Latest / It's A Grand Life / Why Grandchildren Lash Out — And What They’re Really Feeling (Part 1 with Daniel Schulerr)
Transcript
- 0:08SPEAKER_00: Welcome to It's a Grand Life, where our mission is to be a voice for grandfamilies and kinship caregivers everywhere.
- 0:16SPEAKER_00: Did you know that in the United States alone there are 2.3 million grandparents raising their grandchildren?
- 0:24SPEAKER_00: 2.3 million.
- 0:26SPEAKER_00: It's a Grand Life is committed to making a difference for those kids.
- 0:30SPEAKER_00: That's why we have the podcast, a Facebook group, and the Grand Fund.
- 0:35SPEAKER_00: The Grand Fund, which is a 501c3 which was launched in June of 2024, provides financial assistance to grand families, including shelter, food, clothing, and household needs.
- 0:49SPEAKER_00: Grand families are in every neighborhood, in every city, every tribe and territory nationwide.
- 0:56SPEAKER_00: If this is you or someone you love, we're here for you.
- 1:01SPEAKER_00: And we welcome you to join us on this mission.
- 1:03SPEAKER_00: Our goal is to offer hope and resources to help you.
- 1:07SPEAKER_00: Please subscribe to our YouTube channel and follow us wherever you get your podcasts and leave a review.
- 1:13SPEAKER_00: You can also join our Facebook group, just search for it under It's a Grand Life.
- 1:18SPEAKER_00: And your reviews, comments, and sharing of our podcasts help us reach others that need assistance.
- 1:24SPEAKER_00: Welcome to another episode of It's a Grand Life.
- 1:28SPEAKER_00: Hello, my name is Craig Nash.
- 1:30SPEAKER_00: I'd like to welcome you to another It's a Grand Life.
- 1:32SPEAKER_00: And I know you're going to be blessed today.
- 1:34SPEAKER_00: I'm going to be meeting one of my new friends.
- 1:36SPEAKER_00: I was in Texas all last week with Daniel Schuler and a number of our other friends and all from the coaching community.
- 1:45SPEAKER_00: And Daniel's joining us from Austin, Texas today.
- 1:48SPEAKER_00: And he has just got a phenomenal approach to helping folks uncover their identity and how to deal with fear, guilt, and shame and really end up knowing who they really are and who they were intended to be.
- 2:02SPEAKER_00: And Daniel, thank you so much for joining us on It's a Grand Life.
- 2:05SPEAKER_00: And just can't wait to hear all that you're sharing with us today.
- 2:09SPEAKER_00: So can you give us a little bit of your background?
- 2:12SPEAKER_00: How in the world did you get into identity coaching?
- 2:16SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, first of all, thank you so much for having me.
- 2:18SPEAKER_01: It was such a blessing to spend time with you last week, and it was such a transformative couple days.
- 2:24SPEAKER_01: And I was I was about to text the group chat today and be like, can you believe that this time last week we hadn't even met yet?
- 2:30SPEAKER_01: Um, which is so cool.
- 2:32SPEAKER_01: So yeah, thank you so much for having me on.
- 2:34SPEAKER_01: I absolutely love what you're doing.
- 2:35SPEAKER_01: It's it's really important work.
- 2:37SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, I mean, long, long story short, I grew up as an athlete.
- 2:42SPEAKER_01: I wanted to play uh professional golf.
- 2:46SPEAKER_01: That was kind of my my dream growing up.
- 2:48SPEAKER_01: I started playing golf when I was four, and amongst I, you know, I was playing some other sports and instruments and things like that.
- 2:54SPEAKER_01: But the goal really was to play collegiate and then go play pro.
- 2:58SPEAKER_01: Um, and then when I was 15, I got recruited into Hollywood.
- 3:02SPEAKER_01: So then I was in the entertainment industry, and God just was, I was kind of all over the place.
- 3:07SPEAKER_01: But I I, you know, I was very led in all of these different directions.
- 3:10SPEAKER_01: And so as you can imagine, uh, from a very young age, I started believing some false narratives about myself.
