Hot take: your kids should misbehave.

I know — that’s not what anyone tells you. But perfectly behaved children 100% of the time is not the goal. It never was. And if you’ve been stressed every time your child acts out, this episode is going to take a weight off your shoulders.

In this episode, I explain why misbehavior is actually a sign of healthy development — and how to parent through it with peace.

We talk about:
* Why we panic when our kids misbehave (and what it triggers in us)
* The developmental truth about children and behavior
* How to set realistic expectations based on your child’s age and stage
* Parenting with peace instead of panic — even in public

If you liked this episode, you’ll also enjoy:
 The Kids Talk Too Much!
 Stop the Bickering
 Help Your Kids Calm Down

If you want to parent from calm instead of chaos, that’s the work we do together inside Mary’s Heart Martha’s Order. Catholic moms learning to lead their families with peace. Come join us at catholicmomcalm.com/marysheart

But even if it was true, okay, even if it was true, I want you to think about how it feels in your body when you think he shouldn’t hit her. It’s gonna feel tight, it’s gonna feel yucky. You might feel angry, you might feel bad about yourself, like you’re a bad mom. Like if you were a good mom, this wouldn’t be happening. And I am pretty sure that what you do after you have that thought he shouldn’t do that is not great parenting for most of you. Okay? 

I was traveling recently, so I was at a parish that I had never been in before. And I apologize that I do not remember where it was. middle of Idaho somewhere and the priest was very nice, a little cheeky, kind of funny, seems like a great guy. And he said something I had never heard before. 

He said, people wanna be normal. And he said, but from God’s point of view, to be normal is to be without sin. So he said, the only normal people were Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and Jesus and Mary. He said those were the only normal people to the Lord. Everyone else is abnormal.

And I have no idea what children would have done in the Garden of Eden and maybe they would’ve popped out and just been sinless creatures who acted perfectly. I don’t know whether the developmental milestones that children experience have anything to do with the fall, is what I’m saying. I do not know.

But I do know that. Part of raising a child is that they do things that are childish and immature and inappropriate, and it is literally our job to inform them that they should not do that, so it is a child’s job to be self-centered and to give into their base instincts. And to want what they want and to hit their siblings.

And it is our job to come in and go, oh darling, that is not how we behave. That is not virtuous. That is not how we do things in society. Our job as parents is to shape these children. That’s your job. 

Can you imagine being a boss, and maybe some of you have had a boss like this. I haven’t had a boss like this, but I imagine that they exist where they don’t give you any feedback at all. They’re in charge of you. They’re supposed to be guiding you.

And maybe they’re checked out and they never talk to you and they never give you any feedback, positive or negative, you would say, that’s not a great boss. Their job is to pay attention to your work and give you feedback. Your job as a mom is to pay attention to your children and give them feedback, both kinds, by the way.

Hey, good job, buddy. That was so nice. That was so helpful. Thank you for being generous. A phrase we use a lot is, could you be flexible? Which means, I know you really wanted that blue sippy cup top, but I need you to take the red one because I gave the blue one to someone else. 

So in that scenario, we will say, I will say in my most Mary Poppin’s voice, do you think you could be flexible, buddy? And they feel so great. They wanna rise to the occasion. Most of the time. I’m sure there are times that they do not. 

But most of the time I see my guys like kind of perk up my little boys. They perk up and they’re like, yeah mom, I’ll be flexible. And I go, oh, thank you so much. And sometimes I wink at them like it’s a secret between us that they’re choosing to be flexible so somebody else can have the thing.

And I do this with my older girls too. I say it in a more mature way, which is appropriate because they’re more mature. Like, Hey, I know you really want that, but I’m just, I’m asking you to be flexible on this. Can you do that for me? 

And I think I say it in that kind of lower tone where I acknowledge more so for them because it is more true that the sacrifice I’m asking of them is probably bigger. So it probably isn’t the color of a sippy cup top, but something bigger where I’m saying, Hey, can you take one for the team and be flexible about this?

