My Son, Casey, Explains How My Changing As A Dad Affected Him #560

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1:29On iXL, kids can explore any topic in any grade level, and they're not forced into a single learning path. Our kids thrive on positive feedback, and iXL consistently reinforces success. Plus, iXL gives you as the parent feedback on their progress so you know where to focus your efforts. make an impact on your child's learning, get IXL now. Calm Parenting Podcast listeners get an exclusive 20 % off an IXL membership when you sign up today at IXL.com slash Kirk. Visit IXL.com slash Kirk to get the most effective learning program at the best price. So you have heard me tell countless stories about our son Casey over the years and people said, we're tired of your voice.

2:17We want to hear from your son. But I always respect his privacy, whether he wants to do an Instagram video or not, or be on the podcast. And so last fall, Joe Sanak, he's the host of the Practice of the Practice podcast. He's a therapist. He's got two daughters. He said, hey, I really want to interview you and Casey. I want to hear from him. And Joe asked great questions, right? Like, hey, do you remember when your dad made that shift? How did that affect you? What did you learn from watching your father navigate fatherhood and masculinity? And Casey's answers actually surprised me. I hadn't heard him say some of these things.

2:55So I said, man, I really want more people to hear that. So I asked Joe, hey, can I replay that podcast on our podcast feed so our listeners can hear from Casey? So I hope you find this very enlightening and helpful. It's a good one to share with husbands because there's a lot about fatherhood in there. A couple quick notes. One, we have a live free event in Frisco, Texas, north of Dallas on Monday, March 2nd from 6 to 8 p.m. Look it up on the website, celebratecualm.com. We've got a big winter sale going on. If you need help with that, email Casey. And we've got the ad-free version of this that's available at the website as well.

3:34Okay. I hope you enjoy this podcast as much as we enjoyed recording it with Joe. And so my 11 and 14 year old girls now, I now have stories and I'm so excited. Today, I have Kirk and Casey Martin, who are the father and son duo behind Calm Parenting Podcast, a show that's reached millions of parents looking for practical, empathetic strategies to manage behavior without yelling, shame or punishment. Together, they've Built Celebrate Calm, a movement helping families rethink discipline, emotion regulation, and the parent-child dynamic. What makes their story unique isn't just their expertise, it's their relationship as a father and son.

4:14They model a kind of emotional intelligence, humility, and openness that's often missing in cultural narratives about masculinity. Casey and Kirk, welcome to the Practice of the Practice podcast. Joe, it's awesome to be here. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Well, let's let's start with with you, Kirk. Tell us a little bit about your involvement with the podcast. So kind of started with my dad, who is that old school authoritarian career military kind of my way or the highway approach. So like when you were teaching parenting, well, I became a father for the first time to the young man next to me. And we always like to joke that Casey came out of the womb with boxing gloves on because he was just love to argue.

4:56and I thought, oh, I'll just do what my dad did with me. I'll shut that down. And the strong-willed kids just fight twice as hard. And so what I learned was it wasn't about changing Casey's behavior. It was learning how to control my own. And that's what ultimately changed our relationship and kind of launched us on this path was there's one person in life that I can control. That's myself. And that's the quickest way to change your child's behavior. So parenting for me became more about kind of coming face to face with my own immaturity and breaking some of those generational patterns. So hopefully when Casey becomes a dad, he's not as much of a jerk as I was.

5:39Casey, do you remember when there was like a shift from kind of that old school approach to a more calm parenting or was it kind of slowly integrated in? No, it was a very distinct shift. The first, I would say like the first eight to 10 years of my childhood. I mean, my dad was always a good involved dad, but he definitely had those harsher patterns from his dad for the first like eight to 10 years. So we would butt heads a lot. And then around the time I was eight to 10, he started to shift into controlling himself, being a little bit more, I don't know, conscious and taking interest in the way that my brain worked, which was very different from his.