- 3:19SPEAKER_01: So for example, you know, when I was playing golf, I would be told, you know, oh, you're gonna go pro, you're gonna play in college.
- 3:25SPEAKER_01: And I was like, okay, that sounds great to me because you're in a position of authority and something I'm trying to do.
- 3:31SPEAKER_01: And the longer it didn't happen, the more I started, it started to become a lie.
- 3:36SPEAKER_01: And it wasn't that I wasn't good at golf, it was that I'm not good.
- 3:41SPEAKER_01: Same thing in the entertainment industry with modeling and acting.
- 3:44SPEAKER_01: I was doing that.
- 3:44SPEAKER_01: It wasn't that I wasn't good looking enough, it wasn't that I wasn't talented enough, it was that I wasn't enough.
- 3:51SPEAKER_01: And that's the lie that I started to believe.
- 3:53SPEAKER_01: So this sort of it's a joke, it's it's not that it's sad or not sad, it's just kind of funny.
- 3:59SPEAKER_01: But I I like to tell people I, you know, I joined Hollywood at 15 and then I started therapy at 16.
- 4:05SPEAKER_01: And um that was and that was my experience, you know, and I I have a lot of different stories from that time.
- 4:11SPEAKER_01: But anyway, long story short, when I was 20, I had been in the industry for about five years and I left because I just didn't I didn't like who I was becoming and what I was believing about myself and the world.
- 4:22SPEAKER_01: And um, I got into direct sales and I learned about leadership and self-development, and I kind of fell in love with that process of becoming better.
- 4:32SPEAKER_01: And and, you know, admittedly, in the beginning, it was a little bit more on that self-help side, which was, you know, it's a good entry point, but I realized um just again how important identity is, and then obviously I got introduced to Jamie Winship, and so I actually got certified in neurolinguistic programming, also known as NLP, uh, which is essentially just the invisible language program or process that your brain uses to filter the world.
- 5:04SPEAKER_01: And everyone has it, everybody uses it, but not everybody knows that they have it or how to use it.
- 5:11SPEAKER_01: So it's things like your senses and how you store memories and the filter that you use and how many different things happen before you make a decision and what happens actually when you have a thought come into your brain and things like that.
- 5:25SPEAKER_01: So I got that certification, got introduced to Jamie Winchip, who was doing incredible identity transformation work all over the world in high stress areas, you know, in the Middle East and places like that.
- 5:38SPEAKER_01: And so I said, I want to do that, but pair it with the NLP plus all the stuff that I know and kind of just see how it goes.
- 5:46SPEAKER_01: And so I started coaching when I was 23, which is very young.
- 5:51SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
- 5:52SPEAKER_01: And so one of the false narratives I had to overcome, even in that, was who the heck wants to listen to a 23-year-old talk about life?
- 6:00SPEAKER_01: You know, oh, you haven't been through enough, you don't know anything.
- 6:03SPEAKER_01: And so what I would do essentially is tell people, hey, here's here's kind of what I do, here's the the work we can do.
- 6:10SPEAKER_01: It's a win-win for you, because I wasn't charging in the beginning.
- 6:13SPEAKER_01: And I said, you can either like we'll do a session, and you can either make fun of the 23-year-old who thought he was a life coach, or something might change in you.
- 6:23SPEAKER_01: So, either way, it's a win-win for you.
- 6:25SPEAKER_01: The only thing it'll cost you is maybe 30 minutes to an hour of your life.
- 6:29SPEAKER_01: And so I just started doing that.
- 6:31SPEAKER_01: And time and time again, people liked it.
- 6:34SPEAKER_01: They started learning things, they started having transformations, and I would get texts from people saying, you know, hey, so and so said they did a session with you and it went well.
- 6:44SPEAKER_01: I'd love to, you know, have one with you.
- 6:47SPEAKER_01: And it kept kind of happening like that.
- 6:48SPEAKER_01: And even in the beginning, I would do it with some of my friends, say, hey, if you're going through something, let me know.
- 6:53SPEAKER_01: I I have these certifications, I can help, whatever.
