Day 4 Challenge
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[00:00:00] Welcome to day four of our challenge. I hope you're gaining a lot of value so far and you're really learning strategies for how to increase clarity and purpose in your parenting journey for 2024. Our topic for day 4 can be a game changer for your peace of mind as a parent, but also for your child's sense of security.
Their sense of reasonable expectations, your sense of what to expect. Everyone is more comfortable when they know what to expect. So today we dig in to cultivating consistency. Today we identify the areas that would benefit the most from increased consistency. We equip ourselves with strategies and techniques for enhancing consistent routines.
And we implement small adjustments and regular practices to create a more predictable, enjoyable experience for everyone in our homes. Your [00:01:00] free resource for today is the Daily Consistency Tracker. This is going to help you have a visual representation of the area of focus that you're working on and allow you to hold yourself accountable more easily because you're tracking your progress.
It will also provide you with just a strong sense of accomplishment when you see your wins. Now, I have to take a moment and remind you what our amazing giveaway opportunity is so that you don't miss out. It's so simple to enter and it's so valuable to win. Today, I announce the first three winners over in the Christian Parenting Community Facebook group.
And I'll announce the next three winners on day seven. So the way to enter is inside the free Facebook group. You just comment on the homework post for that day. For today's homework, I'd love to know if you find an extra area in your life that could benefit from increased consistency. You [00:02:00] can share in the comments of that homework post exactly what that area is, or if you aren't comfortable sharing specifics, you can just share, yes.
In the comments, and that will count for your entry. The prize is a complete bundle of our new membership, which includes three life changing programs and one easy to navigate membership portal. Our complete A to Z chaos to calm program, which that one dives deep into finding inner peace, boosting your confidence and your self esteem.
Rediscovering your purpose, embracing your positivity, achieving balance and fulfillment in your day to day, mastering your time management, and ultimately it's your secret weapon for resilience and commitment to being the best parent that you possibly can be, because it removes the obstacles from your path that prevent you from showing up exactly how you want to for your children.
It also includes our full [00:03:00] leadership inspired parenting program that provides a complete transformation from confusion and lack of structure, direction, and consistency in your family to full confidence and effective strategies that actually work for you and your unique family. This program helps you learn your specific leadership style and tap into how to use that in your family to find the best approach for you.
It helps you create the confidence and the clarity that you need to feel like the CEO of your family and allows you to be fully equipped to drive the family straight towards the vision you created on day one of this challenge. And our Complete Connection Blueprint Program, which is the Parent Child Bond Mastery Training.
This training is the step by step for how exactly to build unbreakable, lasting connections with your children that will stand the test of time by [00:04:00] creating an environment of deep care, establishing unbreakable trust, and strengthening family bonds. All of the programs will feature on demand training designed to meet you wherever you are in your journey and fill the gap to help you get to where you want to be.
The Kalman Confident Club comes with a private community of like minded parents and ongoing coaching support for anything you may need. Plus two live calls every month for connection, relationship building, and meaningful conversations with me and with the other members in our private community, plus one full Q and A opportunity every month.
And if that wasn't enough, I'm also including all 12 of our challenge giveaway winners into our VIP tier. And that also includes three group coaching sessions every month with me, a certified parenting and family coach. Up to four digital [00:05:00] coaching sessions per email for all VIP members every month, and one member will receive one hot seat, one to one breakthrough session each month.
Our giveaway winners get all of that for free for an entire year, and 12 people will win. So the Common Confident Club will officially open its doors to everyone on December 15th. And you'll have an opportunity to be a part of that, even if you aren't one of our lovely 12 giveaway winners. I'll also announce a special bonus for all of you to thank you for participating in this challenge with us.
And I'll share that with you soon. But let's get started on consistency. I want to focus most importantly on why this matters. Because I think we all realize consistent practices are a benefit, but do we realize how essential it is in creating the types of homes? [00:06:00] For families that we want, we talked a little bit earlier in this challenge about how sometimes someone being inconsistent in a relationship can lead to the person on the receiving end facing confusion and as a result, no longer being able to show up as the best version of themselves to the other, because they no longer feel safe presenting that best version of themselves to some degree.
We have to know what to expect from someone to trust them. And to have a strong and lasting bond with our Children and to create a peaceful environment, we need trust in those relationships. Consistency is also the key to success. In our case, success looks like the vision that you crafted for your family on day one, your ideal family life.
