Handle Child Tantrums Better During Major Changes

A brutally honest episode for dads and parents who look at their kid’s meltdowns and think, “Am I failing as a parent, am I screwing my kids up?” In this episode of The Unhinged Father Podcast, Robert walks through a year of nonstop transitions—moving, a new school, ditching the pacifier, potty training, and welcoming baby number three—and how those changes have triggered huge behavior swings in his kids, from fear and clinginess to anger and full‑blown temper tantrums.

You’ll hear why your child’s “bad behavior” during big life changes is really their nervous system yelling “I don’t feel safe,” and how your own thoughts—“my kid is going to be a jerk forever,” “I’m ruining them”—can pour gasoline on the fire if you don’t notice and regulate them first. Robert shares raw, real examples of losing his temper, over‑threatening consequences, and taking his kids’ behavior personally, then breaks down practical tools that have actually helped at home: predictable routines, transition warnings, connection before correction, calming their nervous system, and knowing which battles are worth fighting.

If you’re a dad or parent navigating behavior changes during transitions—new baby, new school, moving, sleep changes—and you’re stuck between “authoritative” and “gentle parenting,” this conversation will help you see what’s really going on underneath the tantrums and how to be a calm, firm, TUF (tough) but loving presence instead of a dictator. Hit play to feel less alone, get some real‑life parenting tools, and start responding to your kids’ transitions with more empathy, consistency, and confidence.

Transcript

Robert (00:00)
If you've ever thought, am I failing as a parent or am I ruining my kids or screwing them up for the future, then this episode is for you.

My family has been going through a series of transitions which feels like forever, but for roughly the last year we've been going through a lot of transitions with the most recent being the birth of my third son, which has been amazing. Everyone's very excited that he's here, but my second born has been having a real, real tough time with this transition and we've seen the difference in his behavior.

Today, we're gonna go ahead and unpack not only what's going on with your children or why transitions can be extremely hard for them and can cause these big behavioral changes, but also what's going on with you. What's happening with you during these transitions? What's going on with you when your child is changing their behavior and how you respond can either help the situation or can actually make it worse.

Besides just talking about it, we're gonna go over some practical tools that have been helpful for me and my family and that I've actually been seeing positive results with over the course of the last couple of weeks. I am by no means an expert in this area. This is more so just an episode to see what I've observed, to acknowledge it, to give some information and then potentially give some tips to anyone who's looking for it or anyone who's going through a similar situation as us.

So first of all, before we even talk about children and the behavioral changes and everything that's going on with them, I really wanted to take it some time and to discuss what's going on with you. What's going on with you as a parent, you as a dad, because that's where everything starts from.

your child is going to grow and they're gonna go through transitions in their lives and even the most perfect child goes through times where they're a little shit, they have temper tantrums, they throw stuff, they say no, they're gonna do stuff that is quote unquote bad or they're gonna misbehave, any of those things, those are gonna happen. I don't care what your child is like or how you think you're raising them, every single child in the history of the world has done some fucked up shit and guess what, you probably did too when you were a kid.

Maybe you got away with it, maybe you didn't. So that's not gonna change. We can't change the fact that those things are happening. But one of the things that we can acknowledge is the fact that we also have emotions when it comes to the way that our children are behaving. We also feel certain things and they make us feel these things. And when we have those feelings, if we're not aware of them or if we're not regulating them, we can take a bad situation and make it an even shittier situation.

I know for me, some of the things that run through my head are, am I failing as a father?

Is my son gonna be a little jerk forever? Am I ruining my kids? Are they gonna be serial killers? These are all things that run through my head.

And because of that, those emotions that come up in me, they push the secondary motion of anger, of anxiety, of stress, of fear, and all these things that can make me have a much shorter fuse and lead with those emotions as opposed to leading with care, concern, compassion, understanding the things that my child probably really wants, especially in a time of transition.

And is it my kid's fault that I feel all those things? Absolutely not. My kid is just being a kid. I may be saying it very flippantly right now, it's not their fault. I struggle with it. In the moment when my kid does something bad or says no, or throws his plate halfway across the room, I'm not sitting here thinking like, my kid is looking for compassion and care. I'm thinking like, what the fuck? Did I do something wrong? Am I screwing my kids up? And then,

automatically I go into authoritative mode. Now that's just me. It's not going to be for everyone, but me it's more of authoritative, strict, harsh, abrasive. That's my personality. And so I just wanted to acknowledge the fact that a lot of times we focus on the behavior of the children. But really what a lot of parents need to do is first acknowledge their own feelings, their own emotions, and ensure that they've got those regulated and not let those impact them to where they're making

rash decisions or making the situation a whole hell of a lot worse.

