Based on the Mentors & More training manual, the foundation for all mentors, in any role.
Parenting Is Leadership
Mentoring is leadership, and leadership is doing your best to influence someone to be both willing and capable of completing the tasks within a mission of accomplishing a goal.
What does that mean in parenting life? Guiding, role-modeling, teaching, training, and disciplining your child to complete the tasks: the dishes, cleaning their room, the bathroom, chopping wood, homework, taking the dog for a walk, playing peacefully with siblings, exercising, building something, reading. You know the deal.
And as you also know, kids don’t like being told no: no, you can’t have that; no, you’re not going; and no, it’s time to stop doing the thing you’d rather keep doing, like, oh, I don’t know, screen engagement. This is cause for war. And kids will fight back with passivity: ignoring, avoiding, being lazy or apathetic. With aggression: arguing, name-calling (yes, name-calling), threats, hitting, throwing things. Or with passive-aggressive behaviors: lying, splitting parents against one another, manipulating their way out of something or into something they want, being sneaky.
I’ve worked with tens of thousands of families in my career, from the super-affluent to the lowest socioeconomic status, and I’ve seen a higher volume of this behavior than you would think, in nearly every home. It’s prominent and prevalent. And guess what: a lot of the time, the kids are being role-modeled, and therefore programmed, to operate this way when they don’t get what they want or need.
The Missing Superpower: Assertion
You know what’s missing? Yep: assertion. The superpower for all humans. Thinking, communicating, and acting in a present, in-the-moment, activated, caring, loving, optimistic, faithful, courageous, stable, strong, honest, direct, open, and clear manner.
Sounds amazing, right? Well, it is the key to a good-quality, fulfilling life of intent and purpose, for children, for parents, for anyone.
To be calm is to be assertive, and to be assertive is to be calm. It’s the only viable option. It requires effort and sacrifice at times, but it is the only way to keep things as positive as possible no matter what your child does or doesn’t do, says or doesn’t say. You cannot truly control them or their decision-making, but you can have a heavy influence and impact if they see the value of being assertive rather than resorting to some form of aggression. Because nearly everyone and everything else around them is showing them how to be passive, aggressive, or passive-aggressive when they don’t get their way, or to get their way.
I know, I know. So many parents I’ve observed have told me their kids don’t listen until they yell, threaten, restrict, or take away. But all that does is hand kids the justification to rationalize and deny their own responsibility to be calm and assertive: to trust their strength to navigate life at their best through assertion.
And here’s the thing: every poor decision made through an aggressive form of thought, behavior, or communication results in discomfort: disappointment, disapproval, discouragement, fear, stress, guilt, shame, anger, resentment, and grief. And if that discomfort doesn’t get assertively processed, guess what? It stays stacked in their souls, compounding like bank interest, in a negative-deficit kind of way. Not good. Not good at all.
Where You Can Start Today
So what can you do today? Start by recognizing how your kids tend to react, and notice how that feels for you, and how you then tend to react. That alone is a lot of solid data. Then list out or describe how you tend to approach them: What is your intent? What is the content? What is your approach? And is any of it aggression-based, or is it assertive?
Awareness and ownership are good starting points for change. From there, describe as best you can what calm-assertive thinking actually is, then the behaviors, then the communication, and make it a point to role-model, teach, and train both yourself and your kids. Change the culture of your home environment one assertive action at a time.
How? Well, you have to apologize for the previous aggression-based actions and start fresh, knowing you will mess up, and that’s okay. Because now you know the standard.
Calm-Assertion Is Not Being Soft
A lot of parents misunderstand calmness. They think if they stay calm, they’re letting their child get away with something. They think calm means passive, or weak, or overly gentle.
That is not what I mean.
Calm-assertion is the ability to hold firm with real strength while staying emotionally regulated. It is not yelling. It is not pleading. It is not negotiating out of fear or trying to “win” the argument.
It is the parent communicating, through their words and their presence:
- “I am not afraid of your reaction.”
- “I am not going to attack you.”
- “I am not changing this boundary because you dislike it.”
- “I can hold my ground without losing myself.”
That is strength.
