Hey guys, how are we doing?
Hope you are well.
Hope life is treating you really, really well.
I just wanted to jump on here and just say hey, give you a quick little update.
It's been a little while since I've jumped on in the parenting space.
I've been working hard on the new platform in the background over the last couple of
weeks as well as moving my family.
So I've been a little bit MIA.
It's been very chaotic, very busy, probably one of the most chaotic and full on seasons
of my life.
So we are shifted now, we're in a different house and we're kind of finding a new rhythm
and a new flow.
So I just wanted to jump on and say hey and kind of just share a story actually as well
with you from the other day.
My wife and I went to a mall not far from where we're living now and we were walking
through and went into one of the shops and Jackson saw something he really wanted, a
toy that he really, really wanted.
Usually when this happens he's able to kind of move on and accept that we can't get him
every single thing he wants.
For whatever reason he just could not let go emotionally.
And so we said hey buddy, we can't get this for you right now, I'm really sorry.
It's just not going to be able to happen for you and he just couldn't move on.
And for I think probably at least an hour he was just really pressing the issue, he
was crying, really like, it was one of those moments where we're in the mall and everyone's
watching and kind of looking and it's a bit awkward because he's being very loud and making
a bit of a scene.
And so it was hard, it was hard for us and the temptation would obviously be let's just
get him the toy and shut this down.
But that would have been not the right path and it would have been not the right thing
to do because it would have communicated to him that whenever he pushes and whenever he
presses that we're just going to give in.
And so I wanted to just share what happened with us and we tried some of the tools that
we talk about in the Parenting Challenge that you'll find on the new platform.
And at the end of the day what he really just needed for it was we just had to ride it out,
we just had to ride the wave and it took a while.
But what we weren't going to do is we weren't going to shut down his emotions either, but
we weren't just going to give in.
So we actually had to just ride the wave and say, hey buddy I'm really sorry but we
can't get you every single toy that you asked for.
And you see there's this thing, there's this notion of this idea that positive parenting
or gentle parenting creates spoiled children.
But I just wanted to clarify the difference between creating a spoiled child and creating
a confident child.
And there's a difference which is you create spoiled children by giving them everything
they want, but you create confident children by giving them everything they need.
So meeting their needs and being unashamed and over the top about meeting their needs
such as affection and what are the love languages, go through the love languages, figure out
what are their needs, physical touch, words of affirmation.
Be over the top about meeting their needs.
Don't be ashamed, don't hold back, you're not going to create a spoiled child by being
over the top for meeting their needs.
But there's a difference between giving them what they need and giving them everything
they want.
That's how you create a spoiled child.
So to create a resilient child you actually have to not give them everything they want
and you have to teach them that they have what it takes to go through challenging times.
That was a really hard thing for Jackson.
Obviously for us it's just a toy, get over it.
But for him in that moment it was a really challenging thing.
But if we gave him that toy we would have actually taught him that he doesn't have
what it takes to get through that challenging moment.
But in staying connected with him emotionally we taught him that he's not going to have
to go through hard things alone.
There's a difference between creating confident and resilient children and spoiled children.
You can be over the top in meeting their needs and giving them what they need, but there's
a big difference between giving them what they need and giving them everything they
want.
That's how you create spoiled kids.
We rode the wave and it was hard and eventually we got through it and he recovered and he's
fine and luckily we didn't end up teaching him anything that wouldn't have been healthy
long term.
We could have very easily done that, it was hard not to just go in and buy the toy just
so we could move on and enjoy the rest of our day, but we ended up having to shift our
plans and head home after that, but we recovered and that was the story.
I just wanted to share that difference between creating a spoiled child and creating a confident
resilient child.
It's the difference between meeting needs and giving them everything they want.
Hope this helps somebody out there.
It's good to jump on here, it's been a little while, but we're going to get back into the
flow of things.
I'm excited, again, what's happening in the new platform.
If you haven't seen it, you should definitely check it out.
We've got the whole parenting challenge over there loaded up and ready to go.
It's really comprehensive, it's very thorough, it was about nine months in the making that
involved literally hundreds of hours of research and courses and books and it all went into
a nine part series.
If you haven't seen it, feel free to check it out, definitely worth your time.
Bigger and better things to come guys, hope you're doing well and we'll catch you soon.
Thanks.