For example, I'm really big on consequences for actions, whether they be natural or whether they be ones that I come up with. And I want my kids to have choices, and so I utilize the consequences as ways for the kids to feel like they're making their own choices. It's like, you could either do X, Y, Z, and get what you want, or you can still do X, Y, Z, and not get what you want. So.

It's not really a choice, but it is. It's like either you can have this be a pleasant experience or you can have it not be a pleasant experience. But I do know that when my three year old pushes back being a little three nager, he pushes back and gets angry or yells or has a meltdown. I know that a lot of times that will instigate these emotions in me and my consequences become more swift and they become more unreasonable. Like instead of saying like you're not going to get dessert.

tonight if you don't do this. It's like you're not getting dessert for a month and I'm taking away all of your toys. And I'm going to pop the balloons that we gave you. Like sometimes really mean. And that's hard to say because I don't want to be mean to my kids. And I don't follow through on a lot of them. But I would be lying if I didn't say that these thoughts didn't come into my head of harsher punishments and being authoritarian and a dictator in this environment. And I'm not saying that you need to go completely lax. That's not what I'm saying.

still being firm, but understanding that your emotions and your feelings are going to dictate how you interact with your kids and can have adverse effects and make things worse.

And that's why I wanted to talk about this first, because before we talk about our kids behavior, we have to be honest with what's happening in our nervous systems, our stories, our shames, our triggers, the things that are happening within us, because our kids are looking to us to be that stable leader in their lives. And if we're letting our emotions go wild because of the things that they're doing, it's not gonna be good for anyone. So I wanted to have that honest conversation, things I struggle with. I'm not saying this is like, oh, let's go, it's super easy, go forth and.

Don't be pissed off at your kids and don't let your emotions get in the way of what you're doing or how you're parenting them. It's gonna happen. It's just something to be aware of. A lot of people go through life. I was one of them that was just completely ignorant to the fact that my emotional state or how I act or do any of that stuff has an impact on other people. And so I'm just trying to be more cognizant of that as I'm going forward with my life as a parent.

Now we can get into some of the meat and potatoes of what's going on with our kids. And like I said, this episode is more so along the lines of behavioral transitions, behavioral changes that you see in your kid, temper tantrums or clinginess or anything like that that happens during times of transition, which let's be honest, life is all transition. So for us, we moved, we sold our house, we had a new baby come into the mix.

My three-year-old started at a new school. He got rid of his pacifier. At nighttime, he was still at his pacifier in his crib when he was like 2 and 1 half. So we got rid of the pacifier at nighttime, and all times now, actually. And he was potty trained. These are all big life changes that come on, especially the move and especially starting a new school and having a third child come. You're not the baby anymore, even though I tell him he's still my baby.

He's not the baby of the family anymore. And mom and dad had to spend a lot of attention, a lot of time, a lot of attention to the new baby.

Now in our household, we've had times of transitions. Like I said, life is transition, life has changed. Kids are always gonna feel this. But for us personally, we've had two completely different kids that have gone through different transitions that have responded completely different. My eldest son, when we brought home my middle child, he went through these transitions. He started a new school. He didn't have a pacifier, but he sucked his thumb.

And we had a transition out of that potty training. So all of these things were transitions for him. But for him, these manifested in clinginess, in fear of being afraid of everything, of not wanting to do certain things. And everything was really driven by this, this fear emotion. He became a afraid child. Whereas my second born, my three year old now, he is manifesting these feelings and emotions as anger.

having temper tantrums, throwing toys, saying no a lot, screaming, crying. All of these things are the way that these emotions are coming out at him. And I'd like to clarify that my kid is not always having temper tantrums. It's when he's home with us, when he feels comfortable at nighttime, when he's tired, where his...

He's been at school all day, he's been good at school all day, he comes home and he's just letting his guard down and he can't really keep it all together anymore. That's when we're having it. But for him, it's anger, which is not great for me because I respond with anger as well. We're both angry little a-holes and we really feed on each other sometimes.

