Top 5 Communication Habits We’re Teaching Our Kids

For Dora, we need to take a visit to an Instagram page. One and three more times, Nair.

“"Coplar Registry" is a very easy task through a system with automatic validation and audit”

trail. More of "Coplar.com" - COPLR.com This episode is for the parents, a really anybody who is responsible for kids. Today's episode, I'm going to share with you on how we train teach my own kids, our own kids, how to communicate.

I have two kids. My son is eight. My daughter is six right now and if anybody has kids in these ages, you know it is a handful. So I thought it might be helpful for me to share with you as somebody who talks about communication, what we do in our own home, hope you enjoy.

Welcome to the Jefferson Fisher Podcast for I'm going to make your next conversation. The one that changes everything. If you enjoy learning these tips, I'm going to ask that wherever you're listening, you find and click the button, subscribe. It tells wherever you're listening that this is good content.

I also want to let you know that my workbook for the next conversation is the next conversation workbook. It's officially out.

“You can find the links down in the show notes.”

Practical exercises for arguing less and talking more. This episode is sponsored by Cozy Earth. I love Cozy Earth for good reason, everything that I have that is from Cozy Earth is absolutely yes, Cozy Comfortable and it is top tier products, from pants to shirts to bedsheets to bath towels.

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Anytime they have something that you go, I don't know if this is not going to fit. Your customer service handles it beautifully and I'm not saying that just because they're as a sponsor, I've like Cozy Earth way before that and I'm just blessed and happy that I get to talk about them now, which is really cool. So you can go to Cozy Earth dot com slash Jefferson, use the Cogeverson and get it to 20

percent off. That's Cozy Earth dot com slash Jefferson, use the Cogeverson and get 20 percent off. And now let's get to the episode. I get the question a lot. What do you do for your kids, Jefferson, you talk about communication, you give all this

communication advice. Tell you, when you're on home, if there's something that I can teach you and share and give some value about what we do in our home, it's this five things that I want to share with you. Yeah, it's two more than three, right?

You feel like if three is a five and I'm going to tell you right now, I talk to my wife Sierra before making this episode, say, hey, I want to share with my community. What do we do? I have some ideas. I want to get through thoughts.

This is the culmination of the things that we try to do and I want to give the disclaimer although I think it's unsaid, we're not the perfect parents. We don't have that all together, we're absolutely trying to figure it out. So I'm not saying at all, what I'm about to tell you is the gospel that it's some gold standard. I'm sure there are some clinical psychologists, some childhood behavioral scientists that

actually, you know, that could do maybe so and I could certainly be wrong. And this is what works for me anyway.

So take this for a grain of salt, you can always, as always, you can try it.

So let's just get into it.

“Number one, if you want to teach your children to be a better communicator, this is what”

you have to do. Number one, you have to model recovery, you got to start with you. Think about how you argue and communicate right now. It has to do with your own childhood, how you raise your voice, how you sound, even the way you sound comes from your own parents, my sister, when I call her on the phone,

I swear it sounds like my mom. Sometimes I have to double check of the mom just saying through your phone is because we sound just like our parents, even my behaviors. If you watch my very first episode, I have my parents on, I look and sound just like them.

Hello, congratulations, jeans, be jean and all right. So you know that how you communicate comes from your parents. And so you have to make the decision right now, is this the path that I want to teach my, do I want my children to sound like my parents, how my parents talk to me? If you don't like how that happened, and if you feel like that had a negative impact on

you, you get to decide to do something different. You get to decide to break the cycle and isn't that something to celebrate, that you get to make that decision for your children.

So first, it begins with you.

How do we do that? We model repair. You have to be able to model repair. What does that sound like? I mean, we want our kids to see us fail, because there are times when we are tired and

they are my son, six, my daughter, I see me. My son is eight, my daughter is six, sometimes they fight like cats and dogs. At the worst time, too. And it'll be when Sierra and I are exhausted, where tired is at the end of the long day, and everybody, you know, their battery is low, so what do you do?

get it right, we responded ugly, we yelled, we were short.

“You have to be first to apologize and apologize fast, real fast.”

The quicker you apologize, the quicker that repair and that recovery happens, I'm willing

to bet that some of you listening right now never heard one of your parents apologize.