- 6:57SPEAKER_01: So yeah, and then uh it just kind of went from there.
- 7:00SPEAKER_01: And so for the past seven years now, I'm I'm gonna be 31 in uh in June.
- 7:06SPEAKER_01: So over the past seven years, I've coached close to 1,200 people, uh, ranging from seven, eight, and nine-figure executives to people in the military, professional athletes, semi-pro, amateur, ages 11 to 73, teachers, school students.
- 7:25SPEAKER_01: The only reason I'm saying that isn't to brag about the kinds of people I've coached, it's the variety, right?
- 7:32SPEAKER_01: So the the professional football player, the professional baseball player, the nine-figure CEO, and the 11-year-old all believe the same thing.
- 7:40SPEAKER_01: And so we work on the belief system behind where you're at and the decisions that you're making.
- 7:46SPEAKER_01: And the big thing is we don't do this work so that your circumstances change.
- 7:51SPEAKER_01: They might change.
- 7:52SPEAKER_01: We hope they change, but we do it so that they don't have to change in order for you to be solid in who you are.
- 7:59SPEAKER_01: Right.
- 7:59SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah.
- 8:01SPEAKER_00: What what I really liked about them when we were talking off air is that you were saying the uh the whether you're talking about a professional athlete or nine-figure um CEO or a grandparent who's raising their grandkids, it's the same type of thinking that you have to address.
- 8:17SPEAKER_00: What the lies they believe about themselves.
- 8:20SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
- 8:20SPEAKER_00: So how how would you target a grandparent who's raising their grandkids and the the lies that we believe about ourselves?
- 8:27SPEAKER_00: We're not enough, we don't have enough.
- 8:29SPEAKER_00: What's gonna happen?
- 8:30SPEAKER_00: Scarcity mentality, whatever.
- 8:32SPEAKER_01: Yeah, a hundred percent.
- 8:34SPEAKER_01: I think it's it would there's not necessarily a blanket statement I could give other than what are the most common beliefs about yourself that you're using on the day-to-day in the dynamic you have with your grandchild, and how is that showing up?
- 8:51SPEAKER_01: Because it's one thing to know the belief, it's another thing to know how the belief is showing up in the exchange.
- 8:58SPEAKER_01: So it could be things are things are really good until we start getting ready for bed and I have to put them down, or things are really good until I pick them up from school, or things are really good until I ask them to do their homework.
- 9:11SPEAKER_01: And so there's these certain scenarios where the overall dynamic might be pretty good, but there's a couple situations where there's some resistance.
- 9:21SPEAKER_01: And so then the next thing I would ask is in these moments of resistance, what tends to happen?
- 9:27SPEAKER_01: And when that happens, what do you start to believe about yourself?
- 9:30SPEAKER_01: Because the difference is, especially with a grandchild and a grandparent, you're not just working on what the grandparent believes about themselves, you're also knowing that the grandchild believes something about themselves, and part of this work is gonna be an invitation for the grandchild to come into the work that the grandparent is doing.
- 9:52SPEAKER_01: And so the grandparent will be equipped to when they see the grandchild doing this kind of behavior, saying these kinds of things, the the initial desire is gonna be either to lash out, to reprimand, to question themselves, versus okay, this is this is a grandchild being raised by their grandparent.
- 10:13SPEAKER_01: They want, they want to know something.
- 10:15SPEAKER_01: There's a positive, so there's a positive intent behind every behavior.
- 10:19SPEAKER_01: Not a positive result, positive intent.
- 10:22SPEAKER_01: And so if a kid is lashing out, it's clear that they want attention.
- 10:28SPEAKER_01: And if they want attention, it's because they're feeling neglected.
- 10:32SPEAKER_01: So we can then ask, you know, hey, what do you, you know, when they respond whatever it is, and I I guess it's kind of hard without there being a specific scenario, but just getting in that posture of asking questions of, hey, when you do this, I notice that whenever I ask you to do your homework, this is the response.
- 10:53SPEAKER_01: Instead of saying, don't do that, I don't like when you do that, why do you do that?
