Are the kids driving you nuts yet? Some help from Sensei Jim…

Well, this is kind of cool. I, first of all, when I posted this, uh, the announcement for this live stream up, I said I was going to put my Sensei Jim hat on, but be honest with you, I never wore a hat in the dojo. This is what I used to wear. I put this on today just for this broadcast. Uh, it's been a while since I had this thing on. I'm surprised it still fits, really. But it's kind of cool. So I'm going to give you some of Sensei Jim's tips from the dojo, the stuff we used to do to get kids to behave even when they didn't want to. Anyway, the first thing that we always learned was this: it was wear them out. You know, parents would always ask us, why are they so well behaved after they spent some time with you. Well, I'd like to think it was just because they respected me, but I'm a realist, you know. We used to wear them out. We'd send them home tired. Now kids recharge, especially smaller kids, they recharge very quickly, so it's, you got to keep it up, but that definitely was one of the secrets. If you engage them in some physical activity, now that might mean you have to switch your schedule around, and a couple of these tips we're going to talk about that, because, you know, you might be able to put some of your work aside for later on and spend a little time, spend an hour or so just playing with the kids and playing hard. And that way, you know, they'll be a little more tired, a little more compliant when it's time for you to get down to some good work. Listen to— pop up your own suggestions too. Pop up your tips. If you've got something you'd like to share, just pop it up over in the comments there, and I'll try to bring them on as we go too. So wear them out. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna type that one in here too and share it with you. I'm gonna put a blog post together for this as well. Okay, I hit the enter. There we go. All right, so wear them out, that's one of them. Let me do this so that you'll have these on the, on the replay too. Okay, get them involved. Kids love to be involved, especially if they think they're helping with grown-up chores. Share your work with them. Tell them what you're doing and explain how much they're, they're helping you just by behaving. For instance, if you have to take an important call or something like that when this is going on. But like I said, they just love to be involved. We've got to do it more. This kind of goes with a couple of the things that, that I'm going to share with you, but it kind of goes with the reverse psychology thing too. But it used to be interesting that when I was, for instance, vacuuming or, or washing the mirrors or something like that, cleaning the mirrors, you know, the kids would want to be involved. They'd want to do it. They want to— hey, can I help you, Sensei? So that helps a lot. I mean, you know, and I would just, I would just say to them, you know, this is part of how we keep the dojo clean. This is part of why this is such a nice place for us to work out and hang out together. And, uh, and they wanted to. Now, what happened, a lot of the parents say, well, geez, I wish I could get them to do that at home too. In fact, I remember a story. This is where the reverse psychology comes in. Remember one story where one of the moms came in and saw that I was cleaning the mirrors, and her, her son, I think he was 6 or 7 at the time, was asking me if he could help. And it was just the perfect intersection of time. And, and I said, uh, she said, I can't get him to do any of that stuff at home. I said, just watch this, okay? So I went over and he said, come on, sensei, let me help. I said, I don't know, I don't know if you can really do this right. I don't know if you can get the mirrors clean. Now they got to be really clean. And he just kept saying, oh, sensei, I can do it, I can do it. I said, and I held my ground, it's got to be done right, man. It's got to be really— these mirrors have to be really clean. And sure enough, there he went with the Windex and the paper towels, and he went to town, and he cleaned those mirrors great. And, you know, so Mom said, 'Well, how did you do that?' I said, 'Well, it's a little, little bit of reverse psychology. Just baited him a little bit with that,' right? And that doesn't work all the time, but it works a lot of the time, okay? Just make a game out of it, that's all. All right, you want to give older kids a little more responsibility. Get that on here for you. Respond— can I spell that? Responsibility. Apparently not. There we go. Okay, give the older kids some responsibility. Be careful with this one. You don't, you don't want to turn them into little dictators. Hey, Jeffrey's saying don't give all our dojo secrets away. No, we— right, right now what we've got is, is theirs, right? This is Sensei Jeffrey Lampkins, uh, I I hope he's still doing the sensei thing. I didn't think to ask you that lately, but anyway, uh, yeah, get the older kids a little more responsibility. Uh, just make it clear that, you know, they're, they're still the older brother or sister, not, not the parent, right? That they have some responsibility to help with the younger kids. It doesn't mean that, that they have authority over them. And in most cases, be very clear with them. Tell them what it is, you know, that they can ask the kids to be quiet, that they can explain to the other kids that mom and dad are working from from home, but they do, they rise up to that when you give them the responsibility, and you know, Jeff, you remember how well the kids responded, even kids that sometimes parents didn't think they would, how well the kids responded to becoming young instructors, and as we gave them more responsibility, you know, they really rose to the occasion. You