I know a lot of guys who never heard their parent apologize. My dad wanted them. So I don't think I ever heard my dad apologize to me. That's big. You got to be able to model repair, so when I say something wrong, and I say something

that I know, I can't believe I just said that, I'm very quick to say, hey, daddy shouldn't have said that, hey, I messed up. I should have said that kinder, daddy could have said that kinder, good and neat.

“Hey, I could have said that better, I shouldn't have said that, that's what it sounds”

like. I looked them in the eye and if I can, I get them on eye level, and I say, hey, daddy shouldn't have said that, I'm sorry, you forgive me, and I forgive me, because they're, of course, my kids, but it's important for them to say, hey, daddy messed up, I messed up. That right there, I'm breaking cycles.

You can break cycles. When you get down on their level and say, I messed up too, hey, do you know that mom and dad we messed up too? Yeah, that was a time of messed up, I could have said that better. That's modeling recovery, that's modeling repair, apologize when you make mistakes.

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a $275 off plus a 90 day free risk trial. And now back to the episode number two, when it comes to making your child a better communicator, you have to have to have to teach them regulation. How to regulate their emotions because how you teach them now is how they're going to regulate themselves when they're teenagers and when they're in college and when they're no longer in your home. So what we do in Sierra in particular has been great about this, especially with our daughter,

our daughter gets really worked up when she burns. She burns hot. That we get her to breathe. It's in through her nose. So what my Sierra will do, if we know that my daughter Ruby is getting worked up, I see her will tap her nose, just like this. She'll tap her nose three times. And what she knows now, since we've done this, is to breathe. That means three breaths. And what Sierra used to do, and we'll still sometimes do, she would go get on her level on tap her nose. And now my daughter,

she knows when she's getting worked up on something, she will like, she'll touch your nose

“just for a moment to kind of breathe. And that's what we want to teach them because you have to have”

first that breath. You know, I talk a lot about breath as a adult. It all starts with as kids. So

same for my son. If I know that he's getting worked up, breath, we got to be able to breathe. And tears are okay. Tears are welcome. Tears are I will gladly let them cry and get them all out. And I thought my son is actually the cryer. He's he's big emotions. He feels big emotions. He cries when he's happy. He cries when he's sad. It's really precious and a blessing. And even him, we have to kind of sometimes say, I need you to breathe. So if you want to have a child,

that is a good communicator, he's not going to hear. She's not going to do it without knowing

right, to have that prefrontal cortex come back into play. You have to have the breath. So you

“breath to inject that emotional regulation. Number three, what we try to do, and this might be”

a little controversial. We let them argue. I let my kids argue. How they argue here is how they're going to argue out there. I'd much rather be able to see a monitor and control and influence how they speak now because I know they're going to argue on the playground. They're going to argue when they're in college or high school. So wouldn't you rather be able to influence positively how they communicate and argue and handle conflict now, then just hope they figure it out

later because the world will teach them. If you don't teach them in your own house, the world will do it

for them. And that's not something I'm willing to do. What we try to do is say, hey, look, house rules,

guys, when Jen Ruby starts to just yangya at each other, they just make up reasons to be mad at each other for no reason. Just make them up. Just decide over the dumbest of things, silliest of things. It could be, I got toys all over this place. You don't believe me. I got, you don't even know. I got toys all over this place all over this floor right now. But it could be any kind of anything. Go, okay, we know they're going to be arguing with each other. How can we as parents

create an environment that is safe for them to argue? Because if you don't create that environment here, the world will create that for them. That's not a risk that I'm willing to take. So I want to have some positive influence. How do we do that? We let them argue. Meaning we let them have it out. Now, we do have exceptions to it. That means there's no personal attacks. There's no name calling. They can't call each other names. Two, they cannot yell at each other. Three, they cannot hit

each other. They get physical with each other whatsoever. That is an absolute, that's an absolute rule breaker right there. So we really try to get those three elements involved. No personal attacks. No name calling. No yelling. No hitting. All right. Now, what is that? Was it due for us? It allows them practice. Because if they're able to argue their position to each other, it goes better. We get to kind of get involved a little bit into the

discussion, not where we're taking sides. But almost kind of curating and experience for them a saying of this is how I want to model for my children. How do you handle conflict? Okay, here we have an issue. So sometimes we just let them do it. Other times, once they kind of hit a hard spot and they don't know where to go, I will come in and say, all right, let's, let's pause.

