’t always, I’ve spent the last, seven years doing this work, so I’ve been reading a lot about it, thinking a lot about it. so, I guess, I don’t know if that makes me an expert or not, but, but we’re dealing with child behaviour. and we’re not dealing with, with mental health issues.

Some people mix the two up, but this is behaviour. If your kid has serious mental health issues, that’s a different, this is like management. Like if you, if you’re running a company and you’re the boss and you have management issues, it’s not, I mean, I guess it could be mental health, but it’s generally not a mental health issue.

It’s, it’s what’s effective management? What’s ineffective management? So, in this situation, we’re talking about what’s effective parenting with, with the fine stuff. So, the way I got into it was a little bit accidental, which is, a good lesson. And I explained to my kids that you can’t necessarily plan things out.

You, you kind of have a plan. But I think you were saying before that I plan always work out, but, but you kind of have to have I call it a process. You never, a process or you, not necessarily a goal, but a process for discovering what it is you’re going to be doing. Yeah. You don’t really know what it is though.

So, I’m not sure. I don’t like having a goal per se, because I don’t know what that, the goal might be the wrong goal So I sort of had a process. So, my first six years of my career I worked in Washington DC at a think tank that did, health and welfare policy.

And a lot of that is tied with, children’s and families. So, I did a lot of research around this sort of topic area, but then I took a detour and I spent, I spent about 15 years of my career, doing analytics for healthcare. because a lot of the research we did with children’s and families at this think tank was analytic research, but there was a lot of opportunity in healthcare.

So, I spent about 15 years in the healthcare industry, doing mostly startup analytic companies whose customers were these big health insurance companies or the government. And we did analytic work for them and the last one that I worked at, we started the company myself and, five or six other people.

And we grew very quickly. We had like 70 employees within two years. And then the company got sold and, it was a pretty good exit and it gave me the chance to think like, do I really want to be doing this exact same thing? So, I actually took a year off instead of like buying a big house or doing something, I took a year off and just decompressed.

I’d never not worked. And I never had more than a week’s vacation since I was like 21 years old. and I was mentally tired at that point. So, I’m like, I just want to take a year off and, and rethink things. So, we moved to Florida. It was when I moved to Florida, actually the first time.

So, this was 10 years ago. And, not everyone has this opportunity.  so, I just, like, I had this opportunity, so I took it and then I figured out what I was going to do next. And then about a year, or maybe not quite a year into my sort of sabbatical, I, a friend of mine contacted me who was looking for a C E O for his company, empoweringparents.com.com and James Lehman and the total transformation program was born in sort of the mid two thousand back when.  the way you provided content to people was through books and DVDs and CDs. Yeah. And you did it through, radio and television advertising. That’s not how people get content, as you know. Cause we are creating content right now and, and we’re not on a television show.

We’re not on a radio show, and we’re not publishing a book anywhere, like a physical book and we don’t have to ship it. Anyone. So, this is a new way. So, this is like six or seven years ago and, and, James Lehman had passed away. so, he wasn’t around any longer. But, but the program and, and his concepts are evergreen.

It’s, it’s just these are, these concepts will be around forever. He’s, he just has a great way of articulating how you deal with behaviour stuff. So, he was looking for someone to transform the company from its old thing to modern, this is how we do it. So, and I had a technology background and, and I had an interest in the topic area.

I had met James Lehman. He lived in a town next to mine and, and, so it was kind of a, a series of weird, random events, but I ended up, ended up being that person who, who came in and, and did it. And I, it was the last thing in the world I ever expected to do. and the way I got into this was I would never have gotten into this or even had the time to explore it if I hadn’t left my previous job. I don’t advocate just quitting your job if you’re not sure what you’re going to do, if you, if you can’t afford to quit your job. I’m not saying that’s like the right way to go about it. but if you, but there’s certain points in life where, where an opportunity arises and, and you got to take that chance and try something a little bit different. This was totally different for me. but I always felt like if it didn’t work out, then I would, I would go back and do something else and I would’ve regretted not trying those types of things. So now it’s like seven years later and, and I’ve been living, breathing, talking this stuff for, for seven years and it’s been great. we are direct to consumer. We don’t work with institutions or schools or whatever. We, we work with the parents. And to hear their stories is, is amazing.

a lot of their stories are heartbreaking, but we have a lot of success stories and when we see that happen, it’s such a great, feeling. So, it’s awesome.

Simon: What was it like having that year off? you worked so much, over the years and hardly had any vacations.

 What was it like just going from going at a hundred miles an hour to just nothing and, and then trying to figure out what to do with your time during that year?

Kimball: A couple thoughts on that one. My, my wife was panicked because I was so happy. She’s like, you’re never going back to work. She goes, you did well enough to take a year off.

She goes, but you have to work again. Do this. So, I’m like, no, I’m going to work. I’m going to work. Cause I wasn’t one of those guys. Like, I didn’t work hard because I was a workaholic. I work hard because I was panicked. I wouldn’t be able to support my family If I didn’t have to work like, I like hobbies and Florida was great. So, so, she was panicked. I wouldn’t go back to work, but I am, I’m back to work. But, the other, the other weird thing was I remember my very last day of work and it was in Washington DC I was coming back to Florida and I was just sitting in Washington National Airport.

