EP13 – Do Your Kids Have You Trained Yet?

Hey, welcome to this episode of I don't know, Jack about parenting and today we're going to pose a question. Do your kids have you trained yet? We'll be talking about that inside the episode.

I take what makes a lot of sense for me

Hey, welcome back to today's episode and the question being posed is this, do your kids have you trained yet? You may be asking yourself, what do you mean? Do My kids have me trained? See, I don't know Jack about parenting, but because I've done a ton of reading and I take what makes a lot of sense for me and I suggest you do the same thing for yourself. Like just because I say something doesn't mean I don't expect you to go and Google these things, but I was reading a book when I first became a dad and a, and I'll tell you the book, it's called 12 hours of sleep in 12 weeks, meaning that if you were to follow these procedures, if you were to follow this manual for your child to sleep by the 12 week mark or three months, your child will sleep throughout the night.

Scout's honor, first time I did it, 11 and a half weeks, kids slept throughout the night. My second child. I'm like, man, I just hope. I hope I pray that that first episode wasn't just like a an aberration. I don't know if I'm using the right word, but a like a mirage, like just something that freakingly just worked for the one kid, but the second child they say is always different. I hope that it works with the second child and guess what? By 11 and a half weeks, the second child slept throughout the night. Both children, one 14 months now and the other one, seven years old, both sleep extremely well throughout the night because I followed the system and what was said in this particular book.

How do you get them to do this?

Almost within the first few pages it said this, either you are going to train your child or your child is going to train you. So when I'm in these forums and these Facebook groups and I talk to Dad's outside in the real world, who is like, how do you get them to do x, y, z? How do you get them to do this? And I don't get them to do anything, right? I show up in a way where we have schedules, we have patterns and these schedules and patterns are done on a daily basis. It's called consistency and when they know what to expect because mom and dad are going to hold them to a standard, guess what? They follow our rules because we have a plan. Now, if you don't have a plan in you'r,e what I call winging it, they're going to train you as to what's most comfortable for them. Now let's talk about this word comfort.

Not too long ago in a Facebook group, a new dad, he's like, guys, I want to get a really comfortable bassinet for my child, and I thought to myself, there are no such thing as a comfortable bassinet. They're all hard as a rock, and then he went on as he is. He wrote his little article, he says, because all of them are hard as a rock. I need my child, my child, the bassinet designers don't know anything about design or why they're making them hard as a rock, I want my child to be comfortable. Well, here's the thing, if I was just cooped up for the last nine months inside somebody's belly and most of it in a fetal, it's called fetal position for a reason which is tucked all squished up, having to kick squirm, do everything.

How do you know

I think anything besides that would be comfortable, but see, we get into the real world and we think we know what comfortable is. The reason those are designed and are as hard as a rock are not for your kid to be comfortable it's so that your kid is safe. Right? So stop getting that your child is uncomfortable. I also like, oh, he's only comfortable in our bed. How do you know how a child is comfortable or uncomfortable? He may feel safe or unsafe, but comfortable is a whole other idea. So this comfort word for a child needs to be squashed at some level.

Then let's just talk about comfort. There is an image and I suggest you guys go in and grab it. Maybe I'll post it here, inside this video, um, of a comfort zone and inside your comfort zone, if you stay inside your comfort zone or you're always comfortable, there is no growth. But when you're outside the comfort zone in there's tremendous growth in your life. There's also some pain, but with this pain becomes a tremendous amount of pleasure because we're, we're getting outside of what's known to us as comfort. We grow there. So parents, as you're listening, if I still have you, please, please stay with me for a second here. If you get outside of your comfort zone and do something that is uncomfortable for you, I almost guarantee you that's it's going to bring you joy and a lot more comfort moving forward.

