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What does true calmness look like in the middle of a parenting storm? How can fathers rewrite the patterns they inherited and still lead with strength? What happens when parenting becomes less about control and more about connection?
In this podcast episode, Joe Sanok discusses calm parenting and masculinity today with Kirk and Casey Martin.
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Meet Kirk & Casey Martin
Kirk and Casey Martin are the father-and-son team behind Celebrate Calm, a movement helping parents of strong-willed kids build connection instead of control. Through their workshops, podcast, and coaching, they teach families how to replace yelling and power struggles with calm leadership, responsibility, and respect. Kirk draws on his own journey of unlearning harsh parenting patterns, while Casey brings the perspective of a son who witnessed—and lived—the transformation firsthand. Together, they model how strength and calm can coexist in modern fatherhood.
Visit Celebrate Calm, listen to their podcast and connect on Facebook.
In This Podcast
- Model taking responsibility for your kids
- How to parent a strong-willed child
- A son’s lesson from watching his father’s journey
- What calmness can look like
- Kirk and Casey’s advice to private practitioners
Model taking responsibility for your kids
Kirk and Casey, the father-and-son duo, have come together to educate and share their lessons with other families on how to parent kids with real love and respect.
One of the big lessons that Kirk shares is how he personally relearned what it means to be a “good” parent, changing and reshaping what he was taught by his father when he became one himself to Casey.
I thought, “Oh, I’ll just do what my dad did with me, I’ll shut that down”, and the strong-willed kids just fight twice as hard, and so what I learned was that it wasn’t about changing Casey’s behavior, it was learning how to control my own. That’s what ultimately changed our relationship … There’s one person in life that I can control, and that’s myself, and it’s also the quickest way to change your child’s behavior. (Kirk Martin)
Kirk shares how the real lesson came from learning how to regulate and take responsibility for his own actions, words, and behaviors, and that his modeling these skills is what strengthened his relationship with Casey, his son.
Parenting, for me, became more about coming face-to-face with my own immaturity and breaking some of those generational patterns. So hopefully, when Casey becomes a dad, he’s not as much of a jerk as I was. (Kirk Martin)
How to parent a strong-willed child
As Kirk explains, one of the toughest things about parenting a strong-willed kid is that they don’t care about consequences.
They don’t care about losing stuff; they care about losing their autonomy and their agency. (Kirk Martin)
The hardcore father “my-way-or-the-highway” parenting doesn’t work well for strong-willed kids, and neither does the extreme opposite: the motherly, kindly spoken, gentle words.
Neither of these approaches works well with kids who care more about holding onto their autonomy than they do suffering the consequence of a broken rule.
Where we resonate a lot with men is, “It’s a podcast by a guy with his son, and we can model.” I can be the calm, authoritative leader. I can be tough, but I can also be patient and understanding … The shift we try to get is right in the middle, between the two extremes. (Kirk Martin)
A son’s lesson from watching his father’s journey
A big lesson that Casey has learned from Kirk is humility.
Witnessing his father grapple with his identity and approach to the world also gave Casey the chance to realize that a person can always improve and make meaningful changes.
The biggest thing, honestly, is humility. To be eight or ten years old and watch your dad go from a guy who yells and barks out consequences all the time to a dad who steps back, tries to understand your behavior, and gives you tools to work through things, rather than barking out consequences, was huge. (Casey Martin)
Casey shares that learning from his dad’s process was also a defining aspect that changed their relationship for the better.
What calmness can look like
Kirk stresses the importance of remembering that we only have control over ourselves, that we cannot control how we feel, but that we can control how we react to that feeling, and what triggered it.
I am still very intense, but I have learned how to channel that … You can feel frustrated, angry, or anxious about your child’s behavior, but you just don’t want to react out of that, because it sabotages every interaction. (Kirk Martin)
For example, Kirk likens trying to be a calmer and more self-aware parent by treating your kids as colleagues. If your sales department is losing clients, you don’t yell and belittle and threaten your colleagues; you try to find out what the problem is.
Or, Kirk uses another example of being an ER doctor and treating a patient who got shot. They don’t yell at the patient for bleeding everywhere; they figure out what happened and try to help the patient get better.
That’s what we do to our kids all the time, like “What were you thinking?!” Instead, the ER doctor slows their world down inside, takes the vitals, stabilizes the patient, and then problem-solves and leads their team. (Kirk Martin)
Calmness in a parent is not blaming the child for the parent’s emotional response. Kids and kids, and they will piss you off at times. A parent, therefore, must be able to handle tough emotions without blaming the child for simply being a child.
Everyone learns together, but the parent is the one who leads. That is where the accountability has to come in.
If I had one thing I could change in our country or society, it would be the dads who probably didn’t have good dads who have dug in and [said], “Well, it’s the kid’s fault.” If they would just change themselves, they would radically change their families. (Kirk Martin)
Kirk and Casey’s advice to private practitioners
Kirk: Trust your instincts, and don’t overthink your answers to things. Trust what you know, and share that, because it’s that authenticity that attracts people to you.
Casey: Acknowledge what your clients are going through and validate them without labelling them, especially men who are coming from a critical background.
Sponsors Mentioned in this Episode:
Visit afinerframework.org/joesanok today to learn more.
Useful links mentioned in this episode:
- Check out our Practice Academy!
- Visit Celebrate Calm, listen to their podcast and connect on Facebook.
- Sign Up to the Group Practice Boss Conference!
Check out these additional resources:
Moving Beyond Outrage with Dr. William J. Brady | PoP 1282
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Meet Joe Sanok
Joe Sanok helps counselors to create thriving practices that are the envy of other counselors. He has helped counselors to grow their businesses by 50-500% and is proud of all the private practice owners who are growing their income, influence, and impact on the world. Click here to explore consulting with Joe.
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