6:23And so there was definitely a shift there around the time I was eight to 10. Yeah, I know that it was probably six months ago, I was interviewing someone. And that's, you know, when you're a podcaster, you get to interview all these amazing people and have all sorts of self learning. And they were talking about kind of the danger of matching a child's emotions, you know, the kid escalates, you escalate. And so I really started to just notice that in myself. And even just the other day, my 14 year old was having a really tough time. She had had, you know, an overnight from the weekend and was tired from that.

6:56They made a whole tube of cookies and ate them all. And so it was just like everything was set up for her to have a temper tantrum, like a two year old on Sunday night. And she did. And it's like, for me to just think through, I don't need to match that. I don't need to control that was newer for me. Not that I would escalate to that full level, but definitely going to like Western Michigan University, which is a behavioral psychology program where it's like reinforcers, punishers, like very clear type of thing. That was hard for me to shift away from as much of giving consequences in those moments.

7:30I'm wondering, as you guys have explored on the podcast, what have you seen shift in how you think about parenting? Kind of the typical view of parenting is often kid does negative behavior, kid gets negative consequence. Is that still true? Has that shifted? I think, Joe, for me, like the kids we work with are very strong will kids and consequences don't work. They just don't care because they don't they don't care about losing stuff. They care about losing their autonomy and their agency. So you'll see these kids and maybe one of your daughters is like this, where you say, hey, if you do this, this is a consequence.

8:08And they'll like think it through. Like, yeah, I think it's worth me continuing to do that. I'll take that consequence. And so I think the big shift that I've seen, especially when it comes to men, is from my generation, kind of that very authoritarian, I'm going to shut that down, my way or the highway approach. It's shifted. Now, I think it's shifted a little bit too far the other way. And this is where men get left out is a lot of moms now talk really sweetly to their kids all the time like this. And men just won't do that. And so a lot of men are like, hey, if I can't yell and scream, I'm also not going to talk like this.

8:50So where we come in, I think where we resonate a lot with men is it's a podcast by a guy with a son and we can model, hey, I can be the calm, authoritative leader. I can be tough, but I can also be patient and understanding. So for us, the shift we try to get is right in the middle between the two extremes, if that makes sense. Yeah. Casey, I'm wondering, what did you learn from watching your dad navigate fatherhood masculinity? The biggest thing, honestly, is just humility. To be eight or 10 years old and watch your dad go from a guy who yells and just barks out consequences all the time to a dad who kind of steps back, tries to understand your behavior and give you tools to work through things rather than just barking out consequences was huge.

9:48So to watch that and realize, okay, you can step back, humble yourself, learn new skills. That was huge for me. And that's also what helped build the relationship. I mean, it was kind of subtle, but like realizing that he cared enough to change the way he was doing something to make our relationship better. and now as an adult I appreciate that a lot more because I realize how difficult it is to change patterns. You know as an eight-year-old you're kind of like okay cool my dad's a lot nicer now but as an adult you're like okay he had you know 30 years of handling conflict this way. It's hard to shift that so that was that left a huge impression.

10:42Kirk how did how did you shift that? I think it was the first realization of, I can't, I shouldn't fix this kid. And it's not my job. It's my job to work on my own issues. Because I just did a podcast or video on this of, basically what we end up saying as a man is, hey, child, you need to behave, because I didn't do the hard work to work on my own triggers. So you need to behave so that I don't react. Right. It becomes kind of, I don't want to be harsh, but it becomes kind of selfish, right? Like, hey, child, because I can't control myself, you need to control yourself so I don't get angry. And so the other part, Joe, which is very liberating is I, you can't really change the behavior of another human.

11:33I mean, if you try that with your two daughters or your wife, it's not going to end well for you. Everybody's going to be frustrated. So what I started to do is say, why don't I take all that energy that I put into building my career and put that energy into just changing myself? And I began with simple things like, okay, I'll do the opposite of what I normally do. Instead of walking into a room like this, standing over my son, I'll walk into a room and sit down. because it's really hard to yell at someone when you're sitting down. It just changes the dynamic. And then it became addictive because I was like, wait, I'm not even trying to change him anymore.