- 10:57SPEAKER_01: You can say, What do you believe about yourself when I ask you to do your homework?
- 11:03SPEAKER_01: What are you starting to believe about yourself when I ask you to do your homework?
- 11:06SPEAKER_01: Or what do you what do you believe about me when I ask you to do your homework?
- 11:09SPEAKER_01: And they might say, Well, that you're a dictator, or whatever.
- 11:13SPEAKER_01: And then you could you could say, and it and again, the the power here is to dissociate from what they're saying and turn like you're not taking that personally, you're uncovering their belief system.
- 11:24SPEAKER_01: Their belief system doesn't equal who you are, it equals their perception of who you are because of their belief.
- 11:32SPEAKER_01: So, oh, when you ask me to do my homework, it makes me feel oppressed.
- 11:38SPEAKER_01: For example, and you could say, okay, fair enough.
- 11:41SPEAKER_01: Where did you learn that being asked to do your homework was an oppressive question?
- 11:48SPEAKER_00: That's fantastic.
- 11:49SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's the three examples that you pulled right out of your hat, they're the the homework and the other one another big one is cleaning up.
- 11:59SPEAKER_00: Getting ready to go to bed.
- 12:00SPEAKER_00: Getting ready to go to bed or cleaning up your room.
- 12:02SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
- 12:03SPEAKER_00: All those things are triggers.
- 12:05SPEAKER_00: And so uh in a a precise scenario, um, last night we're getting ready for dinner and we're having a discussion about homework or cleaning one's room or something like that, and and it generated a lot of loud um conversation from our granddaughter.
- 12:22SPEAKER_00: I mean, she's like screaming at me, and I'm like, this, I don't get this.
- 12:27SPEAKER_00: And yeah, and instead of getting upset, I should have said, Well, what do you believe about yourself that is causing you to get so upset?
- 12:34SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and even and I think again, there's not um, there's not, it doesn't have to be that specific question every time.
- 12:45SPEAKER_01: It's just the posture that there's clearly something else going on.
- 12:48SPEAKER_01: So it's an invitation.
- 12:50SPEAKER_01: So it's when they have that response, they're afraid of something, they're afraid of losing something, they're afraid of losing independence, they're afraid of losing authority, they're afraid of losing time because cleaning my room takes time and I'd rather be doing something else, whatever it is.
- 13:06SPEAKER_01: And so whenever there's a reaction, it's also as the grandparent, which you guys are just doing such an incredible job as it is, whenever there's a reaction from the grandchild, it is an invitation for you to learn what they're thinking about and their belief system.
- 13:26SPEAKER_01: And so if you notice that she doesn't lash out like that unless it has to do with homework, maybe when she does her homework, she doesn't feel smart.
- 13:37SPEAKER_01: And so you asking her to do her homework, even though it has nothing to do with you, you saying, Hey, can you do your homework?
- 13:44SPEAKER_01: What she really wants to say is, I don't know how to do my homework because I think I'm stupid.
- 13:48SPEAKER_00: Right.
- 13:49SPEAKER_01: But instead, she goes, Why do you always ask me to do my homework?
- 13:53SPEAKER_01: And you know that it's late, blah, whatever it is.
- 13:56SPEAKER_01: And so in that moment, you know, there's so many questions you could ask.
- 14:00SPEAKER_01: And and admittedly, what do you believe about yourself in that scenario probably won't go very far.
- 14:07SPEAKER_00: Right.
- 14:08SPEAKER_01: You know, because they're gonna be like, I they don't know what they believe about themselves.
- 14:11SPEAKER_01: So it just again, it just kind of depends, but it's that framework of there's clearly something else going on.
- 14:18SPEAKER_01: And it could even be something like I can see that whenever, you know, you you could just say, hey, let's cool off, and then I actually have a really important question I want to ask you.
- 14:28SPEAKER_01: And we're safe, our relationship is safe.
- 14:30SPEAKER_01: I just want to learn something about you.
- 14:32SPEAKER_01: I noticed that whenever I ask you to do your homework, this is your reaction.
