Hi, I'm Nicholeen Peck and I teach all about parenting, good communication and how
to improve your family relationships all over the world through the lens of self-government
and in this video I'm going to be talking about how to parent with different parenting styles.
Probably one of the most common questions that I get asked is how do I even do good parenting
when my husband and I don't agree or my spouse is not on the same page with the parenting with
me? How do we make those two worlds come together and be on the same page with our parenting? Well
in this video I'm going to be talking about those different types of parenting and some true stories
for my life with my husband and then also how to come together so that you both can be on the
same page with your parenting or at least be able to work together in the very best ways. Without a
doubt, the ideal for parents is that they parent the same way, that they're on the same page
which is the common term that people usually say to me when they're asking about this question. So
when say mother is very authoritarian, she gets angry a lot and dad's a little bit more like the
fun guy and like let's just have fun and he's more, maybe passive the kids kind of walk all over him
you know that kind of thing, how do a husband and wife maintain any amount of order at home? It's
going to be a battleground all the time if that's the case and I want you to know that is the most
common scenario. One parent who is authoritarian and they are heavy-handed and then another parent
who's like let's just be friends and let's just be nice and nicey and we don't need to do that.
Now, the one person can take that friend approach because the other person's being heavy so they
don't have any responsibility there. They can just look at the heavy and say you're extreme
like let's just be nice, the kids are nice to me. Yeah, they're running to you for shelter because
this other person is being a bully and but they feel like they have to to maintain some sort
of order or structure or whatever it is so but then the more authoritarian parent is looking
at that other parent saying okay, you are enabling bad behavior. You are teaching them not to respect
parental authority, you are actually making things bad for our child. Could you please not do that?
And so they feel like that they have to be even more heavy-handed in order to counter this
amoral upbringing that they are pretty sure that's happening on the other side of things because
that line between parental authority is becoming more and more blurred. So, passive or permissive
parenting versus authoritarian parenting, this is where people struggle and the actual
answer to the problem lies in the middle. So, the best type of parenting, the type that doesn't have
any emotional manipulation is actually assertive parenting, I call it traditional strict parenting.
Some people call it authoritative parenting. So this is a type of parenting that's very deliberate,
it's intentional, it's planned out and if both husband and wife can come together to use
the principles of a traditional strict model of parenting which I've talked about in many videos
on this channel so you can definitely go find more information on all these different styles
of parenting if you're interested in those. But if the husband and wife come together with this
traditional strict parenting, everything changes and the reason why everything changes is because
authoritative parenting isn't about manipulating. Okay so when a person is traditional strict
or very deliberate in their parenting practices, some people say intentional parenting, those types
of parents have made a plan for what they're going to do and it's not just strategy to win arguments.
It's actually a plan that's based upon principle, if they truly are traditional strict
then they have principle. They have based all of their decisions on which means they hold
themselves to it too. This means that honesty then becomes the prevailing tone in the home
and so when you are honest in all of your you know communication with each other, husband
and wife and with the children, everything changes because the war then isn't really
about what you're doing and what they're doing and it's not about taking things personal, it's
about coming to honesty, coming back to principle every single time. But how do you get there?
Like that's a hard thing for people and they're like okay, I get that but she doesn't get that
or he doesn't get that. So, that's when people struggle trying to convince the other person
to come on board with what they know is going to be best. Everybody learns different ways and
some people are stubborn in their learning. They like everything to be their own idea
they're not very open-minded to other ideas and so when that is the case, there is oftentimes a lot of
patience that is required. So this is where I need to tell you a little bit of a story from
my life. Before I tell this story that is a true story about me and my husband, click
that subscribe button. There are great videos on this channel that relate to all of the stuff that
we're talking about, you're not going to want to miss them. Subscribe now and don't forget that
notification bell so that you get notified when new videos come out. My husband and I
started doing treatment foster care when my oldest children were still toddlers and babies.
And so we took in youth that were ages 12 to 18 to do treatment for them. Part of this treatment
required intensive training on how to work with troubled youth and how to help them overcome
a lot of the issues that they were facing. So during this training, my husband and I looked at
each other and went this is really smart. This is really good stuff and by the way, I was so excited
that suddenly we were just like so unified in our parenting. It was amazing because someone was going
to come to our home on a regular basis and watch us do treatment. We were going to be scrutinized in
everything we do. Now many parents could not take that kind of pressure but we wanted to do this for
troubled youth at the time and felt that it was best for our family so we went ahead and did that.
They would come, they would watch it and watch us you know parent the most difficult interactions
and my husband was amazing at it and I was amazing at it and we were so unified and it
was so beautiful and then years went by and we decided that we weren't going to be doing foster
care anymore and we were just going to focus on raising our children. So, we have four children
of our own and at that time my husband said oh good. I'm so glad that we don't need to
use these words anymore and I went what? No honey we have to. I said I'm going to keep using these
skills and these scripts and the things that we're doing that help our children so much
and he said no, we don't need to. Our children are fine and I said there's a reason that they're
fine. They've had some really consistent good parenting and they've learned a lot of skills.
So, you know we're going to keep doing this or at least I'm going to keep doing this and he
said well I'm not. He's like I don't like talking that much and I didn't know that this whole time
doing the foster care, he was doing it for those children, he wasn't doing it for his own family
even though he was maintaining consistency. He hadn't totally bought into communicating that
way just in general. He wasn't doing it for the principle, he was doing it to control the children
where I was doing all of that communication for the principle to change the hearts of the children
that I was working with, not just their behaviors. So, my whole focus was completely different
than his and I had no idea until we hit the end. Now luckily he was following my lead through all
of those years so we had some really incredible outcomes but it wasn't until afterward that I
realized whoa, we are not fully on the same page here. So, he kind of bailed on me when it came to
our parenting practices that we had established and they were good and then I was left going what
do I do? My children are not going to like the way he's behaving because he was starting to
become very authoritarian. He was becoming a bully, kind of fear-based, power struggle,
emotional type of parent and the children were not responding well to it, they weren't following
his instructions, they were kind of you know not wanting him to ever handle a situation with them.