I had no laptop. I didn’t have a company phone anymore. I had nothing I didn’t have to be anywhere. And it was the weirdest feeling I’ve ever had of having not any responsibilities. And it was, it was very surreal. I’d gotten to the airport about three or four hours earlier and I just kind of walked around and it was the oddest feel.

I’ve never had that feeling in my life. So, once you start working again you have responsibilities again. it was very strange. I don’t know if I’d want to have that forever, but it was definitely an odd thing to have that pressure released. After, after years of it.

Simon: so how did you feel your time during that year? did you discover something new or did you just kind of just go through life on autopilot?  

Kimball: So, that last company that we were at, that I described my last day from, so this was back in 2012 and we built that company from the ground up.

Knowing that we had to be remote. So, we worked on Skype back then. And, within two years, we hired 70 people in 25 different states. We had an office in Washington DC in Portland, Maine where I lived. But we didn’t hire people in Portland and Washington. We hired them where they lived so we could hire them from anywhere.

And we built a remote workforce. So, sort of like what happened after Covid, but we did it in 2012 and it was all video. It had to be video. like me, my expertise at the time was like making sure that we, we built a workforce that worked video collaborative online, and then people had to be able to travel when they needed to, to the offices when we got together.

and when I moved to Florida, I was still working for the company and no one knew any different. I just moved to Florida. I mean, I checked with my colleagues and my bosses that make sure that was fine, but they didn’t care. And most people didn’t know, because I had this, this shoji behind me.

 they used to be like 30 bucks on Amazon. I would send them to, to all of our new employees. If they were in the basement or something, they had a bad background, we would just send it to them. instead of having an office and cubical would give you a shoji to, to cover up the background.

So, most of the people had that exact background at the, at, at the company. And so, it didn’t really matter. It didn’t really matter where you worked.

Making a spontaneous decision to move interstate

Kimball: so, we had a, so we had a remote company and then, kind of on a lark, like for no particular reason other than we thought it would be neat, we started homeschooling our kids when they were in sixth grade. and an incredible thing happened after about four or five months of homeschooling.

we lived in a town and we were not beholden to the school schedule in any way whatsoever. And I worked at a company where it didn’t matter where I lived, and it was just, that was actually a very strange feeling to suddenly not be tied down in any way whatsoever. the kids could take a week off anytime they wanted.

and I could, I could live and work from wherever I wanted. And I told you about how the winters were really tough. my brother-in-law lived down here in Florida, and I would just go down and stay with him for a week or so and just worked out of his condo.

 just to get out of the dark weather. I didn’t mind the cold so much, but the darkness was bothering me going to work when it was dark and then coming home when it was dark. so that’s how we ended up in Florida was like suddenly we, just realized we don’t have to be anywhere, anytime.

So, we’re like, let’s go to Florida for like three months and we’ll just get a short-term rental. And so, we did that. But then, about a month before we went down, we were like, hey, let’s just for kicks put the house for up for sale and see if someone buys it. And then we don’t even have to come back if we don’t want to.

And if we want to, we can rent We can do whatever we want. And someone bought the house in a week. this idea was spawned having a cup of coffee with my wife in August. It was like the first week in August. And we were gone the first week in October. So, two months later, not even having a plan.

We were, living in Florida and otherwise we’re homebodies are very boring. Like, we don’t do crazy stuff, but a couple times in our lives we just, we just up and said, we’re out of here and, and changed everything,

Simon: which is crazy in itself.

 like having to move interstate I’ve done it a few times here in Australia and it’s just a nightmare.

Kimball: and we sold all our furniture. We didn’t move, we didn’t wet move our stuff down. I mean, we had, like some personal stuff we took down, but we sold all of our furniture. And, and we, and we rented a place and bought all new furniture.

Simon: You don’t do things in half measures, it’s just like, all or nothing.

Kimball: And we lived, we lived kind of out in the country, where we lived in Maine. Like it was, it was kind of country-ish. I had, I had like landscaping equipment where we moved to Florida.

It was like one of these resort communities where you don’t even have to, I didn’t own any gardening equipment or whatever. So finally, just this past year we finally moved to like, A house more like we lived in Maine. we have like a big yard

Why children really act out

Simon: So, let’s talk about, our kids and child behaviour And I think often parents, we feel like we’re failing our kids when they have an outburst and we are not sure really how to, how to respond to that.

And sometimes we, we get the guilt when we might raise our voices or discipline in some way. But from your experience and you’ve got a wealth of experience, in different kind of as well, I guess we’ll start at the start and why do you think kids do act out and, the next step for a parent when that happens?

Kimball: So, what James Lehman and the Total Transformation Program articulates so well is that he explains that most acting out behaviour is poor problem-solving skills by kids. And when I say problems, the problems they’re facing are problems like they can’t meet a responsibility very well.

 these are kids that are 7, 8, 9, 10 years old. Suddenly they have like homework responsibilities. They’re not able to meet those responsibilities or they don’t know how to deal with emotions like frustration and anger. it’s a skill to learn how to deal with anger and frustration.

When you’re young, you don’t deal with it. And so, what, what they do instead is they act out and acting out actually becomes a problem-solving mechanism for them. and the problem is, and parents need to be aware of this, the problem is that it works for them. So, they act out and then the parent steps in and solves the problem.

So, an example is, let’s say you’re struggling with your kids and they’re not doing their chores. And, you get in fights every night with them. They fight with you about it. And, and finally you just, you’re coming home one night from work and you’re like, what?