Without consistency, we may make moves forward, but we can't be fully successful. We might even achieve temporary [00:07:00] success in some areas, but it won't be maintainable. The life we desire will require our consistency. Becoming more consistent naturally builds habits within us that then make those processes easier and easier as time goes on.
It's an investment in your relationships. It's a way to build lasting connections and bonds. It's a way to provide security to the people that we love and to ourselves. It's how we create peace of mind. It matters. So here's what our road trip would look like without consistency versus with consistency.
I know which one I'm going to choose. Does anyone like constant start and stop traffic and horns beeping and confusion, or do we all prefer a more peaceful drive where we feel safe and secure? No one thrives in an environment of [00:08:00] inconsistency, and literally the mission of my company, Covenant Collections, is to help Christian parents thrive in all things family and life.
So I truly want to see you thrive in your families. Today, we'll equip ourselves with techniques and strategies to create and enhance consistent routines, and this is going to allow us to have a more smooth, peaceful ride through our parenting journey. Okay, so you're sold on the importance, but how do you do it?
I want to reassure you that even small adjustments make a huge Difference. What we need to do first is commit that we're going to make a regular effort. Identify the areas in your parenting where inconsistency can cause stress or confusion. These are the places we want to work on first. I'm going to give you some examples and then I'm just going to go out on a limb and make a strong assumption that every single one [00:09:00] of us can find at least one area that we could do better with consistency in our home.
So if nothing immediately comes to mind, challenge yourself and dig deeper, be observant, and be self aware. Discipline is probably the biggest area that parents face inconsistency. So one example could be, you were in a great mood last week, and Johnny skipped doing his chores. And you just reminded him, because you were in a great mood, it had been an easy day.
You also kind of missed him because he'd been at his friends the day before, so you did the chores with him. And it ended up being a really good time for both of you. But today, today it's the final straw. You're so tired of always having to remind him. He knows he's supposed to do these things and he chooses not to.
It's lazy. It's disrespectful. You fill your head with all kinds of stories about it to justify the [00:10:00] way that you're feeling right now. You immediately go in his room, you unplug his TV, and you ground him from electronics for a week for not doing what he's supposed to be doing. Does he know exactly what consequence and what version of you to expect?
You're When he fails at this task, I'm not going to say which way is best way, which way is the worst way, which way is good parenting, which way is bad parenting. That's up to you. But the point is, your child needs to know what to expect from you in order to show up as the best version of themselves for you.
You may think this type of scenario would cause a child to play it safe and err on the side of caution by always completing the task. So they don't have to deal with the second version of the parent. But it doesn't. They almost unintentionally and probably completely subconsciously turn into little research experts.
They're testing and testing and testing under various [00:11:00] variables to determine what the response will be. Some tests may make you think they finally got it and that must have worked. Others will just be more final straws. That's probably a more drastic inconsistency with a wide variety of space in between the two.
So let's try another. Sally's bedtime is nine o'clock, and you work really hard to get her into a solid bedtime routine, but some nights you allow a lot of negotiation. When you say it's bedtime, and she asks for ten more minutes, you say no, but then when she keeps begging, you change your mind, and you say yes.
So you reluctantly agree after whining. Then you wonder why Sally isn't grateful that you let it slide, and when you're firm, you feel like, well, she should have been grateful I already gave her an extra 30 minutes. But she's not. She's melting down, [00:12:00] and she's telling you it's so unfair she has to go to bed.
Why? Because it worked before. Why doesn't it work now? She is confused. She's not being Disobedient, disrespectful, intentionally bad. She is confused and we created that confusion through inconsistency. That's very frustrating for a child. And then while we try to do them a favor and make them happy, all we've done is cause us both stress and made bedtime tonight and in the future a bigger battle.
So I'm not saying never let it slide. But if I were going to let my child stay up late, I would just decide in advance what that is. So tonight's bedtime is 10 o'clock. That way it's already established. Whatever I've said from the beginning is the expectation. And there's no negotiation and whining getting them the desired result when it comes time to go to bed.[00:13:00]
Of course, if you want to welcome negotiations into your bedtime on a regular basis, then you can do so. That's up to you, because it's going to depend if that type of thing is something that disrupts your peaceful home. It may not be for some of you, and it will be for others. So let's see. One more. Let's talk about toddler tantrums.