So it's gonna look different for everyone. When you inevitably come to a transition with your children in some way, shape or form and their behavior starts to change, it could manifest as fear or anxiety or anger. And just know that even though the symptoms may look different, a lot of times the root cause is the same.

And being angry and being fearful doesn't necessarily mean that your kid is trying to be a bad kid or that they're defiant or that they're trying to rule the roost or that they're just trying to give you the middle finger. A lot of times it's this feeling of instability, of being afraid, of being ⁓ dysregulated with how you're feeling emotionally, having the new baby. The mom and dad still love me. It's this...

idea that they're not stable anymore, that they're not safe. And so that's your job as a parent to kind of help identify that.

The brain is asking, is it safe? Who gets me? Do I still matter? Why are these things happening? My world is turning upside down. And you may think that it's dumb, but in the mind of a child, everything is big. Everything is new. And so they think, I'm not getting a pacifier anymore. Is it because mom and dad hate me? am I ever going to be able to sleep again or feel comfort again without the pacifier? The world feels like it's ending.

And when their mind does this and they go into this, their body goes into flight or fight. We don't have to go deep into the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous system here. You don't need to be a science major, but you do know that what a fight or flight mode is. And when children don't feel safe, they're going to go into one of those modes and it's going to come out in tantrums, defiance, running away, hiding, freezing, shutting down. All of these different behaviors are going to be what comes out. But at the root cause is the fact that

they don't feel stable, they don't feel secure, they don't feel safe. And so they're acting out these ways because they don't know any other way to do it.

And part of this is because they don't know how to self-regulate. And I know a lot of people hear this and they'll think new age psychology and it's too soft and all that stuff. But I know plenty of adults who don't know how to fucking self-regulate. And sometimes we as adults, especially authoritative adults or people who don't subscribe to gentle parenting, put a super high expectation on children to be able to do things mentally that I have seen plenty of adults who don't know how to do.

plenty of friends, plenty of family members who don't know how to self-regulate their own emotions or what they're saying. Shit, I'm someone who doesn't know how to always self-regulate my own emotions, my own feelings. It's like we just talked about at the beginning of this episode. We have to be able to self-regulate our own emotions so that way we don't pull our own shit into what our kids are going through and make things worse.

But kids do look to us to learn. And this is one area where we can help them regulate when they're having these big emotions, these big feelings, these temper tantrums or being dysregulated. They look to us, even if they don't really say that, or even if it doesn't help right, there's no cure all. If a kid's having a temper tantrum, it's not like you're calm and they're gonna calm down right away. But they do look to us. They look to us to see how we respond.

to see if I act this way, am I gonna get the reaction out of my dad that I want? Am I gonna get the attention? Or is dad gonna be a calm, soothing presence? And even when I act like this, does dad still love me? Does mom still love me? Does my family still care about me, even if I act out like this?

You don't have to give in to all of their whims. This is something that I sometimes struggle with. Sometimes I'm just like, all right, just give him what he wants so that we can him to stop crying. I can calm him down then we can parent from there. You don't have to do that. You can still be firm in your boundaries, logical, say no, but do it in a calm, soothing, and as calm as you can, voice.

to where they know like they can't do that, but at the same time, you're not freaking out, you're not playing into their emotions, you're not adding fuel to the fire of the emotions that they're already feeling.

it tells their nervous system that everything's okay. If you've ever been in the car, if I can remember when I was in a car when I was younger with my dad in a snowstorm and my brother, and we were scared because it was a big snow, so was like a whiteout snowstorm and we were up on a hill and my dad had to turn around and it was a cliff on one side and we couldn't get up the hill and I was freaking out and my brother was freaking out and I could only imagine how we would have been if my dad was freaking out.

We would have been scared shitless, and it would have made the whole situation worse. But my dad was calm, told us everything was OK, said that we were going to be fine. And he did. He pulled it off. Even though there probably was some danger to where we were at, it wasn't the safest environment. He remained calm and didn't freak out, and that helped us stay relatively calm. And the same thing can be said in these situations where your kid is having these wild emotions.

play into it and you freak out. You're just going to feed that fire and your kids are gonna be like, everything's not okay. I'm not okay. My dad's not okay. My mom's not okay. And it's just gonna make everything explode. You're gonna go from a little contained fire in a fireplace to just, you know, a massive explosion wildfire that's gonna burn everything down.