It, it would be way easier for me just to do the chores myself and not even have to ask them about it. And, and my evening will be nice. I won’t get in another fight. And then pretty soon you stop asking them to have responsibilities. And from the child’s standpoint, problem solved. They, they didn’t want to do something, they acted out and then the responsibility was removed to them so they don’t have to do it anymore.

Same thing with homework. if you’re struggling over them getting to do their schoolwork and they fight enough, at some point parents will throw up their hands, say it’s not worth the effort. that’s the problem.

These problem-solving skills work for them. They fight back, they act out and, and the thing that they don’t want, or you can see it with a tantrum, especially with young kids, it’s the most obvious thing is with a tantrum. If a kid has a tantrum in a store and wants like a candy bar or something, and then you reward it by giving ’em the candy bar, like it doesn’t take long before they realize, huh, I do that and I get that thing. And, they do it again. They’re not like really thoughtful about it. They just noticed it happened and, and they, and it develops into habits. It’s not like they sat around and think, well, if I act out now, and then eventually she’ll wear down and then eventually whatever.

But it’s, just becomes a behaviour they have when things are, are difficult for them. They act out and then, and then whatever is that was the problem is fixed somehow. and even with, with tantrums that little kids, you’ll watch ’em, they, they will actually threaten a tantrum to get what they want.

Like parents will know, they’ll be in the store, the child wants something and, and the child has that look like, like, I’m going to explode. And the parent’s like, I can’t deal with this. I don’t want like an explosion in the store. It’s embarrassing. It’s like stressful. It’s all those things. So, it’s kind of like you pre-emptively give them that thing that they wanted, that otherwise, you didn’t necessarily want to or didn’t think it was right.

 Ends up being almost like blackmail. So, so it’s, it’s a problem. They’re, they’re, they’re having problem solving skills and it works that the problem is that it works and it’s, but it’s not a good life skill to have because as you get older, when you start hitting teenage years, if your go-to problem solving skills to act out, you’re going to have to start acting out more and more and, in more and more places, because life gets a lot more complicated.

You get a lot more problems. And if you can’t solve those problems effectively, and you’re acting out, you end up in a really bad place. So, it’s better to take care of it early if you can.

Simon: Yeah, I’ve been one of those parents who’s carried a toddler out of a shop or off the beach, and they’re absolutely kicking and screaming in my arms because they’ve received a no or something like that.

And it has, it, it’s heartbreaking as a parent to, to have to do that. But I, I can also understand why parents, so many parents, do give in because it is embarrassing and we don’t want people to be watching us and, and thinking that we’re bad parents when sometimes the kids are sick or they’re tired, or, and particularly like at the moment, it’s the end of our school year here in Australia.

And so, like I noticed my five-year-old, he’s really tired after his first year of school. And, outbursts are a very quick thing for him at the moment compared to, say, six months ago when he was just in the midst of the school year and everything was okay. So, I can really understand why parents feel in this, in this particular situation? is it just around responsibility or like, I I’m thinking about for the younger kids, like the toddlers also around communication as well and, and difficulty expressing what they actually need as well. Do you find that with some of the parents that you work with?

Kimball: so, I want to qualify. One thing is that our programs are designed for kids age five up. If, if they’re younger than age five, they don’t really know what’s going on. They can’t articulate things. Part of it is right, they might be frustrated. and they, and they’re tired. They don’t know that that’s what the problem is.

And I actually, I will coach parents on, on that, which, which I’ll say to them is, if your child’s like overtired and acting out, like one of the worst things you can do is go up to your child and go, what’s wrong? What’s wrong? Because they don’t know what’s wrong either. And you’re the authority figure in the household who’s like the mature person and they don’t, they don’t feel good in there like, going to melt down and they don’t know why.

And then their parent comes along and, and the parent’s asking them, and he is like, oh, my parents don’t even know what’s wrong with me. it’s better to go up to them and go, look, you’re overtired. It’s time to go to bed. put the games down. It’s time to go to bed, take a nap, and just be the leader and just direct them as to what to do.

You don’t have to have a long-drawn-out conversation with them about it. They probably wouldn’t understand it anyway. or you can explain to them, look, you’re just overtired, but you don’t have to overexplain it.  they don’t have to get it necessarily. And they may not get it. You just tell them what the way it is.

Simon: They’re probably not going to get it either.

Setting rules for your child

Kimball: They’re probably not going to get it. We have, we have a great article on our website. It’s called Explain Yourself Once and Move On. And it’s this idea that your child doesn’t have to agree with you or understand exactly why you have rules or whatever.

It, makes sense to explain to them why you have the rules. But it’s not your requirement for them to accept it. It’s not your requirement for them to have to understand it. They may not understand it, they may not want to understand it, they may not be capable of understanding it.

They may not understand it until they’re an adult. but that’s fine. you’re, as the parent in the household, it’s, it’s your prerogative and it’s your duty to set limits and make the rules in the household, and you can explain it to your kids and here’s why. But you can leave it at that.

