Hi, I'm Nicholeen Peck, and I teach parenting and good communication as far as how to build strong
family relationships all over the world. And in this video series, I am going to be
talking about gentle parenting that actually stops bad behaviors. This is the first part in
a six part series. And we are going to be talking about how tone of voice impacts children.
So in this video, we're going to be talking a little bit about gentle parenting. We're also
going to talk about self government parenting, because those two things actually relate to
each other. And then we're going to talk about the tone of voice and how to improve our tone of voice
so that we can improve our parenting. So what is gentle parenting? Gentle parenting
is a type of parenting that focuses on empathy, understanding, bonding,
and creating a very safe feeling environment for the child. But there are some people that strive
to have that type of an environment or that type of a tone in their home, where it feels
safe and respectful, and understanding yet the child walks all over them.
The child becomes a dictator, a tyrant, the parents trying everything to be as kind as
possible and in the end, it doesn't work to help the child be as loving and kind as possible.
Now, of course, example is the best teacher. So hopefully, ultimately, even those parents
who are struggling at that time will find in the end that their child learned something.
But many times children are entitled just because so many things have to be done for
them. And when a parent does not hold them accountable for their actions, but instead,
to smooth everything over nicely, that's when the child can end up causing some problems and not
feeling grateful for the parent or even sometimes mistreating the parent or the family. This type
of person can actually hijack an entire tone or environment for a whole family. So it is important
as we talk about gentle parenting that we say to ourselves, how can we have gentle parenting?
How can we have that respectful environment, but not lose all of the structure at the same time?
Well, that's where self government training comes in. So the business that I had is called Teaching
Self Government. Years ago, I did therapeutic treatment care for troubled teens, I couldn't
touch them, I was told not to get angry with them. And so I had to focus on skill development,
a certain type of tone, and I had to create skills for how to improve that tone, and then
a certain type of a structure or a way that we would communicate so that everything felt safe
and understanding. This type of parenting training liberated me and in no time, I was asked to be on
a television program called The World's Strictest Parents that the BBC filmed of our family in 2009.
They brought to troubled teens to stay in our home for eight days and after two days of tantrums
and me being calm, understanding yet firm and teaching them the skills that they would need,
the hearts of those teens were completely changed. So what did I teach them? I taught them
self government. I taught them the skills that they would need for success and we're going
to be talking about some of those skills in this six part series. But this time, I want to focus on
what the definition of self government is, and on the tone elements that are needed to create
a really great self governing environment so that the heart of the child can change
because self government is all about having a change of heart, not just a change of behavior.
So what is self government? Self government is being able to determine the cause and effect of
any given situation and possessing a knowledge of your own behaviors so that you can control them.
That means that you examine what type of a person you ought to become and then you make plans to
become that type of person. In self government language, we call that creating a vision.
A family vision is what we create for the entire group so that everyone invests their heart and
mind into who you're becoming as a family unit. Then after we have that family vision established,
then we start developing the skills that we need to establish the proper tone
and structure to solve problems and to unify as a family on a regular basis. So let's talk about
that tone now. All of the stuff that I'm talking about in this series is actually in this book
called Parenting A House United, and I'm going to give you this book for free in this training,
so stay with me to the end, and you'll figure out how to get this book for free. Alright, so
let's talk about tone. There are certain tone elements that we might have already thought
of related to our family environment. Maybe we want it to feel loving, right? Of course,
we want our home to feel like we love each other but sometimes we get selfish, sometimes
our emotions get in the way, we start to take other people's behaviors personally and this
can make us fall out of love with each other, or at the very least make it so that our environment
does not feel as loving. In order to truly do gentle parenting, you do need to have that
feeling of love with you all the time, so that you understand even when someone else is going
completely out of control. Now, this takes a lot of self government on the part of the parent.
In fact, I have to say that I probably spend more time trying to coach parents in how to be calm
when someone else isn't, how to stay calm and help someone else get calm without losing your calmness
at the same time more than I teach anything else. Calmness is a key hallmark of a tone of a gentle
parenting environment and that calmness comes when you can maintain the feeling of love
the whole time. Now, when I took in troubled teens into my home for all of those years,
there were behaviors that were pretty extreme. Sometimes even violent, sometimes even personally
attacking but I had to decide those are just behaviors, those are not the person. They may have
formed those behaviors because of training from someone else or because of a bad habit. I need to
not take those behaviors personally, I need to say that's just the behavior. That's not the person,
I love the person that is in there. There is goodness in there, I had to trust that. This brings
me to another tone element, which is trust, you have to trust that that person does have goodness
in there. If we spend our time villainizing our children just because they do choose bad choices
sometimes or they can make bad mistakes, then we can actually distance our heart from them,
which means then that we will not feel as much love toward them. So we have to trust that there
is goodness in there that we can find. Now the opposite of trust is force. So nothing that we
do in the teaching self government parenting program involves force. It all involves choice.