“What do we got? All right. My son, Jet, you, your position is what? Ruby, your position is what?”

Okay. And here's the issue between the two of you. What's the big issue between the two of you? And they get to advocate of like, well, I wanted to this. She wanted to do that. So here's where it really boils down. And see her does a great job of this too. We say, all right, now that we've gotten to argue, let's talk about perspective. So that's where I think a lot of kids, I think personally, I'm very proud of, I think that is a big, a big leg up for my children

in terms of communicating out of the real world because what I try to do is say, you think of

the moment now, I want you to think of the moment after, think of the second moment, think of the

moment after the conversation. What does that? What does that sound like? It sounds like this.

“I will tell, for example, I will tell my son, say, what do you think she is feeling right now?”

Or for my daughter, I'll say, what do you think he's feeling right now? I shall tell me, why do you think he would feel that? And so I'm trying to like get the layer underneath. Okay, and if he does what you want, what will you get? And will it feel as good as you think it will when you get it? And usually they say, no, no, probably not. Why not? Because I wasn't nice. There we go. Now, how do we get it in a way that we might be able to not share, but figure out a solution?

What's a solution? So I start using words like what's a solution, rather than, ah, stop it. Right now, hey, you give it to her. You go over here, stop touching each other. Like that's typical, right? That, hey, just don't look at each other. Now, don't get me wrong. We definitely use that before in the car on the way to church. And you're like, just don't look at each other. Okay, you don't exit, just look up the window. All right. That's, so I'm not saying this is all the time.

okay, let's think about the moment after. So we ask questions that are perspective.

What do you think she's feeling? And what do you think she's wanting? Why do you think she's wanting that? If you say this, how she's going to respond to that? And then I try to put them in the place. If you were in her shoes, what would you be thinking? If you were in his shoes, what would you be thinking? And what I'm doing is trying to just break up the rock, the catalyst of saying, I want you to get outside of your own head, detach for a moment, and what are they thinking?

What are they afraid of? What are they concerned about? What are they upset about? Now, I'm not at all advocating whatsoever for trying to say, I want my kids to be people, please, as well. All they do is think about everybody else. That is not it. All right. That is not it. Because I'm about to go into advocacy. So I, if I will take my son and say, okay, if you say that to her, how's she going to feel? Inhale might say, she'll feel bad and say, how's that going to make you feel?

Not good. Okay, then let's, then let's play it out. If we, if you say what you want to say, is that going to be something that that works in your favor or is that going to be something that hurts your relationship, hurts our relationship? Okay, then what's something we could do different? What's a way that you could say this a little bit differently? Think of another way to say that sentence. You don't think of another way. It's okay. That sounds good. Let's try that. And then

we'll try that. So we'll kind of time out and I'll say, in Sierra, we'll do this. I want you to, to look at her. I'll say this in my son. Look at her. What is she feeling right now? She feels sad. I'm going to do this with my daughter. Okay. What is he feeling right now? And what do you need him to understand? What do you think he's wanting you to hear? I'm telling you, this sounds might sound cheesy to people. That's okay. This is real. And this is what works.

And what you're going to find is that this is the kind of stuff that makes your breaks relationships as adults. And so if I can model that right now and get them to think outside of their own, wants and needs and this is mine. And he has my toy, even though they picked it up and haven't played with it for two months. But her brother just happened to pick it up. And now I've said,

“she wants it. You have to have that kind of conversation. My son, cheesy. My son, dumb. The”

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“or say I don't want to. That doesn't fly. Not in this family. You have to advocate for what you”

want. So let's say my son doesn't want to get up from his legos in his time for dinner. This happens pretty often. And he's like, no, I don't want to. And he wants to just finish this one piece that he's been really wanting to do. And I'll just, I don't want to. I said, you need to

you need to tell me why. Well, I just don't want to. I'll say almost always hope break it down

and say, I need you to ask me for what you need. Teach your kids to ask you for what they need.

in every time. You'll say something different. I need, I just need to finish this piece and

“say, okay, and if I give you, if I allow you that need, what do you think I need right now?”