You don’t have to have endless arguments about it. We have another article about, when your child’s, the little lawyer who, who argues everything. You don’t have to, this,

Simon: I guess because if you do that, you end up in a bit of a loop don’t you, of communication or maybe not.

 constructive communication, it’s almost like a loop of a conversation that you just can’t get out of if you,

Kimball: It goes on and on and on. And actually, that becomes the point is that it’s a power struggle. Your child’s very good at it. The child has, that’s a realized, kids have no, they have virtually no power in life. They’re not in charge of anyone. They’re not the boss of anyone. They don’t have their own money; they don’t have a job. They can’t support themselves, but they have a superpower. And that superpower is, they have complete emotional control of an adult in their life.

Two adults, usually if there’s two parents at home right. They, they can make your life miserable, not miserable. Like they have emotional control over you. for someone who’s otherwise completely powerless in life, can’t support themselves, to have that much power over a large, tall adult who’s many years older is, is incredible. They’ll actually use that power.

Simon: Yeah. And they use it often.

Kimball: And they use it often. And actually, it’s a useful thing. I mean, that’s how they like, like they communicate and cry. Like that’s how they get their problem solved when they’re young. And it makes sense, right? You have to cry when you’re young and you’re hungry because you don’t have the words, you can’t say those things or whatever.

So, but you need to like improve your problem-solving skills as you get older. Yeah. And a lot of kids. this is one thing I want to caution your parents is that if, you’re struggling with a child with behaviour problems, I, I’m going to tell you outright, it’s not your fault you got, you got a difficult kid because there’s tons of parents out there.

Who have kids that are easy. Like, you don’t have to do any of these things. You don’t have to worry about any of these things. You tell your kids something once and then they kind of get it and they just, they’ll be fine on their own without much effort. And we have lots of parents who come to us that have two kids that are easy, perfectly fine.

You barely give ’em any direction. And they, figure out how to solve life’s problems, basic problems. Fairly well. and their third kid doesn’t do it very well. It’s usually the last kid because they stop having kids at that point. but it’s not the parent, it’s just the, the kid’s different.

Like for whatever reason, some kids figure it out and some don’t they all can figure it out. That’s the thing. It’s just that some need to learn it differently than others do. And some, need to learn it through what we call consequences and through coaching. Coaching your child as to like what, what you can do instead of acting out to solve your problem.

Simon: I’m interested in your thoughts on, on the teaching moments that we have with kids. And I had, a wonderful guest, Reneau Peurifoy on the show of a little while back, and he was talking about anger and he, and he said this great quote that I love, and he said, we teach in unteachable moments, so when the child’s upset and we might be upset, we’re trying to ask them why they’re behaving like this or what they’re doing and why they shouldn’t be doing that.

And then his, view was like, wait for things to become calm again, and then go into that, that teaching moment or learning moment with the child. what’s your thoughts on this approach? And, and when is a good time to ask the, the why question as to why they’re behaving that way. And, and then also helping them reflect on what might be a better course of behaviour.

Talking through the behaviour with your child

Kimball: so, I have a few thoughts on that. One is completely agreed that trying to explain this in the middle of the heated argument is not the time and place to do it. if you have rules in your household, you enforce what those rules are. and in the middle of a big argument is not the time to have to explain them or negotiate them.

And if they want to negotiate them or, or explain them or have more explanation, you say to them, look, these are the rules. Let’s sit down tomorrow at five o’clock for half an hour, and we’ll talk it through. Often, they don’t want to talk it through. What they want is to have the rules not apply to them. And, and they don’t really want to necessarily talk it through because, because they know the rule makes sense usually anyway.

 so, they may not want to go to that next meeting, but you say, when things are calm, this is where we’re going to talk about it. Or when they explode, you just say, we’re not, we’re not talking about this Now you have to calm down first. Yeah. and tell them, I just, I won’t have this conversation while, while, you’re swearing at me or while you’re screaming and you do it the next day when things are calm.

The “WHY” trap

Kimball: in terms of the why, there, there is something that we, called the why Trap and a lot of parents fall into what we call the why trap. And, and the example is your child’s supposed to be doing their homework and you walk into the room and they’re playing electronics.

And so many parents will walk in and the first thing they’d say is, why are you playing electronics? And they stand there and they wait for an answer. What James Lehman and what the total transformation program would say is don’t ask your child why? Because when you do that, you’re asking them for an excuse.

And communication with kids matters a lot. If you’ve ever been in couples therapy, communications are one of the number one thing that that is an issue between couples. It’s also one of the top issues between parents and kids, and I don’t think parents realize that, is that there’s a communication breakdown.

Their child’s young, they’re immature, they’re not getting things directly. What you need to do when you walk in is not ask them for an excuse. We don’t want our kids to give us excuses. The kids know what the rule is. So, you walk in and you say, you’re not supposed to be playing electronics. Put the electronics down, go do your homework. And then you walk out and you don’t get into a long discussion about it. and then you check back, and if they’re not doing it, then you apply consequences. And, there’s, we can talk more about if you want what an effective consequence is, but you don’t have to have that why discussion.

And in general? one of our bylines is practical parenting advice. We don’t always need to know the why’s. We may not understand the why’s. I’m not sure, I believe the why’s. The why’s are an interesting academic question, but like, why does one kid act out and one doesn’t and why they like that.

 I don’t always know why, like you can come up with a theory like, oh, it’s because this happened to them when they were young. But I don’t know if that’s true or not, because I can think of lots of examples of kids who act out that nothing bad happened to them.

And so, we’re more on the line of, of there’s no excuse for abusive behaviour by your kids. And, and regardless of why they’re doing it, you just need to treat it as if, as if they’ve done it. And, and they need to have consequences. And you have rules and, and you enforce your rules. And the why’s kind of don’t matter so much.