But when I watch 40 responses

Now I'm going to tell you what spawned this entire podcast this morning is I am in a men's group. I'm in a first time fathers group. Uh, I tend to offer a lot of advice. Uh, I also watch from a distance and see how dads are asking it because all these questions are great right there. There isn't one bad question out there because what you don't know, you don't know. But when I watch 40 responses to a question and not one of them is something that's going to help the person asking the question, it's all kind of hearsay, no research, nothing done. Like, Hey, this is what we do. And it worked for three nights, but, you know, I hope it go work for three more. Um, people are given the best advice they possibly can give.

But when a dad comes in and his dad, who over the last year, I've watched this dad, like give some great advice, do some amazing things. Uh, you could tell he has a real bond with his son. He says, hey, my son is uncomfortable outside of his crib, the only place he will sleep is inside our bed. Do you guys have any solutions to this? He's only spent two full nights inside his bed. He'll fall asleep, we'll put him in his crib and as soon as he realized he's not with mom and dad, he's up and he wants back in the bed. So a lot of people are just giving a lot of off the wall advice kind of hearsay and I needed to know certain things in order to answer this question.

How old is the kid at this point?

Qualifyingly, like, how many hours a night does the kid actually sleep when he's in your bed? How old is the kid at this point? Uh, did he always sleep in your bed or is this just something that's a, uh, he got sick and he got comfortable with you for a couple of days and this is what's going on. Uh, so his response was he's, he's a year old, he does sleep 10, 11 hours at night. Uh, and he's really only spent two full nights in an entire year inside his own crib, inside his own space without mom and dad.

Great. Now I can answer your question. See, mom and dad don't want to get outside their comfort zone. They think he's uncomfortable. Well, he's never slept on his own. So in order to sleep on his own, he's going to have to get used to it. Uh, and that's not gonna happen just because you say, hey, go sleep in your crib. So what happens if he needs to be comforted with mom and dad next to him and it's in that book 12 hours in 12 weeks, if anybody wants to purchase it, I suggest you go purchase it. I'll probably put a link underneath for you to access it in the youtube.

You have to get dedicated

But guys, 12 hours in 12 weeks talks about a system. It talks about training your child. It talks about doing it in an effective manner. Talks about doing it over time, 12 hours in 12 weeks, there's a bout six weeks of training and a lot of pre training that you have to do mentally before you actually start training a child, but once the baby's over six weeks old, it should be a six week process for anyone. Oh my goodness. I'm going to have to dedicate to assist them for six weeks. Absolutely not. You have to get dedicated to a system that's going to be effective in six weeks, but you have to do it for the rest of your life in order for it to sustain, but here's the benefit. You're out of your comfort zone for six weeks. You have created the habit for yourself and for the child.

All you have to do is keep the habit. Here's the beautiful thing. You sleep in bed with your partner. The child is in their bed, comfortable because this is their new expectation and there is no more a, Oh man, I'm getting sleepless nights. Oh the kid's kicking me and tossing and turning. The babie's in their bed. Mom and dad can enjoy some adult time if you choose to do so, you can enjoy a good night's sleep or a good night's rest and you have some sanity, and if you want to have more children, you have the ability to create that simply because you now have your bed and it's yours again, and you get to do what you want inside of it. These are all pluses. Baby's sleeping comfortably inside their bed, but got to get outside your comfort zone. As soon as anyone hears a child crying these days, oh my God, I got to pick it up. I got to swaddle it. I got a pad it. I have to this. Yes, the baby needs to be comforted, but not at the drop of a hat.

I want to be comforted by you

It's so interesting. Uh, as I'm saying this, I have a one year old, 14 months old and a almost without fail. Whenever he reaches his hands up, uh, you know, daddy picked me up. I pick him up. I think when a child is reaching up, you should pick a child up because it's saying, I want you, I desire you. I love you. I want to be comforted by you because he gets picked up immediately, every single time. If he doesn't at this point, because I've done it for 14 months. If I don't pick him up the first time or I say not right now, he just turns around and walks away. He's had his needs satisfied so much that he knows that daddy would pick him up if he could in that moment.

It's because he's comfortable knowing that daddy's always there for them and if daddy says no one or two times a month, he's going to be content with it. I don't even know why I shared that story.