You need me to eat. Yeah, I need you to eat food. As a parent, we do this pretty often. We'll put this in terms of, hey, as a parent, what do you think I'm wanting to do? Right now, what if I'm your parent and I'm responsible for you, what do you think a good move is allowing you to just not eat food and eat junk and eat the other day? It was, they made some fudge and so they thought that was just dinner. If I just do that, is that a good parent decision or a bad parent decision?

I get them involved in the decision making process, but I want to hone in on advocacy. I

we make sure that they advocate for what they need. That means I'm asking them. I'm telling them.

I want you to tell me what you need. Ask for what you need right now. That doesn't mean I can give it. The answer might still be no, but I'm walking you through the process instead of just

“stomping your feet and throwing a fit, ask verbalize what you need to just advocate their position.”

I don't allow the because I just want to. That's not enough. I need you to advocate. And so we make it as a team effort between the two of us that when our son or our daughter wants something, asking for something, we say, okay, I need you to state your position. Tell me, not just why, what is the need here that you're wanting. Now, I might end up saying no, but I need to walk you through that process. It's not just because I want it, just because I want it because it's just something

I want. I need you to explain it. So advocacy, advocating, that is a huge part of being a good communicator. I want to add another piece of advocacy in here and that is we also does not every time. But we're pretty big on getting the buy-in on them on punishment. Meaning we will say, what should we do?

“All right, as your parent, what should we, what should we do here? There's got to be a punishment.”

Or there's got to be a solution. If you've broken this rule, you've done this, what should be our response? And often the things that they will come up with will know actually much harder for them than the things we would have chosen. And we get to kind of have a compromise or a buy-in. But that's, it's actually very beneficial to say, okay, hey, as, hey, I'm your parent. You know, you did wrong. What should we do here? My son will often come up to me. Sometimes when they're,

I can hear a spat and I'm going upstairs and he'll come up to me go, we argue about this. She said this, I shouldn't have said that, and then she yelled, and I'm like, all right, so what do we, what do we, or we're going to do differently? Being able to have their buy-in into, that there's consequences for things. So what's the consequence? Usually the question that we ask, what should be the consequence? And not just let them out of saying nothing or nothing, we should just let them go.

Now you could follow all of this advice that I just shared. And I have to tell you, none of it matters if you don't follow it. You could do all of these little bit of things and read all these techniques and read all these books, but the biggest book they'll ever read is you. You're the one that they're going to see the techniques from, how you talk, how you treat your wife, how you treat your husband, how you treat the people in your life. You're the tape, you're the training tape for them.

They will do as you do, and your voice will become their inner monologue. So the question is, what are you going to teach them? What are you going to be for them? What are they watching when they see you communicate? Because that's exactly how they'll communicate more than any of these techniques. So in our home, in our house here, and I, with our two children, my son again is eight. My daughter is six. How do we make sure that they are the best communicators that they can possibly be before we

put them out into the world? How do we train them? Number one, we model recovery. Meaning, if we want

them to learn how to apologize, we have to be the ones they see it from first. That means I'm going to

say things like I should have said that kind of. I should have said that better. Dad didn't say that very nice study. Can I try that again? Let me apologize. I'm sorry. I want to apologize. Do you forgive me? Model recovery. They need to hear you apologize. It goes a long way. Number two, we regulate. That means we teach them to breathe. When things get tight and they get overwhelmed and they feel those emotions, they need to breathe. It doesn't get any easier as you get older. But if you

Regulate emotions. Three, we teach them that it's okay to argue. We allow argument within safe

“parameters because again, if we don't have influence on how they argue with each other in the home,”

the world's going to teach them how to argue and handle conflict in the future. And I don't know about you, but I don't think the world is all that great of a place to learn how to handle conflict. Do you? Number four, we train advocacy. We teach our kids to advocate for their position. Meaning I want to make sure you tell me what you need. What are you asking for? It's not just because you want it or why because you don't want to. I need you to use words to advocate for your position.

And five, we train perspective. We teach perspective. We want them to understand that their words have impact. Think of the moment after they say what they say. Think of the moment after the words. What is somebody feeling? What are the, when you say something, what's going to be the effect

“on the other person? We get them to think outside of themselves to detach from the moment”

rather than trying to think of just one lane, we want to them see the future and the impact and the ripple effect of their words. Now, you might be listening to say, Jefferson, this all just

homes too good to be true. Well, some of it is, some of it isn't. We don't always hit the mark.