do have to keep an eye on them because that authoritarian gene can kick in, but as long as it's under guidance, they really rise to the occasion. All right, what's the next one? And again, pop in your own ideas too. If you've got any ideas, if you've got some tricks that work, go ahead and share. And even if you're watching on a replay, um, you know, you can keep that happening in the comment threads. That's one of the cool things about this, huh? Oh, here we go. Schedule. Oh no, I want to do the reverse psychology one again because there's another trick. E-P-S-Y, is that it? I think so. Yeah, I think so. There we go. Give me spell correct, so probably works. One of the things I used to love to do, and it's kind of fun, is, uh, just dare them that they couldn't do something that I wanted them to do. And believe me, in the dojo, just like it is at home, sometimes it was just to keep, keep them quiet, right? Just to stay quiet. So I would say, I bet you, I bet you 100 push-ups, you guys can't stay quiet for the next 30 seconds. Now, we would extend that out. I think the record was about 20 minutes. I actually dared a class of very young kids too, my little dragons. Sometimes you'll see my picture up with the little, little guys. Sorry, Jeff, but they were my favorites. My black belts, sometimes they ask me, hey, do you miss us? And no, no, I missed the little guys. I miss you all. But anyway, right, I mean, I miss you all. Yeah, just dare them a little bit, you know. Say, you know, I've gotta— and do it when you say you've got to take 10 minutes to make a crucial phone call. Say, man, I'll bet you, I'll bet you an ice cream you can't keep quiet for the next 10 minutes. And see what happens. Make a game out of it. Now they know you're messing with them, or we're really not fooling too much, but they like to play games. That's all you're doing is you're playing a game with them and doing a little dare and see if they can, see if they can come up with it. Okay, now, ah, schedule the homework. That's a good one. Schedule their homework, okay, during your critical work times. All right, what I mean by that is, let's say you've got an important call coming up and you need some quiet. Well, that's a good time for them to be working on a homework assignment, a reading assignment, something like that. And you want to kind of avoid, I think, being, you know, too draconian about it. You know, if you just come down and say, "All right, I got— you're going to do your reading," blah blah blah, you know, they don't respond too well to that, right? When kids— when you push kids, what do they do? They push back. Adults do too. But at any rate, if you can, you know, schedule their homework time with your critical work time, you'll find that that'll work out pretty well, especially if the kids are a little bit older, right? And they're going to have that. And I'm not sure, I've got to check, uh, maybe we should have my friend Linda on. She's a school teacher and I'm sure she's doing a lot of the, the online learning from home right now. So maybe we can have her come on, she'll have some tips as well. Okay, what else? Shift your schedule. Yes, definitely shift your schedule a little bit. And this is one that some people find difficult. Okay, you can spend some quality time with them. And again, like I said earlier, play with them a little bit, uh, or just hang with them. Just hang with them a little bit and then save some of your work for after, after they go to bed. Of course, some of that can't be if you're doing phone calls, if you're doing, you know, time-sensitive work, uh, you got to use some of these other tricks.. But that one, you know, as much as possible, that works. And not only that, you're going to find you're going to enjoy them a lot more, right, if you can really just spend some quality time with them and then shift some of that less time-sensitive work into later hours. And that's the flexibility that you have from working from home, right? That's one of the things. It does take getting used to if you haven't done it before. It takes getting used to. I remember when I came out of the dojo and was doing the speaking full-time. That was one of the biggest shifts I had to make. But we're going to save those. We got some tips for you. We'll do a little bit of that on Thursday too about how you're working from home. And also, you should check out my friend Judy Hoberman, walkingontheglassfloor.com, and she's doing a whole program on remote, remote work. She does a lot of good coaching in that area. I'd be remiss if I didn't say Martial arts is a great thing for the kids to do. Get them involved in some sort of exercise programs. All kinds of people putting stuff up online, and I'm going to give a plug for my dear friend and, uh, and mentor Tony Fournier, Antonio Fournier, on his Facebook page. Did I— let me see if I saved that for you. I did. Okay, we're going to put that up right now. If you go to his Facebook page and he's been doing this every afternoon, okay? He's teaching his classes online. He's got an assistant with him, they're doing a great job, and I don't know if they're doing the adult classes, I imagine they probably are, but I know they were working with the kids. I popped in yesterday and saw them, I saw them today as well, and there are a lot of other people doing this, but Sensei Tony has always been one of my heroes. He was well established when I started. We became great friends over the years, and he's just a terrific, caring guy. And he's broadcasting them live. I mean, he's working with his students through— it looks like Zoom or something like that— but then he's putting it out livestream as well. So you can join right in, punch and kick. The kids can get it. And believe me, I can't believe I'm saying this, to stick your kids in front