- 14:37SPEAKER_01: Can you tell me more about what is what goes through your mind when you think about homework?
- 14:41SPEAKER_01: Like what do you what do you think about homework?
- 14:43SPEAKER_01: What do you think about me when I'm asking to do homework?
- 14:45SPEAKER_01: Just so I'm you know, you know, you just invite them into that space.
- 14:48SPEAKER_00: The cleaning the room gets the higher for the the hotter response than the homework.
- 14:53SPEAKER_00: We we uh we we dealt with the homework about six months ago when and uh uh when when uh my granddaughter came in and she had a a report card, and she handed her report card to me and told me, you know, Papa, I'm not really that smart.
- 15:07SPEAKER_00: And I looked on the report card, she was top-level reading, just below the top level in math.
- 15:12SPEAKER_00: And her grandma and I are wanted to do cartwheels, you know, in the fast room.
- 15:16SPEAKER_00: So I said, Now who told you you're not that smart?
- 15:20SPEAKER_00: So we were able to go with her into her with her imagination into her favorite place, and I asked her to give the report card to her higher power, which she did, and then to ask him what he thought of her.
- 15:32SPEAKER_00: And he said, You're wise, you're strong, and you're smart.
- 15:36SPEAKER_00: I said, We we don't ever want to hear about this I'm stupid business anymore.
- 15:41SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we know you're wise, strong, and smart.
- 15:43SPEAKER_00: And she's had all these ever since.
- 15:45SPEAKER_00: We want the same type of thing with cleaning the room.
- 15:48SPEAKER_00: We're not we're we're getting um the battle of the bulge every time we talk about uh you know cleaning the room, and and it and all sorts of emotions are coming out, and it's it's it's it's a head scratcher.
- 15:58SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
- 16:00SPEAKER_01: And you know, again, on this on the surface, getting to things like, you know, there's the obvious, well, what do you think it means when you clean your room?
- 16:10SPEAKER_01: And you know, what is it that is so what do you start to believe uh, or what are you afraid of when you clean your room?
- 16:18SPEAKER_01: But it's not always a fear, it's just there's it could also just be a lack of desire.
- 16:23SPEAKER_01: But the other thing is we don't know.
- 16:25SPEAKER_01: There could be a memory stored in there from her uh from her parents, right?
- 16:31SPEAKER_01: Where the last time she was asked to clean her room, she had something happen to her.
- 16:36SPEAKER_00: Right.
- 16:37SPEAKER_01: And so we don't know, you know, and so part of part of this is being tender in the approach, and also just food for thought for everybody listening.
- 16:48SPEAKER_01: When someone presents their idea to you of I'm not smart, the fix is not to tell them that they are smart.
- 16:59SPEAKER_01: And the reason being is you want to acknowledge their opinion because acknowledgement doesn't equal agreement.
- 17:06SPEAKER_00: Right, right?
- 17:07SPEAKER_01: And so what we tend to do is we want to tell people they're wrong.
- 17:12SPEAKER_01: So, oh, I'm not that smart.
- 17:13SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you are.
- 17:14SPEAKER_01: That that doesn't help because they don't believe they're smart.
- 17:17SPEAKER_01: So you valid, you you can validate what they're saying and say, hey, I I notice that I notice that you told me, you know, you don't think you're smart.
- 17:25SPEAKER_01: Just to be clear, I'm looking at these grades that are in the top.
- 17:29SPEAKER_01: So what is your definition of smart?
- 17:31SPEAKER_01: Just out of curiosity, I just want to clarify like what does smart mean to you?
- 17:34SPEAKER_01: Because the grades and your opinion don't exactly line up.
- 17:38SPEAKER_01: So walk me through that.
- 17:40SPEAKER_01: And then, because you you can't really share your opinion until you've acknowledged someone else's.
- 17:47SPEAKER_01: They're not gonna want to listen to you if the first thing you've done when they shared their opinion was shut it down, even if it's with good intentions.
- 17:55SPEAKER_00: Now, uh, you just uh set a mouthful for grandparents right there.
- 17:59SPEAKER_00: We can't share our opinion until we acknowledge their opinion.
