Do you wanna know how to help your child have a change of heart?
I'm Nicholeen Peck and I teach parenting and good communication as well as how to build
strong family bonds all over the world through the lens of the principle and in
this video we're going to be talking about heart changes for your child.
So in this video we're going to talk about self-government, what that is,
and then we're going to talk about what you can do to help your children learn self-government,
which is actually pretty much the same as having a change of heart. All right? I have a whole other
video on what it means to have a change of heart. So if you haven't seen that video, you may wanna
take some time and look at that video so that you can really learn what goes into having a heart
change. But for this video, let's just do a quick review on what self-government is and then how to
set up the environment of self-government in your home so that heart change can. So 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. So what that means is that a person understands
cause and effect, not just as it relates to physical objects or even their body,
but how it relates to their behaviors and their connections and interactions with other people
as well. So in short, their relationships with other people. So they recognize that if they
are short tempered, then people around them instantly disconnect from them and don't feel
like they can trust them. In fact, the people feel like they must be getting manipulated
and more people will not understand them than understand them. They also understand that if
you want to be understood that you have to be calm because calmness leads to understanding, because it
is a front brain activity to be calm. And when you understand you are in front brain. Cause and
effect, a person who understands self-government also analyzes themselves on a regular basis.
So they possess the knowledge of their own behaviors so that they can control them. This
means that they're willing to examine themselves on a regular basis and decide which behaviors will
best serve them. So they actually plan for their future and then check up on their behaviors and
compare it to their plans to see if they met their desired goal or if they need to change their plan
to get a more desired outcome. This is a very strategic and deliberate process. There are many
people who don't like to put that much strategy or deliberateness into their interactions,
but those people are so often met with excuses that they create for themselves disconnections,
mediocre communications because they never practice something better than the way they were
currently doing it. If you want to improve at anything, whether it's communication,
whether it's connection, whether it's problem solving with a person, you have to make a plan.
When a person makes a plan and a person follows through with that plan,
then a person is having a heart change. So what goes into having a heart change for a child?
Children's hearts are pretty much like adult hearts, but they have less experiences, less
moral training are oftentimes more impulsive, sometimes more selfish, and really like instant
gratification. So sometimes the way you present a heart change to a child is going to differ than
the way a heart change from an adult happens. Very often when an adult hears something that is true,
they will modify their behavior and thoughts in order to get in alignment with a truth.
So a child also wants to know what is true, but they don't always see the connection between
what is true and how their behavior might need to modify. So a parent has to help with this.
All strong-willed children are looking for truths. They want you to bring the truths up
to them so that they can feel that conviction to make a change. But the thing is they don't always
know. Because they lack life experience, they don't always know exactly how to change their behavior
in order to better solve their problem or to find greater success. This is where we come in. We've
had more life experience. Hopefully we've been changing our own hearts and our own behaviors
at the same time so we can help them through it. Most parents focus on behavior change instead of
focusing on heart change. So when a person has a change of heart or a change of behavior for that
matter, it actually requires choice. But usually you don't choose to change your behavior unless
you've had a heart change as well. So what parents should really be trying to do is target the heart
and target the choice, the moment where the child gets to make a choice, helping the child recognize
what choices could be made and what choice they ought to make to find the greatest success.
So we're going to talk about how a parent can teach their children how to make proper choices
so that they can have that change of heart. But before we do click the subscribe button, this
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So let's talk about how to help children make proper choices. The first thing is they have to
know it is their choice. Many children think they have to do things because, oh, my mom will kill
me if I don't or whatever and that those types of statements suggest I'm not really choosing this of
myself, I just have to. But we want the children to choose something for themselves. This helps
them have full buy-in. Now sometimes, do they want to make the right decision? When you say, I need
you to take over your dish, do they want to? Not necessarily, but sometimes they have to make the
right decision to just do it even if they didn't want to. But if they recognize, I still chose it,
no one made me because at any minute I could say, no, I don't wanna take over my dish after dinner.