It is our job to train them up. What would you do if they popped out and just were well behaved all the time? I mean, maybe we would just enjoy them. It doesn’t even matter, even as a thought exercise because it’s not our reality. Our reality is that we parent our children for some amount of years, 16 to 25, let’s just call it somewhere in there.

And it is literally our job to give them feedback for them to misbehave and for us to say, Hey, this is how we ought to behave. So I want you just to try this on for size, just to blow your own mind. The next time that they do something naughty, I want you to think, oh, he should definitely do that. And I’m up the mom bat signal goes on.

And you are called up. This is your moment. You put your mom superhero cape on and you’re like, I’m ready. Put me in the game coach. All of those hype sentences, whichever one could have works for you, but like you’re up. This is it. They literally should misbehave so that you can parent them. That’s how we teach them. 

Did you think it was gonna be any different and maybe you did make peace with it a certain number of times, but then this sneaky one comes in later, which goes, they should know that by now. 

So maybe you had some patience for your 3-year-old or your 4-year-old hitting their siblings, but then when you see your 10-year-old do it, you’re like, come on. No, you definitely shouldn’t be doing that. I have said that before for sure.

But because of coaching and because I know how my brain works and that my thoughts create my feelings and that my actions come from my feelings, I know that this is just not a helpful thought.

My little blaze, he is going to school for the first time. My two boys are in the farm school, and on Tuesdays we go. To school. We come home for a hot minute. No, no, we don’t. Even on Tuesdays we go straight from school to religious education and then on the way home. And it’s only happened, we’ve only done it twice. We’ve only had it two weeks in a row. 

He is like so tired, so gone, so crunchy that anyone could breathe on him and it would be wrong. Anyone could touch him and it could be wrong. The music is too loud or too quiet, or it just doesn’t matter. That kid is so tired and his little body just hasn’t adjusted yet to a day that long, and he’s just out of his mind.

And I just think totally, I want him to learn this. This is perfect. I love getting to parent him while he’s tired, I don’t do a ton of talking to him while he’s tired, but I will talk to him later the next day. But I do talk to the other kids in the car like, Hey, we love Blaze. He’s just tired right now. He’s not in his mind anymore. Can you tell? And everybody can tell. 

And I’ll just say, do you see how when we’re really upset because we’re tired, we don’t think clearly. So I get to teach everybody else about that. But of course he’s tired. Of course he’s dysregulated. That’s okay. This is how we learn things. 

And it doesn’t matter to me whether the thought he should or shouldn’t do. That goes through your mind. What I want is you to parent from peace. I want you to not be in resistance to your kids. So if you think the thought, he shouldn’t be kicking in the back seat of my car, he did that today. You shouldn’t. He shouldn’t be kicking the backseat of the car and it doesn’t bother you. 

Like it doesn’t make you upset, and you’re still parenting from peace. Great. But if that thought is creating tension in your body and a lack of peace, and you are showing up in any kind of distorted way, then it is not helpful. And hopefully from now on you can kind of picture me with my cheeky voice being like, shouldn’t he though? Isn’t this what kids are supposed to do?

And you’ll be like, oh yeah, I forgot. Kids should misbehave so that we have the privilege of parenting them. That is literally how the system works. So I said this on a coaching call recently, and the number of people who put in the chat mind blown was a lot. And so I thought, oh, I should do a podcast about this.

We are all abnormal because of sin. We all have concupiscence and we have this inclination to sin. We have this inclination to be selfish and to want more cake and television and fun. All the things.

And as we grow in virtue, and you’re on your own journey, so your kids are on their journey and you’re on your own journey. You’re just doing it however many years old you are right now, where you are also figuring out, oh, I booked too many activities and then I was tired, and then I snapped at my husband.

And I want you to go, oh. I am glad that happened because now I get to learn. I don’t wanna show up like that. I don’t wanna overbook myself. Or maybe you were outta the house for five hours and you didn’t bring anything to eat and you thought that would be fine. 

