Hi, I'm Nicholeen Peck. I'm a parenting expert and author of many parenting books. And in this video,
I'm going to teach you how to discipline your child when nothing else seems to be working.
So, you've tried lots of different parenting techniques?
Maybe some of them had a lot of rules attached to them. Maybe some of them were complicated.
Maybe some of them were very, very simple like just get angry and spank or something like that.
But for some reason, that heart of the child still doesn't seem to be touched. Well, in order to
touch the heart of a person, you have to give them the truth, you have to give them principles. So,
I teach what's called self-government. Learning to govern yourself, literally means
having a change of heart --allowing your heart or your will to control your brain
and your body and lead you toward doing the things that are good, right, and true. So,
in this video, we're going to talk about how to help a person have that change of heart. We're
going to talk about why some of those parenting methods that we've been trying don't work and
what to do to make it so that your children will listen to you, they'll follow your instructions,
and do what it is that you need them to do in your parenting interactions. There are multiple
different styles of parenting. Depending who you ask, sometimes there's 4 styles. Sometimes there's
3 styles. I think we can put them all together in 3 different styles of parenting. I have multiple
videos on this channel about styles of parenting. So, I'm not going to go into great detail there.
But what I am going to say is there are 2 styles of parenting that absolutely don't work.
And that is the really permissive, sometimes called modern progressive style of parenting. And
then there is the bully fear-based parenting which some people call authoritarian parenting. It's a
more aggressive style of parenting. Both of those styles don't work. And any combination between the
2 of them don't work. The type of parenting that does work is assertive parenting. Some people call
it authoritative parenting. Which means that it's principle-based and it is actually meant to touch
the heart of the child so that they want to have a change permanently. But it isn't taught as widely
anymore. People are trying to use bully fear-based or aggressive tactics and friendship or permissive
tactics to try and get the child's heart to get to a principled place. It's not going to work. Those
are all manipulative types of parenting except for the assertive parenting. That one is based
on truth and principle. So, why is it that these other 2 types of parenting techniques don't work?
And by the way, somebody is going to tell you their parenting program, they're not going to say,
"By the way, my parenting program that encourages spanking and yelling at your child and showing
them whose boss is bully fear-based", they're not going to say that. They're going to say,
"This is the trick that you need to know to get your child to get off that couch and stop being
so lazy." They're going to just tell you something like that that's going to touch something that you
go, "Oh, yeah. My child won't get off the couch and I hate that" or "They're always on their
phone and I want to stop that", you know? Or you'll see the YouTube videos of people
taking guns and blowing holes in people's phones and you know stuff like that because their child
won't get off of the phone. Well, that's all bully fear-based stuff, okay? Then you see
YouTube videos or parenting programs that tjust laugh at the kids and like, "Oh, they're so funny
and sassy" and "Oh, they talk back but I'm going to film this." We all know the "Listen, Linda,
listen" videos that went around years and years ago. Those are all permissive styles of parenting.
So, what is it that they have in common? Well, they both appeal to emotion. When you
are being permissive, the parent is emotional. They're like, "I don't want to deal with this.
This is too much work." Or "You know what? I just want to be their friend. Can't we just go
to warm cuddly? I'm just going to let that other stuff you know those behaviors iron themselves
out. If they want to climb the bookcases, at the neighbor's house, if they want to hit other kids,
they'll like learn in time. It's no big deal." So, it's really like phase-based mentality
when it comes to children learning and the parents disconnect from having the teaching role that they
need to have in their child's life. And when they are bully fear-based, they're manipulating
other people's emotions in the same way. They're saying, "Okay, you know what? You will fear me",
right? So, that's also emotional manipulation. Both of these types of parenting increase stress
load for everybody involved. The stress of the parents and the stress of the child. Even
when the parents being permissive and not doing anything, just trying to be the child's friend,
they're worrying that the child when are they going to come around to not doing that dumb thing.
Right? I mean unless they really have blinders on like covering their whole eyes and they're like,
"My child's perfect no matter what they do" you know? Or something like that and they're
not doing the teaching. Which you know, there are a percentage of parents that get into that
place. So, that's one of the big reasons that it doesn't work. But there are more. Some of the
other reasons that bully fear-based parenting and permissive modern progressive parenting don't work
is because they promote power struggles, they are reactive which means that you're just living in
the minute. Whatever happens happens. And they're reacting to anything and they're not necessarily
prepared. Which means that they then are also manipulative. So, they feel dishonest. It feels
like "Somebody's trying to control me" or "Maybe somebody is not actually helping to teach me
anything" like the modern progressive parent would do. So, this means there's a loss of role. And
family roles are so important. The identities in the family like what it means to be a father, what
it means to be a mother, what it means to be a 15 year old daughter; those things are self-evident
truths. And if you pull away from them and the parent acts like a teenager and the child acts
like the parent telling the parent what to do, then you have dysfunction. So, any time you start
to become too authoritarian or too permissive, you lose role which means your foundation in the whole
parenting system is undermined. And what do you have left to try to control each other? Through
power struggles, manipulation, and reactions. And those are never going to lead you toward truth
which means the heart of the child won't change. So, next we're going to talk about what to do.