So make sure you're aware of that. Be aware that new environments, new routines, anything that's new or different for your child can put them in a little bit of ⁓ a tizzy. And you as the parent can either help to pour some water on the fire or you can pour gasoline on it.

Now know what you're thinking, what do I do in these situations? How can I remain calm? I'm still staying calm and my kid's still freaking out. There's all these transitions. What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to handle this? And I've got a couple of practical advice things that I think will be helpful. They've been helpful to me. Not that they've changed everything. It's been a month and a half since the new baby came home and my three-year-old still has.

some temper tantrums, still having trouble going to sleep at night, still having trouble getting in bed and being quiet and going to sleep, but it has gotten hundreds of times better. There's not as many knockout, drag out temper tantrums. When he does have a temper tantrum, he seems to calm down quicker. And I think a lot of it is because some of these practical things that we're implementing, along with me trying to be more calm, loving, and just leading with, I love you and I care about you.

as opposed to just like, are the consequences, be quiet, you need to go to bed. ⁓ All of those things definitely have helped out. So here are some of the practical things that we've been implementing and that I think could be helpful.

One is predictability and preparation, right? There's a reason why a lot of kids like to be in some sort of schedule. And I know there's a lot of parents out there that are like, nope, my kid, we just kind of, the kid will revolve around what we're doing. We don't need to have a schedule if they have a schedule and we're too rigid in that, they're gonna grow up needing that. No shit, we all kind of do better when we have some sort of rigid outline of what we're gonna be doing.

I'm someone who struggles with, I thought that I liked to be go with the flow and have options and not really like define this, but I'm someone who actually works much better in some sort of loosely structured environment to where I know the route to go, where to do, like what to do. can, if I get lost, I can find my footing on something that's structured and then get back into whatever I'm doing.

Kids are the same way, even more so. Kids need routines. when I say they need them, it doesn't mean that they're gonna die if they don't have a routine. You always hear this from the older generations, like, we did this and you were fine. It's like, yeah, we were fine in terms of we survived, but I've got a little bit of a higher expectation in terms of the way I'm taking care of my kids and just like they didn't die.

Some of those things can be routines around bedtime or school pickups or morning routines when you're going to school. Those are things that can be helpful. Bedtime routine, you eat dinner, you take a bath, then you get out, you get some time to play. We give you a warning, 10 minute warning. You get to keep on playing. We brush your teeth, we go in your room, we read a story, we do hugs, we get in bed, right? And you follow that.

You follow that routine to the best of your ability, not being too rigid, but also not being too flexible. And that will definitely help. mean, it's helped us significantly. Our kids know what's coming next. And so when I say this is what's next, it's not a surprise to them. They know that even if they protest, it's still going to be the next thing. And so it's just this constant in their life as opposed to these, these changes. And I, and I struggle with it. Don't get me wrong. My wife tells me constantly that you're always changing routines and doing this and that.

It's like a good workout routine. You don't need to change up everything constantly and actually it can be detrimental if you're constantly changing and you're not getting that rhythm or that routine for your exercises because you're not building the right muscles. It's the same thing with kids. Get into a routine. Don't make it too rigid to where you don't have flexibility, but also don't constantly change it and try and mix stuff up to make things better. That's where I struggle. I'm like, well, I could do this different or that different. Doesn't work.

The advanced warnings also work quite a bit. This is something that I do constantly. You'll hear me at playgrounds in parents. I'm the only parent who does this, but I'll be like, all right, boys, five minute warning, five minute warning, and then we're going two minute warning. Then we're going one minute warning. Get your last little playing in and then we're going. And it doesn't always work. There's still sometimes some protests, but it's been a lot better when I give those warnings and I give those timelines.

than when I don't do that at all, when there's no predictability. They are already starting to gear their mind towards the fact that they're gonna have to leave eventually, as opposed to if you don't give them warnings and they just, all of a sudden it's like, all right, pick up and leave. How would you feel if you were doing a task or something that you wanted to do and then all of a sudden it was like, okay, put your shit down and let's go. And no one gave you a warning on it. Like you wouldn't like that. And so we should be giving our kids the same thing.

