Photo courtesy of Brett Martin.
Celebrate Calm
By shifting from kids’ camps to large workshops, Kirk Martin realized he could share his teaching skills with a greater number of parents in need.
Celebrate Calm
Parenting Workshop Jan. 9, 7-9 p.m.
Family Workshop Jan. 10, 9:30-11:30 a.m.
Oak Mountain Presbyterian Church
5080 Cahaba Valley Trace
Free admission
What do you do if your child looks at you and drops the “F-bomb” during a fight?
You might yell, get angry and ground them, or you can turn it into a learning opportunity that brings you closer to your child.
Although it may sound impossible, Kirk Martin’s workshop, Celebrate Calm, teaches the skills necessary to do just that, and the free workshop is coming to the U.S. 280 corridor Oct. 13 at Oak Mountain Presbyterian Church.
When Martin's workshop had to be cancelled in October because of severe weather conditions, Oak Mountain Presbyterian knew they needed to reschedule. Now the event will feature a parenting workshop Jan. 9 from 7-9 p.m. and a family workshop Jan. 10 from 9:30-11:30 a.m.
“We really show people how to take those really nasty moments and turn them into teaching opportunities,” Martin said. “Ways to actually draw closer to their kids rather than letting those nasty moments destroy their relationships.”
The key thing that makes Celebrate Calm different from other programs is that it focuses on parents controlling their own anxieties, which in turn helps diffuse their kid’s anxieties as well. Not to mention, the skills are taught by the father-son Martin duo.
Martin said parents don’t always listen to their kids, and the same goes for kids about their parents. But with Celebrate Calm, parents hear a firsthand perspective from Casey, Martin’s son.
“It’s very real-life,” Martin said. “We are a real dad and a son, and the truth is the stuff that we teach, the principles and the strategies, work.”
That’s why the children’s ministry director of Oak Mountain Presbyterian, Angie Hoffman, jumped at the chance to host the workshop for the surrounding community. She said it is a much-needed opportunity for parents and children to hear they are on the same team.
The church’s children’s ministry assistant, Tara McCallister, has been to the workshop before, and she said the seminar is fresh and exciteing. Best of all it gives you hope.
“It’s not for parents with bad kids,” McCallister said. “This is for parents — even ones thinking about having children. It just provides you with information to build your skill set of a parent.”
At the last workshop, she said she found the information about diffusing sibling squabbles the most beneficial to her.
“There are a couple things where he’ll ask you, ‘If you have experienced this, raise your hand,’” McCallister said. “Almost every hand in the room goes up, and you go ‘I’m not alone.’ You feel like you are with people who understand you.”
That’s because the Celebrate Calm workshop started as a personal change Martin said he needed to make in his life. He said that as a father, he was awful in his discipline approach of yelling, screaming and demanding things.
Martin said he started to realize that doing those things didn’t work, and that it was hurting his relationships with his kids, especially Casey.
“I saw that I was losing him — that he didn’t trust me anymore because I was always getting upset with him,” Martin said.
He decided if he came home and found something positive Casey had done that day, Casey responded in a completely different way. This led him to the conclusion that if he could learn to control his own reaction, it produced a similar reaction in his kids.
“There is only one person in life that I can control, and that is myself,” Martin said. “Trying to control other people does not work, and people don’t like that.”
Martin started sharing the calm approach by inviting people to their home for camps. Kids from all over the country would attend, and Martin and Casey helped develop their social skills and taught them emotional control. The workshops started about 10 years ago, when Martin realized he could reach 150 to 300 people at one time as opposed to 10 kids at a time.
It only grew from there.
“We have worked with the hardest and most defiant kids, and with the most wound-up parents,” Martin said. “We know what really works. People like that we live in real life rather than just telling them raw principles.”