of a screen for a while. I never thought I'd hear those words come out of my mouth, But as long as you're doing something productive like that, so check out, uh, Tony's, uh, live stream on Facebook, and, and there you go. Okay, now here's the last one I'm going to share with you, and please jump in with yours if you've got some to add here. But, and again, if you're watching on the replay, that's cool, just add it to the comments and people will see it. Okay, this is the ultimate secret. All right, if they're really having— giving you a hard time, you really can't settle them down too much, well then you just tell them Sensei Jim is going to show up. I'll do it on livestream for you. Just let me know when, I'll come on and I'll do it and give them 1,000 push-ups to do. I'll do them with them. I'll do like 10, 12 maybe, but we'll get them to do it. I'll dare them to do 1,000. And we have done it, haven't we, Jeff? And they enjoy that. And there's Sensei Alex too. We got the senseis chiming in. So anyway, if all else fails, tell them Sensei Jim's coming there right through the live stream to give them 1,000 push-ups. So I hope these tips helped. I'm going to run down the list real quick again just so make sure everybody has them. First, wear them out, okay? Get them to exercise, get them to do something, get them tired, then they'll be a lot quieter, right? Okay, most of you know that anyway. Get them involved. Make sure they know what's going on. Oh, you know, I skipped over a little bit there too. Make sure you're keeping them informed, especially if you're facing some challenges. A lot of us are facing challenges these days, right? You know, 60% of the American workforce is living paycheck to paycheck before this happened. And then all of a sudden, there's people laid off, lost their jobs, closing their businesses. So, you know, things are going to get tight before they get better. And, you know, if we're always just yelling, screaming at the kids and expecting them just to understand what we're going through, that's not very productive. And I can't tell you how many times in my career as a sensei that, you know, a parent would come and ask me to either help them or sometimes outright deliver bad news to the kids sometimes. And, you know, that's not my role. I used to have to say, I mean, I'm glad to help, but you're the parent. It's— they want to hear it from you, and they trust you. You are the leader. In their lives, you know. So keep them informed. If things get tight, you know, ask them how they can pitch in, just like you'd be doing with your employees at work, right? It's the same process, and the kids respond to it. I'm telling you, there's so many times, a lot of the times with us, it was dealing with a child that had special needs or special challenges, and the kids at first, if they didn't know, you know, they'd react one way, then And once we explained it and asked them for their help, man, they were just beautiful. And I can't think of a time when they weren't. They always rose to the occasion. So they will if we give them the chance. If things are tough, make sure you give them the chance to help and keep them involved. Give the older kids responsibility, right? Make sure that they have a little responsibility and reward them for that too if they're doing a good job, you know, when they're doing a good job, I should say. Okay, this one you can ignore. This one, Jeffrey says, don't give away all our dojo secrets. Yes, we're going to give away all our dojo secrets. Absolutely. Reverse psychology. Dare them. If they want them to keep quiet, dare them. Tell them, I don't know, I don't think you can keep quiet for the next 10 minutes. Make sure reward them afterwards. Okay, schedule their homework during your critical work time so they're busy when you need to be busy. Shift your schedule. Like I said, this is one of the— takes getting used to, but it's one of the blessings of working from home that you're able to shift some of your work, especially if it's not time sensitive, to after bedtime, right? Uh, what else we have here? Oh, that's, uh, Tony's link there. Make sure you go on his Facebook page. I think he's posting up a schedule. It's pretty cool. He's working out. Your kids can get some free martial arts lessons while this is going on. Then afterwards, go to your nearest dojo and sign them up, right? And then if all else fails, just tell them Sensei Jim's gonna come and give them some push-ups. Okay, there we go. I hope this stuff helps. We've got a lot of other things going on. Make sure you go to thesensileader.com. I'll post this up for you here. And we've got right on there, there's a resource button that says coronavirus leadership resources, and we've got a lot of things up there. We're adding to it every single day, and that's where you're going to find things like free webinars. There's free book downloads. We've got an incredible offer on coaching. People have been asking about coaching. And if you're watching this, this is, uh, Monday, March 23rd. So if you're watching before the end of this particular week, I'm going to do free coaching, free laser coaching on Friday this week. All right, and just all you got to do is go, go to those pages, you'll find the links, and, and, uh, you can sign up for that. That's going to fill up pretty quick. So, okay, hope that helps, and, uh, we'll keep these live streams coming for you. Thank you so much for being with us, and if you're not a member already, please please come on, join the Sensei Leader Movement. Our first level is free, always will be. Right now, even our black belt level is free, and that will be remain free as long as you stay a part of the program. Okay, be well. I hope everybody's doing okay. And Jim Bouchard, Sensei Leader Movement, we'll talk to you again soon.