- 18:02SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
- 18:02SPEAKER_00: And so we um and you're you're talking about a method, you're not walking in with a lot of emotion, and you're not fired up when you're dealing with your your whether it's a spouse or your grandchild or what have you.
- 18:14SPEAKER_00: You're you're really trying to get to like that that you know you're not smart.
- 18:18SPEAKER_00: Well, could you define smart?
- 18:19SPEAKER_00: What is that?
- 18:20SPEAKER_00: And I I love that idea, but you and and you but you can't share your opinion until you've asked someone else their opinion.
- 18:27SPEAKER_01: It's almost like it's not it's and it's not not to cut you off, but it's not just asking their opinion, it's affirming that they have one and that their opinion is valid, not true.
- 18:37SPEAKER_01: Validity doesn't mean truth.
- 18:39SPEAKER_01: So they could it is true that she doesn't feel smart, it's not true that she that she isn't smart, right?
- 18:47SPEAKER_01: So if she presents a belief and you say, no, you are smart, what we've just said is the way that you think about yourself is wrong, which in reality, like that's true, but the delivery is way more important than the actual words.
- 19:05SPEAKER_00: Well, uh uh Daniel, how do you get your clients to get the delivery down?
- 19:10SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's you've got all these years of working on this, and you've 1200 people you've walked through with you know, a lot of these a lot of us grandparents are dealing with one to five grandkids, and yeah, they seem to have more moves in front of them that than we do.
- 19:22SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it takes, I will say it's it's not this one size fits all immediate transformation.
- 19:29SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it takes time, not sometimes, it takes a lot of time, but the time that is spent becomes more productive because rather than kind of pulling out of a magic hat hoping your next method works, you have the tool.
- 19:48SPEAKER_01: When you're building a house from scratch, when you look at the foundation, there's not a house there, but there's a house coming because you have the blueprint.
- 19:57SPEAKER_01: If you try to build a house without the blueprint, no matter how hard you look at the foundation, it's gonna be really hard to see a house.
- 20:04SPEAKER_00: Right.
- 20:05SPEAKER_01: But when you look at the foundation being built, you're going, okay, I know that there's gonna be a day when I'm getting ready to put the roof on and it's gonna start dumping rain, and I can't put the roof on, but there's a roof coming.
- 20:18SPEAKER_01: But I know that I have the shelter, I can put the roofing materials in, I can, you know, cover the wood and all these things.
- 20:24SPEAKER_01: So the house is being built, and understandably, as a grandparent, you are also overcoming your own false narratives on how to deal and solve these sort of problems with the grandchildren.
- 20:40SPEAKER_01: So you're not just working on it for them, you're working on it for you.
- 20:44SPEAKER_01: So your first responsibility, as they say in the plane, is to put the oxygen mask on yourself.
- 20:49SPEAKER_01: If you haven't figured out your own false narratives, how are you gonna help your grandchild with theirs?
- 20:54SPEAKER_00: Well, how do I do that?
- 20:55SPEAKER_00: How do I pick that up?
- 20:57SPEAKER_01: Because then you're just then you're just uh communicating both of you from from a false narrative.
- 21:02SPEAKER_01: So for the for the grandparents and just everybody, it's thinking about what is an area in my life right now that I really want to experience transformation in, or what's a really inconvenient mindset that I have.
- 21:20SPEAKER_00: Well, friends, we probably have to stop it there, but uh our guest today, Daniel Schuler, has just done a phenomenal job talking about how his coaching practice can affect grandparents raising grandkids.
- 21:33SPEAKER_00: This is the end of only part one, and I want to encourage you to join us next week for part two, which is all about experiencing transformation.
- 21:42SPEAKER_00: You're really gonna uh be blessed with this uh this short, compact, but loaded message from Daniel Schuler on how his coaching habits can make a difference for you as a grandparent and also your grandchildren.
- 21:56SPEAKER_00: So don't forget to join us next week for another It's Grand Life.
- 22:00SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
- 22:02SPEAKER_00: Thank you for joining us today for It's a Grand Life.
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