12:14And his response to me is changing. And I did that solely by controlling myself. That gave me a lot of power. And it was kind of a really cool insight. Kind of reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where George Costanza decides to do the opposite of everything. and he's like highly successful and gets promoted and everything gets the girl. My brother just sent us that clip because everything you ask my brother has a Seinfeld reference. And when he went up like, hey, my name's George, I'm unemployed and I live with my parents in the basement. She's like, oh, the vulnerability is so attractive. I don't know what kind of masculinity George Costanza, we'd have to explore that on a different episode.

13:01Well, I'm wondering, so, you know, I think for a lot of guys, calm isn't just the absence of emotions. And maybe for a lot of men, it feels like that's what calm is. You just don't have any emotions and you're just like floating around all Nirvana style. What does healthy emotional expression look like for men and boys from your perspective? Go ahead. I'll let you do this one. I'll do that. Okay. I think for me, like I always say that, like, you don't become like Gandhi or something like, oh, nothing bothers me. Like I am still very intense, but I've learned how to channel that. And for me, it's like you can feel frustrated, angry, anxious about your child's behavior.

13:43You just don't want to react out of that because it just sabotages every interaction. Because all that happens is I escalate like with your daughter the other night. Like if you would have reacted to her attitude, it just would have escalated and you would have had like a three hour meltdown. And so for me, it's part like a lot of it. I was raised kind of with that like servant leadership thing of like, OK, I'm the guy. I'm confident. I don't I always tell guys, like, don't take things personally like you're I was one to use the F word there, but like you're a grown. You can. We'll just put an explicit on there.

14:19I will. No, I don't need. But sometimes for emphasis, like you're grown up and men, like stop taking it personally that a four year old or a 14 year old was sassy or had a little attitude. It's like, what did you expect from your 14 year old daughter after she had been up all night and eating? So, Joe, I think, you know, one thing that helps men when I talk to them is almost treat your kids like they're your colleagues at work. At work, when things go wrong, we're not like, you know what? Sales are down. Everybody's fired if you don't start selling stuff. No, we walk through and we're like, OK, let's problem solve.

14:56Why are sales down? What's going on? But when we come into our home, it's like there are Legos on the floor. Why aren't you doing anything? And then we escalate. So I use the example sometimes of like an ER doctor, right? Like an ER doctor late at night brings in a patient that's bleeding. They're not like, what were you doing out this late? Why did you get shot? You're making my emergency room all bloody. Good job. That's what we do to our kids all the time. Like, what were you thinking? Instead, the ER doctor slows their world down inside, takes the vitals, stabilizes the patient, and then problem solves and leads their team.

15:34so I found that analogy for guys is really helpful of like treat your kids issues like you do at work or like a quarterback does it'll go much better so I don't know I mean for me it's not I still get frustrated all the time I still have anxiety all the time we still get into little arguments all like it and I'm in a different I'm in a different stage I don't have kids I just got married last year. But for me, a lot of it is learning how, A, it's okay to ask for help. It's okay to talk to older mentors or a therapist about, okay, I'm really struggling. I get angry in these situations and I end up taking it out on my wife.

16:19And then just learning tools to, okay, I'm going to feel the anger. I know I need to take 15 minutes to go on a run or go do something that kind of relaxes me before I like remove myself from the situation and then connect with my wife versus, you know, the initial blow up reaction. Yeah. You know, with my daughters, you know, we often talk because I'm a single dad and have primary custody of talking through just like, you're a roommate to me. There's that side of it that like, if we look at that category, we've got to keep up with the dishes, we've got to keep up with food, we've got to go grocery shopping.

16:59We've got to get laundry put away. Like that's roommate type stuff. And there's an expectation of for your age as 11 or 14, there's certain things that you do, you know, just to be a good roommate. So sometimes it'll even be right now, you're not being a very good roommate. Like it's just tough to live with you the way that you're acting over dishes. We all have to help with dishes. And then there's other things that are more, you know, family connections type of things. And there's other things that are more kind of training them or teaching them about the world. You know, we have this thing where since they're really little and I don't know if I made this up or picked it up from someone, but I always say, you know, you always have three options because when I was a kid, there was just you listen to the parents and or you get in trouble.