A child’s self-esteem and their behaviour

Kimball: And even it comes around to, you see it a lot in what we call the self-esteem movement. Where people will say, the reason kids are acting out is because they have low self-esteem. And, James Lehman would turn around and say, yes, it’s true that kids who act out often have low self-esteem. He says, but it’s, it’s never been effective in my experience to solve a kid’s behaviour problems by working on their self-esteem.

Instead, he found the opposite true, which is that when they learn to behave better, when they learn better problem-solving skills, their esteem goes up. So, he had this thing that he would say to parents, you can’t behave yourself.  you can’t feel your way to better behaviour, but you can behave your way to better feelings.

And he found it was very, very effective to teach kids how to behave better, coach them on it. And as a result, when they start getting along and doing things in a way that doesn’t hurt or is abusive to others, they start feeling a better about themselves. And he remembered that about when he was in his teenage years when he was, in the drug abuse and stealing and a bunch of other stuff.

He said he felt horrible about himself. Like, looking back, he felt like a, like, just like a sort of a miserable person, even though he kept doing it. And it wasn’t until later that he learned how to behave better and not do those things that he and be able to control his impulses, that he started feeling better about himself.

So, his, his esteem didn’t grow until his behaviour improved. So, so from a practical standpoint, we’re always focused on improve the behaviour, the esteem and those other things tend to follow. And it’s, that’s kind of tied into the why’s. It’s like, I’m not sure, we always need to know the why’s.

We may never know the why’s. We may have theories and, and they are in interesting academic questions, they may or may not matter. Sometimes there’s like some root cause stuff that you can look at to see, like, if they’re always acting up and they’ve, and they’re getting three hours of sleep every night and they’re going to bed late, you might want to say, well, the why might be, well, yeah, they’re sleep deprived.

 So, you want to address those kinds of questions, but, but in general, we say that, that, the goal is, appropriate behaviour, no matter how you’re feeling, no matter how you’re feeling about yourself, no matter what is the goal’s, appropriate behaviour, and you’re, there’s ups and downs in life.

 you, you need to be able to behave appropriately and not abusive towards others, whether you’re in a downswing or an upswing or somewhere in between. And I learned that, the hard way during the stressful years of marriage, which is even when like you’re, in the, in the dark winters when I’m feeling all depressed about things and kind of miserable, that’s not an excuse to like, to snap at my wife.

And, I did. I would do those things, but it was not an excuse. it was completely not right to say, well, the reason I did those is because I was suffering from X, Y, and Z. No, no, no. You should not do those. I mean, you can start taking care of yourself to prevent those things, but it’s not, not an excuse.

Simon: And you, and you mentioned consequences before as well. So, let’s, let’s have a chat about that. Like, so a child’s acted out and you’ve walked out of the room after giving that direction as to what they should be doing, and you’ve come back and then still not doing it. what’s a way that you teach, parents to help improve behaviour through consequences?

How to use consequences

Kimball: So, the main goal of consequences is not to punish your child, but to show them that they’re cause and effect in life and it’s a teaching moment.

And, in general, you want them to be short term and you want them to be task oriented. And, and short term is the consequence. You want them to be practicing the better behaviour. So, like if, if they were playing electronics, you would take their electronics away, somehow, remove the electronics from a room or whatever.

And when they’re done with their homework, they get it back. And you want to get it back in their hand. You don’t want to just say you’re grounded from electronics for a week. Because all you’re teaching your child to that point is to do time. They have to wait a week and you don’t want your child good at doing time.

 Which, I don’t know, maybe in the, in the, in the American vernacular, doing time means you’re in prison, right? You don’t want your child good at that. So, what you want is, take it away. And the task is when they’re done with their homework, they get it back and you give it back to them. Now, the fact that they weren’t doing it in the first place, maybe like there’s a, there’s a little bit of a consequence on that, but, but in general, you want them to get the electronics back and you want it short term.

So, they’ve practiced getting their homework done and then getting rewarded afterwards. And then, this is completely practical. Then, when they inevitably do it again, because these are usually be patterns of behaviour and it takes a long time to break them. When they do it again, you can take it away again.

You don’t want to bankrupt your child. If you bankrupt your child, there’s nothing left to take away. you don’t have any leverage on them anymore. So that’s, that’s not a good place to be. So, you want ’em short term task oriented. So, if one child’s hitting the other child, one thing you do is you could take away the electronics until they go three hours without swearing or hitting or getting along well, and they can get along well and they behave well they get that thing back or another. Sometimes it’s hard to know what the task would be. and, and you have to be a little bit creative. This is something that our coaches work with parents on. Like, what’s the task if, if your, if your daughter stood in the middle of the kitchen and, and said, if you because she was upset about something.

And, we don’t swear, we don’t verbally abuse our parents and we don’t say the f word to our, parents to their face in the room like that. And one of the tasks could be like, okay, you lose a privilege for like three or four hours.

But in addition, you have to write me a letter Explaining to me that, we do not swear in this household. It is against the rules of this household to swear and verbally abuse another member of the household. And you have them write out with the rules. You don’t have them write, I’m sorry, because they’re probably not, sorry.

 What you want them to do is, write down that there are rules in this household. they’re going to roll their eyes, if they roll their eyes, don’t worry about it.