Another number two on the practical tips that you can do is connection before correction. And this is also something where I struggle with. I struggle with a lot of things if you guys can't tell. Trying to connect with them before starting to teach them stuff is sometimes difficult for me because I don't want to forget what I'm trying to teach them. But when they're hyped up all jazzed and they're screaming their head off or they're

you know, they're hurt and they're crying, whatever it is, you can't in that moment teach them stuff. They're not gonna like learn whatever you're trying to teach them while they're in this heightened state of emotional illness. You need to make sure that you connect with them first, like, hey, bud, this is a big change. You know, I hear that you're not happy about it or that you're upset and your dad still loves you. Give him a hug, calm them down.

calm down their nervous system. And then after you've gotten them calmed down, you can have this conversation with them after. Now will say it works. It's easier with older kids because you can actually come back to what the event was and they'll figure it out. But it does work with little kids. It's harder because they're kind of like that dog and up where they're just like, yeah, squirrel, squirrel. They'll forget you calm them down and then they're like, yeah, dad, guess what? I had pizza at lunch today. And they're not talking about anything that.

that you were talking about before. That event has gone and is, it's dead. That event is dead, gone past old news. So it is harder with younger kids, but that connection before correction, it does help. And it is very difficult, especially if there's something that's emotionally charged for you and you're having a hard time staying calm. So just another thing is before you correct the behavior, before you tell them what they're doing,

connecting with them just as simple as like, dad still loves you. I say stuff like, is there anything that you can do that would make dad love you less? And no, there's not. There's nothing that you guys can do that would make dad love you less. Giving them that assurance and then kind of going from there.

This is kind of a line, but like visual things and routines and rituals also help in a lot of different transitional situations. It's really just having these concrete things that you can rely on or that the kids can grasp onto and help them remain some like maintain some sort of order or something that feels solid to them.

We've tried some of the little schedule things, the visual things, and I'm not very good with that. it's a struggle for me, but I do know that it does work for other people. So maybe something to try, like a chore chart or a nighttime routine chart or a morning routine chart. Those things do help. Now rituals are something that do help, and I am able to do those. They're little silly ones going to school in the morning, me and my oldest son.

We try to make sure that our middle son is not afraid. He's able to go in. He's not too clingy. So we try to play with them. Right now the ritual is they get in the front seat, but the car's off and I close the door and I push the car back and forth so it feels like they're driving and they pretend like they're driving with the steering wheel. Then we go inside and I joke with my youngest about like, where's your class? You need to tell me where your class is. Is it in here?

and I'll go to the trash can. this your class today or is it underneath the table or is it underneath here? These are just little rituals that we have, little games we play and it's not anything groundbreaking, but it does help put him in like a good mood. He is laughing and it kind of breaks him out of this. Like I'm going to school and it's going to be terrible and I'm dreading it. It's more like, this is fun. Dad's playing with me and I'm also connecting with him during that time as well.

And this is the last one is just slowing down and then lowering expectations for some things. When your kid's going through a transition and I've noticed this and I do think that actually one of the biggest causes of temper tantrums or disconnection or dysregulation, a lot of time it's time. It's just the time. You're so busy. You've got so much shit to do as a parent. You've got to get to work.

You got to drop off another kid. got baseball practice. I feel it now. We've got three of them. Only one of them is really in sports. But God help us when they're all three in sports, because we're just going to be running around everywhere. But I do notice that if I'm in a rush and I'm rushing my kids to do stuff, they feel that. Again, back to I am making the impact on my children how I feel. If I'm not in a rush or if I give us plenty of time, it's calmer.

It's easier. I can give hugs. I can play these little games. can do the rituals because I'm not in such a rush. So slowing down is definitely something that I can see. Not being in a rush. Making sure you give yourself plenty of time for that connection.

These are things that have helped me and I've seen this in my eldest and my middle child and I'm sure I'll see it in my third born as well is slowing down and giving them time so they don't feel like they're a to you and that you really do care about them and you want to be with them and giving them that connection. And then you lower the bar a little bit, right? Things are not going to be perfect. Anyone who

is on Instagram and has a perfect house and perfect kids that are, know, my five-year-old does the dishes and my seven-year-old mows the lawn and my three-year-old sorts the laundry, like, the fuck out of here. Like, you gotta lower the expectation somewhat.

