Hi, I'm Nicholeen Peck and I teach parenting all over
the world through the lens of the principle self-government,
and in this video we're talking about how to discipline your child for bad behavior.
In this video we're going to talk a little bit about what parents are dealing with,
bad behavior wise, what doesn't work, and then how to discipline your children with calmness the
self-government way. Nobody likes bad behavior. In fact, I think every parent has this delusion,
this hope that their child will be that perfect one that doesn't ever do anything bad, but alast,
that's not part of being a child. In fact, don't ever expect to create a perfect child because it's
not possible. The only thing that we can hope for is a joyful adult who knows what their mission in
life is and can't wait to fight for it and has solid relationships with God and family
and understands principles, the things that are important, but during childhood, they're going
to learn and grow along the way, and there are a lot of things that people are dealing with.
So what are some of these bad behaviors that we find ourselves trying to navigate through? Well,
there's things like complaining, back, talking, being oppositional, crying, whining or not talking
to parents or maybe being lazy, not doing what they're asked to do, being unkind to siblings or
friends, sometimes even getting violent. These are all the types of things that parents are trying to
work through on a daily basis. And while people say there's no exact Bible for parenting because
all children are different, and that is true, there are some things that our society is missing,
and that's because there are mixed messages about what makes good parenting out there. In fact,
some people are afraid of the whole idea of disciplining their children. I don't love to
think in terms of discipline. I love to think in terms of teaching. Every parent should recognize
that their top role in the child's life is to be the child's teacher. Every parent is the primary
teacher of their child, and so they need to make sure they're doing teaching well. When
does teaching happen? It happens before a behavior is initiated, and it also happens afterward. After
a behavior occurs, that's the feedback time. But the feedback time when corrections happen
or maybe praise happen, is also a teaching time. All corrections should really just be moments that
we teach our children. Now, that doesn't mean that they don't accept consequences, however,
because children do need to learn, cause and effect if they are going to learn self mastery
and to take ownership over their own behaviors. So what we're going to do is we're going to talk
about what doesn't go well for people. Then we're going to discuss self-government and how you can
calmly discipline, correct or teach your child in a way that will touch at the heart instead
of just addressing the emotion associated with all of the behavior. So what should we not do
when it comes to disciplining? The number one, don't do it is get emotional yourself. I know
that that is probably the hardest thing to say to a parent who's frustrated with behavioral
problems that their child might be having. You can't be emotional. You can't take it personal,
don't do it. So what oftentimes happens is parents will go, ugh, not again. And they get a feeling of
frustration and then they start thinking, I have to stop this. I have to stop this. And
as soon as you go into that mode, you are in a controlling mode and you will start initiating a
power struggle with your children. So we don't want a power struggle with the children. This
happens a lot. Sometimes parents who are even trying to negotiate with their children are
power struggling. So let's not negotiate because that's a power struggle. Let's not get angry
or frustrated because that will lead to a power struggle. Let's not feel like the passive victim
and just retreat and not handle it because that's another type of a power struggle. We definitely
do not want to be power struggling with our children at all. That is the no-no. We also
don't want to make the mistake of not handling the situation. If a child is going to learn to
take responsibility of their own behavior, their own thought processes, then that child needs the
opportunity to have a teaching moment or some feedback after they've taken an action. So what we
want to do is we want to make sure that teaching occurs. If you just leave it alone, ignore it,
you're actually hurting your child in the end. So we're going to talk about self-government and what
to do to discipline bad behavior in children, but first, are you liking what you're learning so far?
If so, do you see that button that says subscribe? Well click it because when you subscribe to this
channel, you'll learn more and more all the time because new videos are coming out every day. So
let's talk about self-government. What does that term actually mean? It's a principle of freedom
actually, and we all want to have freedom in our families. Our children want freedom,
and we want freedom too. And so we have to abide by principle to find freedom. You can't ever just
control freedom. You can't just take it and then actually experience real freedom. Freedom has to
come through principle. So what is the principle of self-government? Self-government is being able
to determine the cause and effect of any given situation and possessing your knowledge of your
own behavior so that you can control them. So what that means is that you see what type of a person
ought I to be? Okay, what direction do I see myself heading in order to get the best results?
So what effects do I want for my actions and my life and my connections with other people? Okay,
so what's my plan for going in that direction? Then I examine myself and say, how am I doing
along this journey? Or what do I know one of my weaknesses is? Maybe I have a weakness of getting
too emotional. Well, how am I going to prepare for that then so that in the moment I remember not to
go into my emotional part of my brain, but to go to my logical part of my brain instead. I've got
to have a plan. Well, that's what I teach people. I teach people how to create plans so that they
can be self-governed so that they can actually get the outcomes that they want to have and here's
the secret of self-government too. Really, when a person is self-governing, what happens to them
is they have a change of heart. That means when parents are self-governing, their hearts shift,
soften, turn toward their children and have a change. And when a child has a change of heart,
when their self-governing, their hearts soften and turn toward their parents, they have a shift not
just in behavior, but they have a heart shift too. That's what this whole channel is about,
is how to help people not just have a change of behavior, but have a change of heart too. So I've
written a lot of books. 11 books, 11 books, all about helping a person learn self-government.