And we trust that when someone sees the logic of a situation, and they feel the bond and the
attachment that comes with the love that we have for them, then that person will actually choose
to make a proper change. Now, this does not mean that there aren't consequences though. So don't
get me wrong there. A person is not harmed by consequences. In fact, a person cannot learn
cause and effect as it relates to them governing themselves without acknowledging consequences,
whether they happen to be natural consequences or artificial consequences. And just so that,
you know, artificial consequences can actually be more merciful than natural consequences sometimes.
Think of a child that runs in the road, what would be the natural consequence of that behavior,
they can get hit by a car, that's not a very good consequence to let them accept,
so the artificial consequence of after you run in the road, and mom says get out of the road,
we're going to talk about it and you're going to get the opportunity to do a correction,
and maybe earn an extra chore to teach you cause and effect for not running in the road,
that is much more merciful. The child is done with it quickly. They have a conversation that involves
learning. And they got to learn cause and effect. How perfect is that?
So there are a lot of things that we teach in the teaching self government program that really point
back toward choosing and trusting that the child can learn to make those right choices with the
right teaching. There are so many tone elements that I could discuss. I could discuss unity, and
what it means to really have unity in our family. We have family meetings on a regular basis,
we have scheduled family activities that we all hold as a high priority. We have standards that we
share in common, we have a family standard. This is all talked about in this free book that I'm going
to give you so don't worry, you can learn about all of these things. But because we understand
the same skills, we use some of the same words to solve our problems, we discuss openly with
each other in meetings, we talk about how we feel with each other and seek truly for understanding
then we have a feeling or a tone of unity in our home. In fact, as I've seen my children now grow
and get married, I have noticed that they want to create environments where there is also this
feeling of unity and it's really empowering for me to see that they want to duplicate
something that they had as a child, and they are now teaching their spouses
how to use the skills of self government that they learned when they were just small children.
The majority of the skills revolve around the tone element calmness. When a person is calm,
that means that they can stay in front brain, when something is happening around them, they can
look at the pieces of the situation, and they can figure out what to do next, that is true calmness.
When a person chooses to stay calm, it's because they've got the right dialogue going on on the
inside. Every time an emotion flies at us or we get a feeling, we get the opportunity to think
something and we can choose a thought that will self sabotage, that will create
distance in our relationships, maybe even hostility and communication or
we can think of thought that empowers, the gives ourselves an instruction of something that we can
do, a thought that will lead us to calmness and security. And that's what the tone of calmness
is all about. A person knowing what goes on inside, choosing ahead of time, what to think
in those moments when they might be thrown off course and then feeling that empowerment that
comes with choosing calmness and clear thinking in some of those most difficult moments. Now, this
doesn't mean that a person couldn't have a moment where they maybe aren't calm for a second. I mean,
we're human after all, right? We can try and try. But sometimes we still falter. And we need to
understand those moments. I think some people on the gentle parenting paradigm think that no matter
what dumps out of a person, it's all good. And it should all be taken into account and hashed out.
And well, I think that feelings need to be talked about, emotions need to be talked about and
understood. I do not think that we should elevate them in such a degree that those emotions and
those feelings can actually take over the person's ability to make better decisions for themselves,
and to use skills that can actually help them. If you really want to be the advocate and show
empathy for your child, then it's important that you teach them the skills that they need for
self government and that's what we're going to be talking about in our very next video.
So be sure to join me for tomorrow's class where we talk about the skills of the structure
that you need in order to have a truly gentle parenting environment where everyone can learn
self government. And don't forget the free book I talked to you about how I was going to tell you
there's this free book that's coming right? Well, in the description below this video,
there is a link to the free book. I will give it to you completely free. This is my main book. I
mean, I've written 11. But this is the one that holds them all together. This best selling book
has been out since 2009 and I hope it floods the world. I hope that everybody can learn
that it is possible to be gentle in your parenting, to unify, to feel closer to a child
during and after a correction than you even did before. It's possible and I talk about how to do
it in here and I wanted to give it to you for free. So in the description below this video,
click the link to the free book. You'll have to pay a little bit for shipping so that we can get
it to you, I can eat the cost of the book, but I can't eat the cost of everything for everybody. So
the shipping charge will help us get it to you and it's not that much. So go ahead and click on the
link now and you can get this book for free.