Not on everything, right? It's not like you need to lower the expectation on everything that you have. But knowing what battles to fight, picking and choosing what's really important to you and important to your child and important to your family, you need to pick those battles, fight those battles, but don't fight everything. Don't make everything a fight. Lower your expectations on certain things and let kids be kids.

Now what are some of the things that we get wrong as parents and I specifically get wrong as a parent? Well, there's a lot of stuff that we do wrong, but these are some of the things that I've noticed, especially during these transitions with the children and their behavioral changes.

We as parents a lot of time like to look at the symptoms as opposed to looking at the root cause. We see hitting, see whining, we see temper tantrums, we see clinginess and we go straight to punishment, panic without asking ourselves like why is my child acting this way? Is it because they've all of a sudden just become this little demon hell spawn that wants to be a dick to everyone or is it because there's something else going on?

And it's not just transitions, right? Is my kid tired? Is my kid hungry?

We need to look at what's causing our kids to have these reactions, why their behavior is changing. It's most likely not just that your kid decided one day that I'm gonna stick the middle finger up to dad or mom and I'm not gonna do anything, I'm just gonna completely change my personality. There's probably something going on underneath it.

I know that when I get hungry or if I'm tired or if I don't feel good, then my behavior changes and I think that the same can be said for our kids, right? Our kids are little human beings.

not always fully formed yet and they still need our guidance but they are little people. They have emotions. They get hungry. They get tired. They go through these transitions and I think sometimes looking at it through the perspective of how would I feel if I was in this type of situation can help us just have some empathy even if we still need to teach our kids or give them lessons or hold boundaries having a little bit more empathy for them in these situations and also so that way you don't feel like I'm completely fucking up because my kid

isn't listening to me now. It's like, no, this is normal. Any human being would go through this and my kid just doesn't have that regulation yet. And it's my job to help guide them through this.

Parents also take things personally and I do this.

It's like my child is personally attacking me if they have a temper tantrum, especially if it's somewhere where other people can see, because then they're showing other people like how shitty of a parent I am. And I'm not saying that that's true. That's not true. But that's just what's going through my head in this moment. My kid has a temper tantrum and I'm like, everyone's going to see that I suck as a dad or I don't have enough discipline or whatever it is. And it makes me angry. And then I respond in kind with my kid, bigger consequences or rough voice.

and my kids respond in kind back with that elevation in emotion. And so that's just something that we need to be consistent with or be conscious of with our kids is that if we take things personally, we're gonna make it worse.

Something else that I struggle with is being inconsistent. Now part of this is I've got ADHD and I'm just all over the place constantly. I'm sure if you listen to this podcast, you can tell that I'm scatterbrained. But one thing that I need to work on is being consistent.

giving my kids boundaries one day and then changing the boundary the next day and then putting it back into place the other day. my kids not gonna know what the fuck's going on or yelling one day about something small and then being perfectly fine with it the next day and then yelling again the next day. They're not gonna know what the rules are, how they need to act or what needs to go on. So being consistent with your kids in terms of the boundaries and how you act with them and how you interact with them, that's gonna be very helpful as well.

Now just because you struggle with this or I struggle with this and you may too, that doesn't mean that you're a bad parent. That doesn't mean that you are doing a terrible job. That doesn't mean that your kids are gonna grow up to be little dickheads. It just...

A lot of times, we're dysregulated adults who trying to help guide dysregulated children. And if we can't look within ourselves and see these things or identify them for ourselves, it's gonna be difficult for us and for our kids.

Now for dads in particular, as I've already mentioned, I'm not the softest person in the world, except in the midsection a little bit right now. I'm trying to fix that. But I'm not the softest and gentlest person in the world. I don't always have the most empathy, and I can be very abrasive. But I will say that one thing is with my kids, I'm a lot calmer, a lot kinder. I lead with kindness and care and compassion a lot more.

Now I still struggle with that because I do sometimes feel like it's a power struggle and that I need to have this discipline and that my kids need to respect me. And I just want to kind of have not a call out, but just an awareness of dads that a lot of times our gut reaction is to lead with anger or yelling or getting super upset with our kids or

trying to make sure that they're super disciplined or to quote unquote break them like a horse, like you would break a horse, break them of their behavior.

your child is not trying to overthrow the government of your house.

They're trying to survive transitions. They're trying to learn. They're trying to grow.