17:40There's no nuance to it. And I hated that because there were times that I got really far on a video game and I wasn't to a place that I could save it. And it was time for dinner. I just needed two minutes to get to that final spot where I knew I could save it. And so, you know, with the girls, to say, you know, if I ask you to do something, you can say yes, you'll never get in trouble for that. You can just say no outright, you'll probably get in trouble for that. Or the third option is you can respectfully advocate for your position. If you do that in a calm voice, if you advocate and say, hey, I'm two minutes away from the end of this Netflix show, I'll help set the table at that point for dinner.

18:16Yeah, if you do that in a calm way, it's a lot easier to then let you have that flexibility. And for me, then when I have those moments where I'm like, no, this is just a hard, like, no, you can't do that. Or I need you to do that. I'm not using that card all the time. So then they know, no, we seriously need to get in the car now. Like we can't be late to this thing, drop everything. Like we need to hustle. What are other things like that, that maybe you guys are seeing it in, as you explore these topics? I would say, I mean, honestly, something that we used to do a lot and that I would talk to kids about is learning how to disagree respectfully.

18:53So kind of what you were talking about with advocating is like I had a curfew that I disagreed with wholeheartedly. And like what teenager doesn't disagree with their curfew, but I disagreed with it. I wanted a later curfew, but eventually it came to, hey, mom and dad, like, I would like to earn a later curfew. What can I do to earn that? Something I started doing was coming home a couple of minutes early each time so that my parents learned that they could trust me to come home on time. And you could apply that to video games or screen time. It's like, if you have 45 minutes, get off after 42 minutes, come down, show your parents you can control yourselves.

19:41And then they're going to trust you with maybe a little bit more freedom. And that's kind of, we did that a lot where it's advocating for yourself, but also asking, okay, what do I have to sacrifice to get more time playing video games or so that you trust me going out with my friends? That was highly effective and manipulative. He knew what he was doing. He was smart about that. What I love about that is that then it also makes the parent think like, why do we have a 930 curfew? Why do we have a 27 minute limit on video games to then say, what are the actual concerns here for them to think through it on a deeper way that maybe they haven't?

20:21It also gives your kids a chance to learn how to sacrifice for future gain. So, I mean, that was a huge lesson for me. The other one we would do a lot was, well, I mean, our ultimate goal, yours like for your two daughters is for them to be independent and control themselves. Right. So it was always that thing of like, I don't want to be the boss of you. Like, I want you to be the boss of you. But oftentimes, like I was just thinking with your teenagers, if they sometimes when our kids open up to us, we do that initial. Oh, let me give you lecture 43B on how to choose good friends. And then they shut down.

20:57So oftentimes I'd say, you know what? I appreciate you sharing that with me. I've got some ideas about that. I need to go get started on dinner. I'm going to be in the garage. If you want to hear my ideas sometime, come get me. Well, now I'm not forcing my ideas on the child. Now, later, if they do come to you, they may come and say, okay, what are your stupid ideas, dad? And then you have to not take it personally because they've just opened up and said, okay, what are your ideas? And I've found sometimes that helps a lot better, especially with teenagers in that space. But all the things you're saying, it's like problem solving with your kids and treating them kind of with respect and like adults, like you believe they're capable of having a rational conversation.

21:43I just think it works a lot better. Well, even recently, so this school year, my 11 year old really wanted her own alarm clock. and it's like, great. Like, I don't want to be having these fights to get you out of bed in the morning either. So she got her own alarm clock. She's been awesome with it. And then I had an early morning stomach scope. I had to be at like 5.45 a.m. or something super early. And I just, my parents were out of town. You know, it just didn't work where I could have someone come over. And I think, no, I think we had to leave like 6.30. So it was like an hour before she had to be out of bed.