And so it’s such a good thing that you snapped at your husband and then hopefully had a reflective moment about that and repaired with him and. Learned the lesson of like, oh yeah, I booked too many things in this day and I didn’t have enough food. 

So I’m not saying I will never condone the behavior and say that it is a what’s the word? Which means it by itself is a good thing. I feel like I’m don’t have my great philosophy language here. Someone’s gonna email me and tell me.

But there’s a kind of good, that means like intrinsically the thing is good. I don’t mean that being short with your husband is never good. It’s probably always a venial sin. But there is something to be learned from that so that you can refine yourself and grow in virtue and move along the candyland path to sainthood.

I’ve just decided in my mind there’s a candy land path to Saint Hood and you just had to pass, you know, short with my husband. ’cause I overbooked myself. And then you get to learn that lesson. So the Lord is like your parent watching you going, oh good, we’re coming up to that path now. And she’s gonna learn that.

You know, he’s not sitting there going, oh, she shouldn’t do that. He wants sainthood for you. He wants you to be refined and to grow in virtue. So he likes the obstacles because he knows it’s an opportunity that you can choose him, repent and draw closer to his heart and to eternity with him. 

So, I mean, it is gonna stretch your brain a little bit, this concept. But being angry with your children or with yourself for behavior is not holy, and it does not lead to progress. Being angry at your children or being angry with yourself for your own shortcomings will not improve those shortcomings. They might improve the outward performance of something in the short term. 

Let’s go back to the boss analogy. Let’s say you have a boss and he like comes in and yells at everybody. They might hop too when he comes in the room and they might play the game a little bit. But it’s short-lived. They’re short term gains, not really building a great team, and over the long term. They’re not going to be the highest producers or they’re gonna leave because anger does not create virtue.

So I just want you to sit with all of that, just a little light. A little light thinking on a Wednesday morning. But we are here to grow in virtue. We are here to know, love and serve the Lord. We want to be like him. 

And he’s not walking around baffled about why the children are misbehaving and the adults are misbehaving. He’s like, yeah, original sin, and I still love you, and I will gently invite you to repent and choose to grow in virtue in the very next moment.

So let’s give some grace to our kids and ourselves, and I want you to start managing your mind. Do not allow that thought bubble to pop up. He shouldn’t do that. And let, and then water it. It’s gonna pop up. That still pops up in my mind. She shouldn’t do that. But I just, I don’t plant it in my mind and water it. I just kind of push it in the trash,

And I go, yep, this is great. This is a great moment. This is a teaching moment. That’s a thought. I do like, oh, this is just a good teaching moment. Or I will also think this is gonna create a teaching moment later. So again, with my leg blitzed stout, 7-year-old little guy who’s so tired, that actually just isn’t the teaching moment for him. He’s not there anymore. 

And so I’ll talk to him later when he calms down, and I’m surprised how often they, you know, the next day will remember what happened and can have a pretty good conversation with me. Like, Hey, do you remember? You were so upset and it seemed like such a big deal, didn’t it, buddy? Yeah. 

And was anything really wrong? No. Do you think maybe you were just tired? Yeah. Did you feel a lot better after you woke up? I did Mom. Right? I mean, we just, we do wanna have these moments with them and to teach them. 

Okay. I love you. You’re doing a great job and I’m praying for you. I just pray for moms all the time. You say, Lord. Well, I just think motherhood is particularly difficult in this age where we have so much information going on in our eyeballs and not a lot of support, and we’re all kind of lonely and isolated, even if we’re surrounded by people. And I think, you know what I mean? 

And so let’s just pray for each other. I really think that matters. I think there’s a real currency there that is helping give each of us, you know, more grace. So please just pray for all Catholic moms, you know, once throughout the day, Lord have mercy on us. This is a rough out there, and we need you and we need your help. We need your love and your strength, Lord, to carry us through. 

All right, my friends, thank you so much for listening. I’m praying for you. Please pray for me and have a blessed day.