We probably get out of now, 65% of it, right? I feel like and that's probably a pretty high margin in my book. And you try to teach these things in the rest, it's just a circus. Of course, there are times when we don't always hit the mark. That's the time you get to offer recovery. There are times when we feel really good about what we've been able to teach them and how they're talking to one another and we want them to be best friends, but we also want them to be

“individual people. It is a huge burden and responsibility and one that I will always just continue to”

be blown away by. And something makes me think a lot about my parents, you know, how they,

how they handle things when I was a kid and me and my siblings. And I can tell you that if there's something that I can pass on some insight that I can give you, that if you don't become a safe place for your kids to talk to, they'll find someone else to share it with. And you might lose that relationship. Do your best to be a safe place for your kids to come to you about things. And not just anything, the hard things. When my son was five, he came to me and he had his hand

over his shirt. And he looked really ashamed and she pissed out and I said, "What's going on?" He goes, "I did something bad." I said, "Okay, what happened?" And he pulled down his hand and showed me a big hole in his nice, like little red polo shirt. I said, "What happened?" He goes, "He just almost looked in pain." He goes, "I cut it." I said, "You cut it." What? Sizzers. What made you want to cut him with scissors? He just, in this way he said,

"I just wanted to see if it would cut." And I said, "That was my moment," really, right there. And you're going to have a moment and you've already had those moments and you'll have those moments in the future to choose to do something different. Where some, that you might experience in the past, that's where you get yelled at for spilling the milk. That's where I could have just how could you what is, I could have said the worst possible phrase and that is, "What is wrong with you?"

And instead, I said, "And what did we learn?" And he took a big sigh and goes, "It definitely cuts it." And I started to laugh. I said, "Yeah, you're right. What do you think we should do?" Because not do that again. I said, "That's probably good rule. It's not do that again." And I had to think in time of, "What's the value there of?" Let's even in financial sense, the cost of a shirt, a child shirt, versus the cost of them

thinking that I'm not a safe place to go, that they can't tell dad. God, that like, "Ah, that gives me chills and makes me want to cry." Whew, that cost is way too high to not be the person that they want to go to when they've messed up because they will. And the messups are only going to get bigger.

you're going to get mad. You're going to get yell and you're going to say, "What is wrong with you? What are you thinking? They're not going to come to you. They're going to go somewhere else.

They're going to talk to someone else." And I don't know about you, but I, I never

want that to be me. So when you can, that doesn't mean it's always perfect. Do your best to be a safe space for people to come to. And so what is, how do you do that practically? That means when they come

“to you even small with things that they've done wrong, you need to make sure you say, "Hey,”

thank you for coming to me with this. I'm so glad that you told me. Thank you for sharing that with

me. Hey, that was really big courage for you to share this with me. I'm so proud of you for telling

me that that is something that we've really worked on. Because I've seen, I've seen the opposite effect of not feeling like you can go to your parents with things. And you want to feel like you can go to your parents with things, right? Same way with telling the truth, we have this saying in our

“house that lies, make you sick. And that's the best way we could kind of illustrate that if you,”

if you don't tell the truth and you keep a lie in, then eventually it's not going to feel good on you. It's going to grow and it's going to make you sick. And it's instilling this mentality of, I would much rather you. I tell, I mean, I had this discussion on my son three nights ago over brushing his teeth. I would rather you tell me, I don't want to brush my teeth and have that conversation, then lie to me and tell me you did brush your teeth just because you didn't want to.

And that's been a process in so much of it. I see myself too of when I chose not to say the truthful thing because I didn't want to face the reality of saying or facing the consequences of the impact on other, on other people. And this is a lesson that I would much rather still and it gives me a sense of pride to be able to share these lessons with them now, rather than be with them through the struggle when they're older. I'll be with them either way, but I'm hoping that some

“seeds we plant now will reap a lot of helpful things for them in the future. So that's how we do it.”

Like I said, he tried to do these things and everything else is just an absolute circus.

So as always, you can try that in following me.

Krass, I don't really like how you do it. Steuern-elevedic? Self. With Viso Steuern.