Like, just ignore it. You just want them to, to understand by writing this down that there are rules in this household. Here’s what the rule is. so, they just, they will write, I understand that there’s no swearing in this house while I broke the rules, the next time I get frustrated with mom or dad, I’m going to do X instead.

 So, what you’re doing is you’re forcing them to, articulate and write down a replacement behaviour for the acting out, which is, I’m going to take a deep breath and I’m going to go to my room and I’m going to just, calm down for a couple of hours, or I’m going to go for a walk around the block.

That’s sort of the coaching moment where you can coach them as what the alternative behaviour is. And it sounds silly, but it actually, it forces them to, think ahead of time, the next time that They’re tensing up and they’re about to explode. if they’ve had this seed planted is what they can do already and that it’s not appropriate and you’ve been explicit about that, it’s actually going a long way to, to letting them try something different. And when they, do decompress and don’t swear at you, it’s, it’s awesome and you watch it and you want to make sure that when the kid does do that, that afterwards, not in an over top, but afterwards you just say to them, look, I really liked how, I saw that you were getting frustrated this time.

I, you didn’t explode. You took care of things. I liked how you did that. It’s very important to give that positive feedback when it’s clear they did something in a challenging situation that was right. Because kids with behaviour problems are being corrected all day every day.

To them its negative, negative, negative stuff coming at them all the time. So, when they do something right, you want to point it out and, and, and, and give them some positive feedback on it.

Simon: when you say patterns of behaviour, what are you talking about? And are there ways that we can use patterns of behaviour to our advantage in terms of our parenting, approaches?

Patterns of Behaviour

Kimball: this is specific for the parents to come to us because, no parent comes seeking our services just because their child once swears to them.

 it’s, they come to us and then the first thing they often write to us is, I’m at my wits end. I, I can’t take it any longer. I don’t know what to do. so, it’s happened not once or twice. It’s happened over and over and over again. Sometimes for years before they, get to the point where like, I need help.

so that’s what I mean by patterns. These are, the child’s go-to way that they solve problems is by acting out and being defiant. And, it takes a long time for them to, to learn those things. And part of the value of what we do is since they are patterns, we use that to our strengths.

We know what’s going to happen again. And what we do is ahead of time, we plan as to what we’re going to do, what we’re going to execute the next time it happens. And that’s a lot of the value of the coaching and the total transformation program because it tells you what to do and say the next time it happens and it’s going to happen again.

And if it doesn’t, then perfect. life’s great. Right? But this is what you do the next time it happens. And with parenting is, remaining calm and not exploding. And not just adding fuel to the fire. And often that happens out of frustration cause the parent’s not sure what to do.

But when they go into the situation with a plan, they’re usually much calmer. They know, they know what they’re doing. like, first responders, firefighters and emergency medical technicians. They, practice these things over and over again. before they actually go out in the field and do it.

And when they go out in the field to do it, they’re going through the same, drill that they practiced, they’re just executing. That’s, what you need to be doing with your parenting as well when you, when you’re dealing with these challenging kids.

Simon: Amazing insights into parenting strategies. I’ve got little examples left, right, and center with what we’re happening at, at home, at, at the moment with our five-year-old particularly, and I’m sure a lot of parents who are listening to this are getting some great insight into this as well.

What’s the success rate of the program that you run? Is it quite successful? Have you got that feedback from parents?

Kimball: Yeah. You usually, when parents come to us, they’re at their what’s end. So they are, they are looking for help. So, we’ve had, tremendous success with parents and often the kids know right away something’s different.

Especially that first thing that they don’t attend every argument that you’re invited to, the first time you walk away from that argument when the kid’s dragging you down to it. When, your own pattern has been, has been to explode, like the kid knows something different like almost immediately.

So, we’ve had tremendous success with parents and, some very challenging situations, but a lot of it depends on, on the kids. And I, and I’ll give you a couple scenarios as to how you judge, like whether it’s working or not, because depending on where you’re starting from, success can look different.

So, luckily most parents that come to us, and I think usually the situation is something like this, which is the parent’s having a really hard time with the kid, but outside of the household, the kid’s, okay, like, he’s not getting in trouble with the law. He’s not getting in big trouble at school.

Some, some kids are, but, but if your kid is defiant with you and you’re having a real problem, but outside in the real world where there are rules and, and people held accountability, they behave well, that’s actually a good sign. That means that the issue is between you and your child. And those are usually through our programs, fairly easily rectified through, through doing a lot more of the effective stuff and doing a lot less of the ineffective stuff.

And we explain what those, what those things are. but then there, there’s a subset of kids that we would describe as having oppositional defiant disorder. and those kids are oppositional with everyone. And for them it’s challenge. Those kids are challenging and those kids are off often wonderful kids too because they’re, they often become like the business leaders.

 If they’re able to channel their behaviour, To useful pursuits and not criminal pursuits. They become incredibly productive people because they’re the ones who challenge the status quo. They’re the ones who become the business leaders.

 they’re the ones who, build Apple Corporation and stuff these were all defiant kids. Like they, went against the trends and through will of personality, they made things happen. So, these kids can be incredibly productive. if we were all just a bunch of rule followers, nothing would happen in the world.

 we, tell parents, like, you have one of those kids that, that, channelled, right? It can really be incredible. But success looks a little different because they’re, they’re defiant by nature. It’s not just an issue between you and you and your child that you need to work out this, this is going to be something that child is going to deal with long-term, and you want to have your child build skills so that, they use this for, useful purposes and not getting in trouble the rest of their lives.

 but that, it doesn’t mean it’s going to be a picnic. it’s just a challenge raising these kids, and it’s, it’s good to point that out to parents a lot of the success comes from, the parent knowing that, and we tell them this, is that they’re not responsible for their kid’s behaviour.