22:16And so we talked through it with her alarm clock and then having her iPad as a backup and then having another alarm that went off when she's supposed to leave to walk to school. And literally she did the entire thing on her own flawless. And this was a thing that I just thought, oh man, like I didn't, I didn't know how it was going to go. But since then, since that kind of brave independence that she had, um, every morning she started waking up earlier so that she just has more time. She's realized she likes that autonomy. She's doing her own breakfast. She's getting herself ready. Literally. She just knocks on my door and I was like, dad, I'm headed downstairs.

22:50And it's gone just in like a week from me getting out cereal and things to her just doing it all. And I think a lot of times parents, especially in this generation, I mean, I see so many parents carrying their kids' backpack to school, which sometimes are really heavy and should happen, you know, because these kids are carrying a lot of books sometimes. But it's like, you know, to just see how accommodating to kids oftentimes this generation of parents are. That independence point, I think oftentimes this generation of parents is often missing. I'm wondering when you specifically, when the two of you look at kind of redefining masculinity and virtues for this generation of parents, like what would you want to include?

23:35What would you want to leave behind? And even knowing, you know, Casey, you're recently married, to know, like, what do we hope would be the virtues that are passed on and things that maybe we can say, that served that last generation, but it maybe doesn't serve us as well anymore. A few things from me. I mean, the willingness to admit that you're wrong. That's a huge one. I feel, I strongly feel like your generation, no offense, I don't want to, you know, lump you all in, but there wasn't a lot of like, yeah, I'm wrong about this. Let's talk about a different way forward. So just being able to humble yourself and admit that you're wrong.

24:13Are you thinking of your uncle? Never you. Never not you. Actually, you were right. Yeah, he can never admit that he's wrong. He won't. Don't send him this episode. Maybe he should. Being willing to ask for help. I think leaving, I mean, jumping into. No, go ahead. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Let it fly. I kind of want like masculinity in a sense. Like personally, I want that to be measured by like, what are the relationships that I have? How are my friendships? How's my relationship with my wife? I want a relationship with my kids when that happens. So kind of all of that, I would probably leave behind.

25:02Everything I did. Everything that, no. No, you know what? But I have seen that joke because people get on like the millennials and younger generations, but they're very self-aware in ways that like we weren't until like I was like 45 or 50. Like they have good, honest discussions. Casey has like deep talks with his friends, like vulnerable. Like my guy friends. We I mean, most of us go to therapy. We tell each other that we love them. I don't know that that was a thing in your generation if you ever said that to your friends. But like, no, he just said, like, good golf shot, which really meant I love you, man.

25:41I gave him a fist bump. I was vulnerable, honey. No, but it's like and we're pretty intentional about keeping in touch and talking regularly. Friends that I had in college that we all live in different places now and we'll talk every week. And we're very open about our issues and our relationships. Ask each other for advice and thank each other for the support. And yeah, every call ends with, I love you. Like, thanks, man. So it's really cool. Joe, you know what? It's so different from like what you see online with like the toxic masculinity. I watch Casey and his friends and they're awesome. Like, and I hang out with a lot of the younger people.

26:21They're so much more in tune with stuff and they work hard. They're responsible. It's like they took the good parts of my generation and then they've added to it like emotional intelligence. And so I think it's a really good balance that they have. And they have life balance, which I used to get upset, like you don't get work life balance till you're 50 and you're bitter. Right. Like that was our thing. And I think they're making good choices with it. So I kind of have a more positive view of where men are going with that. And I've seen a shift in our work. and I've had to address that on the podcast because my generation is like, hey, don't be such a hard you know what, like you got to humble yourself a little bit.

27:07And then his generation, our younger parents, it's kind of teaching them sometimes to even be a little bit tougher. So it's swung, but I think they're getting a really nice balance with it. Yeah, I'm glad you bring up kind of that toxic discussion and kind of the culture wars of it. It feels like there's this binary choice. You're either like this traditional male that's toxic and you know on that side of it you have a trad wife and then on the other side you like never stand up for yourself and like you just you know let your your feminist girlfriend or wife just steamroll you and you don't take up and but you try to be emotionally intelligent and but you know that like you understand your power and your privilege and all that and it's like neither of those are are in and of themselves right like how do you guys think through kind of those binary choices of what manhood means.