Your toddler wants a blue cup. You tell them you only have a green cup. Toddler tantrum ensues. I know they're hard, but our ability to self regulate and manage the situation is so important. It's not a solution that we have on hand. We don't have the blue cup. So I've personally seen parents take a situation like this and out of desperation, just go buy a blue cup.
Or phone dad and ask him to run by the store and bring home a blue cup. Search high and low through storage in your garage [00:14:00] to find a blue cup. I would give them their preferences and let them make choices. So, if you can within reason, but I would never make an exception or go the extra mile to give into something during a tantrum.
And why is that? Because you just reinforce that behavior would equal that desired result for them. And if you do that sometimes on the hard days when you just have less patience, but you don't on the other days. When you're ready for it, and you're prepared, and you're super self regulated. And then you wonder why the tantrums are so bad.
Even on those good days, it's because they're checking their boxes to see what worked last time. Why is this not working this time? Maybe if I just try for longer. It'll work this time. It's an inconsistency in our approach. [00:15:00] And sometimes if we're not careful, we look at that like a problem of our child.
Most of their problems can be fixed by fixing something in ourselves. It's kind of a common theme through parenting. So think about your family life, your approach to your children, your home, and find an area or a couple of areas that you know you have the potential to improve your consistency. It may not even be specifically how you approach your child.
It could just be something that affects your family. So if you prefer to do all your household cleaning on Saturday mornings or for like one hour a night where you give screen time, but you've been letting it slide and and you've been relaxing during that time and now it's cutting into family time.
That's an area where some consistency could benefit your family, even if it's not directly negatively impacting them in a notable way at the time. [00:16:00] Now it's time for proven techniques to help you be more consistent in your behaviors and your routines. Number one, we have to set clear priorities. Use your values and your priorities to get clear on what matters most.
When you do that, it'll be so much easier to stay consistent in those areas because you're looking at something that's affecting something else. That means a lot to you. Number two, start small. Start with manageable changes. Trying to overhaul your entire life at once can be overwhelming, but it also reduces the chances that any of those changes will be lasting habits.
Gradual adjustments are much more sustainable. Number three, create keystone habits. Identify key habits. That when you practice them consistently, can have a positive domino effect on [00:17:00] other areas in your life as well. That's something like, if you implement a strong household routine for cleaning, cooking, and those other fun, unavoidable tasks.
That frees up more family time. So that has obvious benefits, but it also can reduce your stress, improve your mental health, increase connection and bonding time in your family. It can help you with time management with various other tasks that you were struggling with. So that's a keystone habit. Number four, you'll hear me say this a lot, but set yourself up for success.
Remove as many barriers as you can. Set reminders on your phone, use your daily consistency tracker, make yourself to do lists, get an accountability buddy, plan established routines and specific times for certain tasks to make it easier to stick them, put fail safes in place that will reinforce your [00:18:00] consistency until they become reliable habits.
Number five, revisit your why frequently. Why are you doing this and why does it matter to you? If you stay focused on your positive outcomes that are associated with those consistent behaviors, the mental image alone can reinforce your commitment and keep you motivated. Number six, it's progress, not perfection.
You're winning if you're consistently engaging in the process. You don't have to be perfect and it's not healthy to expect 100 percent from yourself all the time. Set realistic goals to set yourselves up for success and you should be a pro at making up smart goals at this point, so utilize those in this practice as well.
I also encourage regular check ins with yourself to reflect on your efforts and take note of the things that are working well, what could still be improved, and then go ahead and [00:19:00] make necessary adjustments. We have to be open to constantly evolving, make an effort to incorporate mindfulness into your process so that you can stay present and connected.
This can help you reduce those inevitable Distractions of life that try to mess you up in this process and help you remain consistent. Don't be afraid of flexibility. Life is not black and white. Let unexpected events and abnormal days be just that. And lastly, reward yourself for your wins. Pat yourself on the back, share with a friend, no matter how small or how big, celebrate when you achieve a goal because not only do you deserve to, but positive reinforcement also reinforces those habits.
Consistency is a skill. Skills can be learned. And skills can be developed over time. Experiment with these techniques and find the approach that [00:20:00] works best for you. Don't pressure yourself to show up perfectly every day. Just make a commitment to positive change and consistent effort. These tools and this work will provide you with more stability, security and peace within your homes.
So the effort is completely worth it. That's all for today. I hope you enjoyed it and I hope you're ready to take action on cultivating consistency in your home. I'll see you over in the Facebook group for our giveaway entry and tomorrow where we'll dive into utilizing feedback from your children.