In the Effective Mindset Training System I developed over decades of work with families and organizations, calm-assertion is the ideal state for communication and decision-making. The goal is not to become emotionless. The goal is to respond with composure instead of aggression while staying clear, direct, and grounded.
Parents often tell me, “James, I try to stay calm, but my kid knows exactly how to push my buttons.”
Of course they do. They’ve been studying you their whole life. That doesn’t make them bad. It makes them human. Kids are working out power, identity, and independence, and they sometimes do that in immature, disrespectful ways. Your job is not to be shocked by that. Your job is to lead through it.
Why Children Try to Pull Parents Out of Position
Children, especially teenagers, are in a season of testing. They test rules, tone, independence, and whether your “no” really means no. That testing is not always pleasant, but it is part of development.
The problem is that many parents take the test personally.
A teenager says, “You’re so unfair,” and the parent hears, “You’re a bad parent.” A teenager says, “I hate this house,” and the parent hears, “Everything I’ve sacrificed means nothing.” A teenager says, “Everyone else gets to,” and the parent feels cornered, judged, and alone.
That is where parents lose their footing.
Once you start defending your worth instead of leading the situation, the child has pulled you into the wrong conversation. Now you’re arguing about whether you’re a good parent, whether they appreciate you, whether they respect you enough.
Those may be real issues, but they are usually not the issue of the moment.
The issue of the moment may be:
- The phone is done for the night.
- The tone is unacceptable.
- The homework needs to get done.
- The curfew stands.
- The consequence is not changing.
Calm-assertion keeps you on the actual issue.
What Calm-Assertion Sounds Like in Real Life
Calm-assertion does not require a speech. In fact, the more charged the child is, the fewer words you should use. Long lectures give kids more material to argue with.
Here are some examples:
- When they argue: “I hear that you disagree. The answer is still no.”
- When they raise their voice: “I’ll talk with you when your voice is respectful.”
- When they insult you: “You’re allowed to be upset. You’re not allowed to speak to me that way.”
- When they keep pushing: “I’ve already answered. I’m not going to keep debating this.”
- When they storm off: “Take some time. We’ll come back to this when you’re ready.”
- When they call you unfair: “You may see it that way. My decision is based on what I believe is best.”
Notice what is missing. No sarcasm. No threats you don’t intend to follow through on. No emotional chasing. No desperate need to make them agree with you.
Calm-assertion is not about getting your child to like the boundary in the moment. Many times, they won’t. That’s okay. A child can dislike a boundary and still need it.
The Parent Has to Practice First
I’ll be direct: you cannot teach emotional regulation while refusing to practice it yourself.
That doesn’t mean you’ll do it perfectly. No parent does.
But if your child’s disrespect automatically turns you into a louder, harsher, more reactive version of yourself, the first work is yours. Not because their behavior is acceptable. Because the adult has to lead the emotional pattern.
Here is a practical place to start:
- Pause before responding. Even three seconds can keep you from reacting.
- Lower your volume. Do not compete with their intensity.
- Name the boundary once. Be clear and brief.
- Refuse the debate loop. Repeating yourself ten times usually weakens you.
- Follow through calmly. A consequence delivered with composure lands harder than one delivered in anger.
- Repair when needed. If you blow it, own it. “I got too heated. I’m sorry for my tone. The boundary still stands.”
That last part matters. Apologizing for your delivery does not mean surrendering the standard. A strong parent can say, “I handled that poorly” and still say, “The rule remains.”
This Is Learnable
Some parents tell me they are just “not calm people.” I don’t accept that as the final answer.
Calm-assertion is a skill. Skills are built through awareness, repetition, failure, correction, and practice. You may have grown up in a home where people yelled, avoided, exploded, or shut down entirely. You may be trying to parent without ever having seen calm authority modeled well.
That makes this harder. It does not make it impossible.
Start with one moment this week. Not every issue, not the whole relationship, just one moment where you would normally back down or escalate.
Pause. Breathe. Say less. Stay respectful. Hold the line.
It may feel awkward at first. But every time you practice calm-assertion, you are teaching your child something they genuinely need to learn: that strength does not have to be aggressive, and calm does not have to be weak.
That lesson will stay with them long after the argument is over.
If you’d like more information or help with any of this, reach out; this is exactly the work we do at Mentors & More.