But I just want to reach out to you and say hey, if you're liking this, subscribe to this channel.
I hope this is interesting to you. I try to talk about things that maybe other people don't take
the time to mention. So, then what do you do to discipline your child when nothing else
has been working? Well, you be assertive. So, what does it mean to be an assertive parent?
That means that you're proactive, that you do deliberate teaching before there's ever even a
problem? And I have a great word that describes what this is. And that is self-government. You
choose to be self-governed as a parent. And you teach the children self-government too.
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. This means that you and your child both dedicate yourselves to being in control of
you. Now, it's going to be easier for you to be dedicated to being in control of you. But it's
actually going to be easier for them to learn the skills because you've had a lifetime of habit. So,
if you want to be effective in disciplining your child, you've got to show them that you
are honest. Good discipline is based in truth and honesty. nd a person who controls themselves shows
that they are living according to truth. Now, controlling yourself doesn't just mean
having a face that looks unaffected. It means having a bond, having a connection. Being an
understanding and open-minded. But also teaching the child what they need to succeed with you and
with other people. I will forever be grateful to a neighbor, an adult neighbor who told me,
"Nicholeen, if you want to get along with your parents, you need to just say okay and be okay
every time they tell you to do something or not to do something." That changed my life. She said,
"If you do that I bet you they'll give you more freedom." I didn't believe her but i put it to
the test and she was right. Parents, we need to teach our children what they need to do to succeed
with us. They want more freedom, they want more trust. Teach them how to get it by teaching them
certain skills that they need for success. In the teaching self-government parenting model
which is very assertive, we teach 5 basic skills that take care of 99 of the behavioral problems
for the child. So, we teach them how to follow instructions, accept no answers and criticism,
accept consequences and disagree appropriately. And they can learn these skills even at the
youngest ages. These same 4 basic skills also apply to you as a parent. If you are driving
in traffic and someone cuts you off and you start complaining in the car with the children, you're
not accepting and no answer. Because to accept a no answer, you need to look at the person,
keep a calm face voice and body say "Okay, that happened" or asked to disagree appropriately
which probably you don't have time to do in traffic. And then you drop the subject. So,
if you put hand signals out your car or get frustrated and say something, those are not
disagreeing appropriately and they certainly are not having a calm face, voice, and body and
definitely not dropping the subject. I've known people who talk about some bad traffic situation
on their Facebook pages. And for days after they can't stop complaining about how bad the traffic
is in such and such place or how rude the drivers are in such and such place. That does it make
sense to me? Drop the subject, be happy, move on. Parents need to use those 4 basic skills as well.
And in the Teaching Self-Government parenting course, which is on teachingselfgovernment.com,
I talk about 5 different skills that parents need to handle the problems when the children are not
using those 4 basic skills. And both parents and children need to know exactly how problems will be
corrected. Which are a whole other amount of skill sets that parents need to learn. Although they're
not as difficult as you might think. They're pretty intuitive and simple once you put some
practice into them. After you've taught them the skills that they need and you've prepared yourself
to use skills to correct them too so that you don't get emotional and become the wrong type
of parent, then you need to focus on calmness. If a person is not calm in their interactions with
another person, then automatically, everybody thinks we're going to manipulation and power
struggling. And it's got to be real calmness. So, you need to work on what it means to be calm for
you. And you've got to teach your children what it means to. So, in every one of the 4 basic skills,
there's a step called have a calm face, voice, and body. Practice what does it look like when
a face is calm. And when it's not calm. What does it look like or feel like when a body is calm or
not calm? Or a voice, practice those things. And make sure that they understand the difference.
Then when you correct a problem because you're going to be consistent in your correcting,
if you want to handle a problem, if you want your discipline strategies to work with the children,
you must be consistent. You cannot be moving from thing to thing and creating new things every day.
You've got to find one program and stick to it. And hopefully, it's a principled program.
Something that's not going to lead you to manipulate your children. If you think that
this program might be good for you, then I would highly recommend going to some of those links down
in the description of this video and clicking on them. There's even a free Calm Parenting Tool kit
in the description of this video. If you've enjoyed this video, give it a thumbs up. And
you might enjoy my next video which is This is The Key to Calm Parenting. It's going to help you
refine some of your calmness skills and prepare to be that assertive parent that you need to be
so that you don't have to keep jumping from thing to things.