You cannot choose your child’s behaviour for them

Kimball: And, and a lot of parents feel guilty. Their child’s struggling, they’re having behaviour issues, and they feel guilty about it. And we tell parents, at the end of the day, it’s your child’s behaviour, it’s not your behaviour. So, your child has a choice to make when they’re standing in the middle of the kitchen and they have a choice to make as to whether they swear at you or not.

 And or whether they, they throw something and break something, or punch a hole in the wall like they have a choice to make and they made the wrong choice. That’s not your choice. That’s their choice. And what you need to do is hold them accountable for it. And not feel guilty that you did something wrong as a parent.

 because the guilt’s not helpful. it makes you miserable, first of all. And second of all, you can’t make your child do anything. You really can’t. You can’t make your child behave better. All you can do is set up an environment that that strongly encourages them to behave better and discourages them from behaving poorly through consequences.

 and it works the vast majority of the time it works, but you still can’t make them. They have to be an active participant. And I’ve said this in other, in other podcasts, that you can no longer make your child behave better than you can go to the gym and work out for them and expect your child’s muscles to grow.

Only they can do it. And, and it’s a problem when you start feeling guilty about it, because first of all, the child might know that the parent feels guilty about it. And you’ll milk that.

If you’re manipulative, you’ll milk that. whether it’s explicit or not, but I can remember milking that. I just like knew, I manipulate this situation to my, advantage and get to go out with my friends and do, and stay out all night, do whatever I want. And, the kids will manipulate that.

They’ll manipulate your guilt and use it against you. So, it’s not helpful. And then here’s, here’s what’s even worse, is that they might actually believe that the reason they behave poorly is because you’ve been a bad parent. and then it becomes a scapegoat for them.

I don’t behave well because of what you did to me, and now it’s not up to me. I don’t have a choice. I don’t have what they call an economics agency anymore, and I’m not in control. The reason I am the way I am is because of you. And I can’t go back in history and fix you as a parent to fix me.

 And that is not useful in, any way whatsoever. That’s not useful because you could make the argument, well, the reasons you were a bad parent was because of their parent and they couldn’t help it either.

So, it could just go on and on and on. If you carry the logic to its extreme and it’s, and it’s not helpful. So, you need to make sure that the kid is accountable for their behaviour. It’s their behaviour. It’s not your behaviour. don’t take on the guilt of it. just say, hey, tomorrow I’m going to do more of the effective things as a parent that I’ve learned through these programs and I’m going to do less of the ineffective stuff.

And if you change that balance, wonders can happen in the household.

Simon: You just touched on something there, it was around picking ourselves up if we do have a, a moment where we don’t get it right. And then just stepping back on the path and, and reintroducing the boundaries and the rules and all that type of stuff.

It’s not the end of the world if we get it wrong. And there’s, a lot of talk around at the moment around good enough parenting, and we don’t need to get it perfect all the time. We can actually fail. And it’s actually probably good for our kids to see us fail and things, but also good for them to see us pick back up again and, and start the process as well.

have you heard about good enough parenting and, and any thoughts on that?

Good enough parenting

Kimball: Yeah, that’s something that, James Lehman talks about a lot. He says, our audience is the good enough parent. They don’t have to be a superstar. they want the best for their kids.

 they’re going out and trying to earn a living and trying to support their family. And they’re just, your average parents just trying to get by and, and raise decent kids who, end up with, a child who’s challenging, very challenging. And it wasn’t any of their own doing so, so they just had a challenging kid.

 I just want to be careful to say that, not in the good enough parent category is, parents that are like, suffering from like severe, drug or alcohol abuse, that’s a different situation. We’re not talking about that. We’re talking about just your basic parents that are just, the average Joe’s doing their thing and, want the best for their kids.

 and you just want to do more of the effective stuff and less of the ineffective stuff. And it’s, and you can’t beat yourself up if, if. You still explode and get that, that argument or attend the argument you should have attended.

You just say, tomorrow I’m going to do better next time. No one’s a hundred percent. No one’s even close to a hundred percent. the goal is not to be 0% or 10%. do it right 70% of the time. If, you’ve been doing it 30% of the time correctly, do it 70% of the time correctly, that still allows you 30% of the time to like, to fall off the wagon or, or whatever.

because we’re just human, like we don’t, yeah, we don’t, we don’t react well all the time. And, what, we should recognize that our kids are going to do the same thing. So, they’re going to improve inevitably. but that doesn’t mean they’re not going to do the things you don’t like again, because they probably will.

And that doesn’t mean that they’re failures either. if you’ve seen some successes or whatever, something’s getting better. if things don’t always go perfectly for them because they’re not going to, so, we’re all a work in progress forever.

Simon: Absolutely. So, a great way to finish off the show actually in, in that reflection that both us and our kids aren’t perfect people and there’s going to be times where we get it right and don’t get it right as well. but Kimball, thanks so much for coming on. you’ve got an amazing insight into parenting and you said you weren’t an expert, but I think anybody who has a child becomes an expert in some way of parenting in their own unique way.