They really felt like he wasn't living according to principle because they saw me living
according to principal and then he wasn't so what was I going to do? Turn my children against their
father, that wouldn't help them and it certainly wouldn't help him make any kind of a change,
it would just lead to more power struggle and it wouldn't help my cause either. So I
thought long and hard about it. What was the principle that I needed to focus on right now
as my husband was doing something different than I was doing. So, I found a couple of principles
and I put my focus there. Number one principle was that people can learn, that is a principle,
learning, education. It truly happens and it happens on somebody's own time. So, he was going to have to
learn on his own time. Another principle was cause and effect. Cause and effect is a great teacher.
So, I was going to have to rely on him learning from cause and effect
which means that I was going to have to practice acceptance of things not always going the right
way when he was having a parenting interaction. So that required a lot of humility for me. I was
going to have to not tell him what to do, not boss him around, not get emotional and not
drive a wedge between him and the children. I was going to have to build him up as the father and
maintain principle myself even though we were going to be doing something differently with
the children. I also was going to need to be very direct so deliberateness is also
a principle. So, I was going to have to talk to my children about what was the difference between
what dad was doing and what I was doing and I was gonna have to say I'm choosing this because...
dad is choosing this for his own reasons. I didn't know all of his reasons so I would
just have to say and you're going to have to work with him possibly a little differently than me. If
you're smart, you will keep doing the same skills with him that you're doing with me even though
he is not teaching you in the same way. So, I had to make sure that the elephant was out of the room,
that they saw that I noticed the differences. That would help them better be able to analyze what is
better and what is not better. This was going to be good for their development even if dad wasn't
all the way there yet. So I did that and and then I always supported dad's interactions and I
said listen, you can't tattletale on dad to me. You have to try to disagree appropriately with him
even if he won't really listen to you because he's being emotional. You have to,
he has to learn that that's the right way and I'm praying for a change of heart.
And so that was it and then I said we all have to respect that everybody's at a different place
and we kept it there even though I maintained the course and helped the children differentiate
between what was true principle and what was not. I also believed in the principle of choice or agency
and knew that at any moment, he could choose to do something differently, that I had a choice
that I was going to choose to do what I thought the best practices were because ultimately I
was held accountable to God for my choices that I would make in rearing my children and I could not
use my husband as an excuse for not doing things the way I knew my children would most benefit from.
So, I made my choice, I allowed him to make his choice and then with all of the parenting,
I was allowing the children to make choices and showing them the cause and effect of each of
those choices so that they could learn the very best. Those were the principles that I focused on
and they paid off. Let me explain. So, I was praying all the time for the change of heart
in my husband, that he would see that principle was the way to go and not just emotional manipulation
and it took a long time. It actually took somewhere between a year and a half and two years
of praying before he sat down one day, it was a Saturday afternoon on the couch and he went
and something inside me said this is the moment and I looked over at my husband and I said what
do you want and he said what do you mean what do I want, that's a pretty broad question and
I said I mean you're clearly frustrated about something. What do you want and he said I just
want them to do what I say when I say it and I said oh okay, well if you just tell them
this is an instruction then they will do all five steps to following the instruction because
you know we taught them all five of those steps. So the steps to
following instruction are to look at the person keep a calm face, voice and body,
say okay or ask to disagree appropriately, do the task immediately and then check back. So I
said to him just tell them it's an instruction and they'll know that they have to follow all five of
the steps and he kind of got this little look on his face. Finally he was humble enough and he said
that you're right. We probably should do that again and I said yeah. Whenever I say that they
just follow my instructions. He's like I know, I've noticed. He was ready, my heart did a leap. I was
so excited that he was ready to talk about this finally and you know what? Because of our little
conversation right then he changed. He changed. I get emotional just thinking about it right now,
thinking about that I had faith, I trusted that he could learn, that he would change and that I wasn't
going to talk bad about him or try to undermine him but I was gonna teach my children the truth
and I was gonna have integrity and honesty and what I knew was right and then I was gonna wait
for that right moment and that was the moment and he literally did not go back after that. Now
was he a perfect night and a switch? No, he had to refresh on a bunch of skills from the old
days but he did it and he would catch himself doing it wrong, he would apologize for
his misbehavior and he would fix it and he now has been a person that has trained so many people
on how to overcome that tendency to be aggressive and to be emotional and how to be deliberate
and intentional and traditional strict instead. My husband truly inspires me now. How long will
it take for the person that you live with and love and are co-parenting with? I don't know. I can't say
but I do know that your tone, your approach during the whole process makes all the difference. You
have to be true to what you know is right, you have to follow your own inspired thoughts about
what your children need and the other person has to learn in their own way. So, be true but be kind
and be understanding and you will see incredible success. Now one thing that you are definitely
going to need in this journey is your own dose of calmness. I have a calm parenting toolkit that I
would like to give you for free. In fact it could be the first piece that your spouse or whoever
you're co-parenting with could use to maybe get a vision of what self-government could do for them
too. So, take a look at it and see if it's something you want to share with them as well. It's a short
introductory course but it's completely free for you and it's all about calmness.
There are 10 short lessons on how to improve your calmness really quickly and to help your children
be calm too. In the description below, this video there is a link to the calm parenting toolkit.
The link says teachselfgov.com/toolkit. Click on that link now and I will see you at that
calm parenting toolkit. I cannot wait to hear about the changes that happen in your family.