Here's the deal.

I don't know Jack about parenting, but I do know this. If you don't train your child, if you don't have a parenting plan, your child is going to dictate your life and you're going to ask questions in forums on facebook on somewhere and say, what do I do? And you're going to be asking people who don't know what they're doing either and 90 percent of the time you're going to be like, oh, that'll work for you, but not for me. See, I answered the gentleman, um, I gave him a plan. I told them it's going to take about a week and a lot of crying. I said, you got to put the kid in his crib and you could comfort the child. When he gets up after two hours of sleep, you got to go in there and you got to soothe them. You had to say, hey, it's all right. This is your bed. This is a safe place for you.

You got to rub his back and he's going to stand up and he's going to wail and he's going to cry and you're just gonna stand there and you can say, Daddy's here. Mommy's here. We love you, and you're going to do it in this tone. And you may get frustrated if you get frustrated. Pass it off to the spouse. Get back in the other room, let the kid cry it out a little bit, rub his back. Tell him you love him. Tell her you love her, tell them this is their, their bed, and this is where they're going to be sleeping from now. And this may last three hours, four hours, the first night.

Just talk to them in this demeanor

The same process is going to happen the next day, hopefully it will be a little more tired because they didn't get a good night's sleep. It is going to be, they're going to fall asleep in her crib just like normal. Or you can get up. They're gonna. Want to go to mom and dad's mom or and slash or dad is going to get up and they're going to comfort. This is your bed. We love you. This is where you're going to be sleeping from now on. We love you. Sing a lullaby. Tell a story, do some ABC's. Just talk to them in this demeanor. Read a book, do whatever you need to do, and maybe that three or four hours turns down to two or three hours and the next night is gonna. Repeat until the child sleeps throughout the night. Recognizing that mom and dad, no matter how much they cry, you cannot train us.

We're training you. See, it's a test of willpower at some level, but you're not damaging your child. You are comforting your child so you could comfort your child in any scenario. I'm going through this with a seven year old right now. Is he training me or am I training him? He gets a packet of homework at the beginning of each and every single month we have now because he had me trained a little bit. Oh Dad, I want to do it tomorrow. Oh, can we do it on the weekend and weekend would come. Oh, it's the weekend. Guess what? Now he gets his packet. He gets a month's worth of homework. We do it within the first two weeks and then he gets two weeks off, but we focus for two. We do twice as much each night and then he gets two weeks off. I am fortunate. He's actually a, a very, uh, I won't say he's bright.

I hope he's done with his homework

He's efficient when it comes to his homework, so he's capable of doing it faster than I know a lot of his, uh, his friends do their homework because I've witnessed it and because he's efficient and I was like, you know what, let's just get this done. We're going to do a certain amount of stuff. We'll break it up and we're done. Now. He trained me at the beginning and I decided to take back the training and said this in two weeks we're going to break it up. This is how we're going to do it, and now it's the end of the month. Right now. Just happens to be falling on the last week in a month and the neighbor has homework to do every night. He can't sit there and play with him and he's like, I hope he's done with his homework. I said, isn't it nice to be done with your homework and you could go out and do the things that you want to do.

See, I've trained him, but there's reward. We're outside of our comfort zone for the first two weeks of the month. He doesn't like it. I don't like it, but I really liked the results he's done. He sees the rewards of having things done. There's less a dialogue, heated dialogue in the house and he is now trained that this is how it's going to be because that's how it's been for the last three months and he knows his packets come in next week and I'm excited to get it in because we're going to get to work and he's going to reap the benefits the rest of the month, so I know that seems like a lot and you're like, man, how do you do this? See that book behind me. It's called be the dad you wish you had. It's just as effective for dads as it is for moms. Why? Because the tactics are the same. It's just a way to connect with your child, gain respect, gain connection with your child, letting them know how much you love them by creating structures in their life and creating bonding moments.

I suggest that you train your children, that they don't train you. We'll see you in the next episode.