How to access Empowering Parents resources and support

Simon: does empowering parenting, is that something that’s available worldwide to parents across the world, or is it just in the US?

Kimball: since we went fully electronic. we have worldwide customers. in mostly the English-speaking world, so United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, UK, Ireland, and then there’s expats that live all over.

I think we’re in like 40 countries, so if you go to empoweringparents.com, we have hundreds of free articles and I recommend you sign up for our, our newsletter, which is free. You get an article sent a couple times a week. But also, there’s where you can sign up for the total transformation program, and it’s all, it’s an online streaming, class with a set of online workbooks and stuff, and you can start that immediately and, it’s incredible content and really, it’s like taking a course.

So, the articles are great, but sometimes getting the foundation and the coursework and working through is really how you understand it all. And that, that’s really how I started. I started by doing the program and it’s, it’s been great. And we also offer coaching, so, if you want to talk to a person about applying the programs and, and about your issue.

We have coaching and we coach worldwide also. our coaches are on the east coast of the United States and they work reasonably normal hours. we do have plenty of Australian customers, but they have to be a little bit flexible, like for you.

Mm-hmm. This, you know, it’s early in the morning and for me it’s, mid-afternoon. So, we just have to, work around that with the coach. So, but we have plenty of, customers worldwide, both for our coaching. We do it over the phone. So, you sign up, for a coaching session and, and we call you.

So

Simon: Awesome. Sounds fantastic. And I’ll put the links to the website in the show notes so anyone can access that if they like. but the last question I like to ask, all my is to plug something that makes you feel good. So, we’ve talked a lot about parenting and behavioural issues as well, but it doesn’t have to be anything about parenting or behaviour.

It could be just something that you’re listening to or watching or reading at the moment that can pay it forward. And maybe some of our listeners can tune into that themselves and make themselves feel good too.

Kimball’s feel-good plug

Kimball: So, it can be anything

Simon: Absolutely anything.

Kimball: Like a product or any, because I was wondering like what, because I do get excited about things. I discovered a few years ago, which I tell people this, is that my eyesight’s terrible and I used to buy glasses and this is not a plug because I get nothing out of this other than, I just love this product.

 and I’d go try on a, a pair of glasses. And glasses are like expensive. Like, you go and it’s like, the, middle of the line or like 400 US dollars. I’m like, ugh. And then I thought they’d look nice, I’d get home, I’d wear them for a week. And I realize like they’d gimme a headache.

I’m like, oh, I just spent all that money or these, or I’d break them or something. And, there’s online glasses companies now. So, the one I use is called Zenni. And the frames are like 10 bucks.

 and then the lenses are like another 10. So, you can, get a pair of prescription glasses for like 25 bucks. And it’s hit or miss. So, what I do is when I get a new prescription, I’ll order like five or six. I’ll take that like $200 and I’ll order like five or six different pairs of glasses.

And so, I have like, tons of backups. They’re just become an accessory. it used to be like really expensive item that I’m going to have for like three years and I can’t change it. Now I’ve got glasses literally all over the house, all different kinds. Like, I have bifocals that are computer length and reading, for the computer, I need that and I need distance glasses, I have sunglasses.

 so, for a fraction of what I used to spend going to the, optometrist to get glasses, I just get tons and tons of pairs of glasses. So anyway, there’s a few companies out there that do it. I used one called Zenni, and, I discovered them, it’s been almost 10 years now.

They’ve gotten more expensive now. I discovered them before they were popular and they were really, really cheap. Now they’ve become more popular. So, the price has gone up a little bit, but it’s still it changed my, my world in terms, in terms of, eyewear.

Simon: Yeah, it’s a timely discussion.

Cause my wife is just literally yesterday or the day before, got her eyes tested.

 I think we’re still in that frame of mind of going into, an optometrist and, you got their glasses on the wall or there are some glasses places, but they’re very limited in their designs in Australia as well.

They’re very boring designs.

Kimball: yeah, that’s the thing. You get like very, funky stuff that’s just sort of, it’s like costume jewellery. It’s like the costume, jewellery, version of, of glasses. And you can do both. If, if you still want to get like the, the one from the optometrist, you can still go and order a couple of pairs.

 like they’re inexpensive. And me, I did a lot of like, water activities and stuff and I can’t count how many times I’ve dove into the water and I had my sunglasses on and I didn’t realize I had ’em on, and I’d lose them. And like in the past it’d be like, it’s like, like $400 just went down, just went into the lake and I’d just be horrified.

And I couldn’t, of course I couldn’t find them, but now, now when it happens, it’s like, ah, 25 bucks, like that sucks. It’s not that bad.

Simon: Awesome. All of my spares are all like, scratched up and they’re using them for the garden.

Kimball: And you can’t order one pair and expect it’s going to be the perfect pair. You got to, you got to like play around and it’s when you discover a frame that like fits you really well and you like, yeah. Like, you’re like, ah, this is great. it’s all I, I have like three or four go-to, but then I’ll always try like a new one.

And sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t.

Simon: well, thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate you coming on and, and sharing your insight into parenting and fatherhood and, and glasses as well. and I hope you have enjoyed your time on the Mindful Men Podcast and I look forward to, to catching up in the future and seeing how things are going.

Kimball: Thanks Simon.