What I would like to tell you right now are some of the highlighted things in these books that you
can use when you are teaching, correcting or disciplining your child. So earlier I talked
about the role of parents as teacher. I actually have a whole book all about roles in the family,
and I'm not talking about who makes dinner or who goes to work. Those are just responsibilities that
anybody can do. I'm talking about who you really are to each other in your hearts. This is a great
story to read together with your family. So you might want to look up "Roles: The Secret to Family,
Business and Social Success" by Nicholeen Peck. So if you understand your role as teacher,
then we can start talking about what needs to be taught to the children. So one thing I
did as a treatment foster parent that got the attention of the world is I started teaching
my foster children and my children four basic skills for success. And people were like, whoa,
that's so simple. It's actually so common sense. How come people don't know this? And they learned
this when the BBC made a documentary of our family back in 2009 called, here's a scary title for you,
The World's Strictest Parents. What they saw was these children get upset, angry need, lots of
disciplining, but it was all done with calmness. And there were certain words that we kept saying
to each other like, Hey, oh, that's a "no" answer, or right now you're not accepting a "no" answer.
People probably didn't fully understand what it was, and they started begging for books. So first
I wrote this book called Parenting A House United, which goes into the nuts and bolts of the skills
that parents need to teach their children and that they need to know for themselves to correct
negative behaviors. In fact, this piece right here is kind of the central piece to my teaching,
but I also created these books. These four children's books each teach one of the four
basic skills which are following instructions, accepting "no" answers and criticism, accepting
consequences and disagreeing appropriately. When a child proactively learns these four basic skills
that actually takes care of 99% of the behavioral problems. This doesn't mean that they will always
remember to accept a "no" answer, but when they've got the skill, now you can pinpoint exactly what
needs to be corrected and the people don't have to get emotional or power struggle again. So how
do we use all of these pieces? There are four basic skills for children, like I mentioned,
there are three meetings that parents are going to want to have on a regular basis in their family so
that they can prepare the family to be successful when it's time to correct or discipline.
And then there are five teaching styles that parents can learn. All of this is taught in
my TSG parenting course or in those 11 books. But there are other tone elements too, like calmness
that you want to really make sure that you have in place in the home and in your teaching so that
that discipline can hit the heart instead of just trying to control or manipulate the other person
through a power struggle. There is a process that we go through to discipline a child. It starts
with pre-teaching. So first, you pre-teach the four basic skills. I'm going to tell you just one
of those skills right now. Accepting a "no" answer is the shortest skill and probably the second one,
you should teach your children. The steps to accepting a no answer are you look at the person,
keep a calm face, voice and body say, okay, or ask to disagree appropriately, and then you drop
the subject. That means you don't think about it or talk about it anymore. Think of how that
will handle the whining, the pouting, the anger, calm, face, voice and body. What does that mean?
And drop the subject. Super powerful things. The children learn, they can accept "no" answers. They
learn those boundary lines are "no" answers. They learn that they can accept disappointment because
disappointments are "no" answers. They learn how to use the skill in so many different areas of
their life as the parents continually do the pre-teaching and then go to the feedback step.
So after a person is given a "no" answer and they don't accept the "no" answer, then the feedback
step that a parent goes to is a correction. So there are seven steps that I teach for how to do
a proper correction. It starts with a description. When you describe what happened without using any
emotional attachment to that description, then the person will start to engage the prefrontal
cortex instead of the amygdala or middle emotional part of the brain. So what you want to do is you
want to say, just now, I gave you a no answer and you didn't keep a calm face, voice and body,
which is one of the steps. You also kept talking back to me afterward, which means you probably
wanting to use that other skill called disagreeing appropriately, but you didn't use it and that
means you didn't drop the subject. What you should have done was, so then we go into another
description of what they should have done. We give a rationale, tell them there are consequences and
there are certain consequences that work better than others. I'll tell you what, right now people
are using manipulative consequences, things to just try to get their child to feel bad,
and that is not necessarily what makes a good consequence. I don't have time to go into all
of that on this video, but be sure to check out for more information about what makes great
consequences. But then we also have a practice session after they get the opportunity to accept
their consequence, and by the way, they have to do the six steps to accepting a consequence
or they will not get the opportunity to learn self-government. So this means they have to know that skill too. Now,
some parents might be saying, well, great lene, but what if my child is so oppositional that they
literally are not going to accept a consequence, they're not going to care. They're going to
throw up their arms and say whatever. Well, we have something prepared for that too. And that
particular skill is an intensive teaching skill that I teach called the Rule of three for older
children. For younger children, we use a trigger spot called the calm down spot and then go to
an additional correction. So there is a chart on my website teachingselfgovernment.com that
actually shows you the process you go through for this type of correction and when you would need
to go to that intensive teaching. However, you're probably not going to understand all the steps to
those skills on the chart unless you do a little learning first. So I highly recommend going to
my next video, which is the not so known secret for parenting success that is going to help you
learn more of the nuts and bolts that's in that book, Parenting A House United, and in my course,
it won't teach you all of it, but it might help you get started and then you can learn more from
there. So go to the not so known secret for parenting success now. I'll see you there.