You don't have to be this quote unquote gentle parent that just lets everything fly. But you can lead with kindness and compassion and love, right? We love our kids, don't we? We love our kids, we want the best for them, at least I do. And so I can lead with that while still holding firm to boundaries. I don't have to be this mean dictator yeller.

I can lead with kindness, compassion and say, but I love you and I care about you and I want the best for you, but you're not going to be able to do that. You can't have the third cookie. You can't do this. And I'm not going to change my mind just because you cry, whine or complain, but I'm also not going to like hit you or yell at you or make you feel like you're a bad kid because you're trying to get that. You're just being a kid.

So lead with kindness, lead with that love that you have for your kids, lead with the fact that you want the best for them and the reason why you want them to be respectful and have discipline is because you want them to grow up to be good human beings.

You're gonna slip up, I slip up constantly. I always mess up. That's just kind of the nature of being human, but it's okay. Have that grace with yourself. Learn when you did. You can apologize. You can apologize to kids. You can apologize to spouses. You can apologize to other people. Be the example of the person that you want your kids to be.

And then also, no one to bend. I said it before, I'll say it again, not everything has to be a battle. Just because your kid wants something doesn't mean they're trying to completely challenge your authority.

They want a toy in their room or they want to stay an extra minute at the park or they want something right. Just because you bend in certain areas doesn't mean you're bad or doesn't mean that you're not holding boundaries. You need to learn when to be flexible and when to be firm and what's what that's going to look like is different for every family depending on what their values or what they're trying to implement with their kids is going to be. But just make sure that you're not

dying on every single hill because guess what you're going to die on that hill eventually.

Being a and being a masculine force in your kid's life doesn't mean that you need to be cold or angry or a dick or an asshole. That's not what being a dad means. Being a dad is being a calm, stable, loving presence that holds discipline, exudes strength.

through love and compassion. ⁓ And there's a lot of ways that you can express being the dad, being a man, being masculine, that don't mean that you need to be this tyrant.

So if you're in the same situation I'm in where your kids are going through transitions, which you probably are, like I said, life is transition, kids are always going through them, it doesn't mean that you're failing, it only means that you and your kids are human, that you guys are people, that you're struggling, that you're moving forward, and this episode was meant to bring some light to that, to kind of see what's going on with us, what's going on with our kids, what are some practical things that we can do.

to help alleviate these problems so we can move forward in our lives and really just to kind of talk about it.

We always need to kind of look internal first before we start looking at our kids, Look at what's going on with us, check our emotions out, check our feelings out. Are we making things worse? Are we making things better? Are we understanding that our kids' internal world is flipped upside down? Are we giving them some empathy? Remember that their nervous system is going through lots of changes and going haywire. We have some tools that we can now utilize to hopefully make things better. They're not.

They're not cure-alls, they are not insta fixes. They are things that will take time and consistency in order to implement and to make changes eventually. Like they're making changes with us. And you just gotta keep on showing up. No quitting, don't give up, don't result to fear tactics or any of those things or that's the easy route.

making your kids afraid, being a dictator, all of that. That's the easy route to getting them to comply with you. But when they're older, do you really want them to just be these compliant little automatrons or do you want them to be people that can think for themselves, can regulate their own emotions and can do the right thing because they want to do the right thing because it's the right thing, not because they're afraid that they're going to get hit or there's a some sort of consequence like that.

And I wanna hear from you guys. I know I say this every episode, but I really would like to hear if your kids are going through transitions or if you've had this same experience or if your kids are perfect. If your family is perfect and you're one of those Instagram influencers who...

just as everything perfect and your kids are already detailing your boat and waxing the motorhome and mowing the lawns and are already in college when they're four years old, I want to hear about it. I want to hear about your transition stories and things that are going on in your life if you think that these are good or if you have another example of a way that's a practical way to help our kids during these transitions. I'd love to hear from you. You can send me an email. You can click the little message in the description of this episode that says

send a message about this episode. Or you can reach out on my social media on Instagram or Facebook or any of those other areas.

But I really appreciate you guys coming and being with me today. And if there's anyone that you know that has kids that's going through these transitions or is struggling with these behavioral things, maybe share the episode with them. Let them listen. I really appreciate it. But other than that, I hope you all enjoyed this episode and I will see you all when I get another 20 to 30 minutes to record another episode, which has been difficult with a newborn at home.

Anyways, have a good one y'all.