And mom would say, okay, you don't want to. So let's do a correction about that. Let's talk
to you about the behavior and what you need to learn about it and then let's talk about what
the correct behavior should be and why. So it's just going to open the door to a teaching moment,
but we will maintain parental authority in the family because it actually is a bad lesson for
children if we don't teach them to follow parental authority. So we make sure that we do that,
we teach them and we correct them, give them opportunity to follow instruction. But if they
don't want to, they don't want to and then there are other effects that come because of that. So
we have a whole procedure in place. If they don't accept the correction, then we move to something
called the rule of three and if they go all the way through the rule of three and they've
chosen the largest of the negative consequences that we have, then even still at that moment,
they're in kind of this limbo phase where there's these three things that we do.
We repeat them about every 15 minutes until a person is ready to get back in instructional
control, and we can help them have a conversation about the situation that just occurred and accept
their consequences. The parents actually prepare the child to learn to choose by setting up a
system where there are clear choices that can be made. They can always disagree appropriately. They
don't have to do it, and then this will happen or they can do it and then this will happen. And
by the way, one isn't necessarily bad or good per se, it's just that they're seeing the cause
and effect of the system. Obviously, it's not a good choice to dishonor your parents. We should
always honor our parents. That's the good thing to do. But if they choose not to, parents don't
have to take it personally either. They just do the teaching that the system is set up to handle.
So I don't have to come up with new ideas and creative ways to manipulate the feelings of my
children. All I have to do is go to the system I already know, figure out which piece they need,
and then start right there. And I don't have to take it personal at all. In fact, I can be very,
very calm, that's the beauty of knowing a system. So they learn that every choice is their choice.
Then you teach them the skills and principles that they need in order to better govern their choices.
So we teach four basic skills to children. Those four basic skills are following instructions,
accepting "no" answers and criticism, accepting consequences and disagreeing appropriately.
If a person learns all four of those four basic skills, that takes care of 99% of their
behavioral problems. So that's actually a lot. So then when that person learns those skills,
then we also teach them the skills that we're going to use as parents to correct problems if
they choose not to use one of their skills. So this just tightens up the process so that
the cause and effect can be administered in the easiest way possible. We also teach them all
about calmness, what it means to be calm, not to be calm. We have them practice calmness and
practice all of these skills ahead of time so that there are no surprises. This decreases anxiety,
increases predictability, and helps them have all the pieces that they need in order to thrive and
to be well understood in their communications with mom and dad. Probably one of the hardest
things that a child can learn is how to accept a no answer and really drop the subject and be
calm and second to that would be accepting a consequence, how to really be calm and drop the
subject about a consequence. How to take personal responsibility for themselves. I would say most
parents are looking for a child to be soft-hearted enough to do those two things usually.
I mean, some parents are even willing to put up with, okay, well maybe they're not going
to do their chores and follow instructions, but at least they're not going to melt down
or get angry all the time. Hopefully they can do all those things, even follow instructions,
because if they won't follow an instruction from you, you can't really parent them. You're just at
that point in trauma zone all the time, and it's a state of dysfunction. What can you do then?
So you can teach your children how to be calm, calmness. Having a calm face, voice and body is
one of the steps in all of the four basic skills. And if you need help with your own calmness,
I do have a whole video called How to Have a Change of Heart as a Parent. So you might wanna
check into that one cause that could help you. But if you need help with your calmness or
your children's calmness, there's also a free gift that I'd like to give you to help with that
calmness. So I have something called a Calm Parenting Toolkit and that Calm Parenting
Toolkit is available on my website teaching selfgovernment.com. You can also get to
it by clicking the link in the description below this video. So there's a link that says Teachself
gov.com/toolkit. This toolkit has 10 lessons in it that will give you 10 different tools
that you can utilize at any moment in order to be calm when someone else isn't, to help
them get calm without losing your calmness at the same time. It really is beneficial.
It's the best first step to take to help your children be calm, to learn some of the words
that you need and some of the skills. Now, after that parenting toolkit, you might wanna follow it
up with the TSG Parenting course because the TSG Parenting course or one of the three Day Parenting
mastery trainings are the very best way to learn the entire program. So you have all of the pieces,
but at the very least get the calmness piece going and that Calm Parenting toolkit is really
going to help. So click on the link to the Calm Parenting Toolkit now, and I'll see you there.