Hi, I'm Nicholeen Peck and I teach parenting. I teach parenting through
the lens of self-government which means the parents and children are able to
control themselves. In this video I'm going to be talking about why most parenting advice is wrong.
In this video I'm going to be telling you about a couple of true stories from my life
and then what types of parenting advice you want to watch out for and why. I remember when
I was expecting my first child, Quinn and I was nervous, right? You don't know what you're doing
even though you've been raised by great people who loved you and cared about you, you still feel like
am I going to be able to do this? So everybody naturally hands out parenting advice to you all
the time. You go to your baby shower and they all fill out little things of parenting advice,
you know stuff that involve what to do when your baby doesn't sleep in through the night and and
what to do when you need a little me time or whatever all these different little bits of
parenting advice and I noticed that people started loading advice to me that didn't feel right. So
there was one woman from my office who said to me Nicholeen, if there's one thing I know it's you
do not feed that baby any more than every four hours. You have to train the baby right from
the very beginning only every four hours and I thought that feels weird, that sounds like you're
dictating to a person who can't understand and what if they're hungry but then I thought
well maybe she's right. So I get to the hospital, right, I'm having the baby. Here's this cute
little baby, I'm looking at the baby, the baby is hungry every two hours and I'm thinking to myself
should I make the baby wait and scream and my nurse said to me the baby knows when it needs food
and so usually that's about every two hours, maybe three. If you're super lucky it's four but at first
you just follow the cues from your baby and I felt so good about that. It felt so much more natural
and I thought to myself that was horrible advice that that woman gave me. How selfish that that
advice was that she loaded on me and actually I entertained it for a while and thought do I have
to train my baby for what I want. This is actually a problem with a lot of parenting advice a lot
of parenting advice is selfish. People give advice based on what they want but not necessarily based
on developmentally where a child is at, what a child needs both morally, socially, physically. These
are part of the child that need to be considered when a person is deciding whether they're going to
accept advice from somebody or not. I've noticed- so I'm an older mom, I've got some gray hair you know
in fact I'm an empty nester pretty much. I've got one left at home and he's on his way out the door.
I know that there is a lot of advice out there. People are even giving me advice right now as a
up-and-coming empty nester and what I've noticed is that so much of this advice is very selfish.
Things like you do what you want to do, that child can wait. You need to have your fun. You've got to
nurture your social. You know everything about you you, you but if I could give you a piece of advice
that truly was life-changing for me, it was actually a piece of advice that I got
at the United Nations of all places. So I had a business called teaching self-government which is
all about parenting but because of the work I did teaching parents and children how to unify, there
was another organization called the Worldwide Organization for Women that asked me to speak
for them at the United Nations and later asked me to become the president of their organization
and when I was at the United Nations at the conference on the status of women one year,
there was a person who was talking about the needs of mothers and they presented something that I
actually had never considered before although it rang true instantly and that was that a mother
has certain needs for connecting with her child and that when she serves the child,
when she engages actively in parenting that child and being bonded and connected with them it
actually fills her bucket. It heals her and as I heard that I thought that is true, that's why
those moments of bonding right after birth are so magical and important for mom and baby to have. It
starts something that heals and helps mother and child all the way along through the relationship
but then the thought occurred to me. Yeah, if mom wants it. If she wants that bonding and that
connection because you do have to decide to want it. I think that there's been this idea that's been
perpetuated in our society that somehow children are a burden and a lot of the advice that people
hand out relates to this concept that somehow children are a burden instead of recognizing
that children actually maximize the health and the purpose and drive and overall productivity
of their parents. I know there's got to be a lot of parents who are watching this video so before
I get to some of my other probably interesting ideas about bad parenting advice, I would like to
know what bad parenting advice you have gotten so put it in the comments below. I know people
hand out bad parenting advice all the time and hopefully we're catching it and not following it.
So, we've talked about how parenting advice can not keep the parent child roles or bond in mind.
This is definitely a sign that it's bad parenting advice. So, if you are hoping to identify bad
parenting advice when it comes at you, if that parenting advice is only about you and how you
feel and what you want, then you can probably be pretty sure that that parenting advice is coming
from a place of selfishness and is not taking into account the entire family dynamic that
and the developmental needs of your child. So when we're taking advice from other people, we
need to be watching out for things that help our child develop, which means that they're going to
solidify identity, which means that they're going to lead to increased unity. When someone is giving
you parenting advice, does it end up leading you to unifying with your child, understanding your
child more, helping your child understand you or learn from you? Those are the types of things that
are probably going to be better parenting advice. If those bits of parenting advice are just about
controlling the child, shutting the child down or making it so that the child is seen and not heard,
those are going to be controlling and that means that they're manipulative.
Many people give parenting advice that actually is just nothing more than how to manipulate or
trick your child. So, they want to transform their child immediately instead of recognizing that each
child have transformation occur within their own heart and it's a choice that they make
and it's based upon truth. So, a key thing that a parent can understand is how do I identify
truth when I hear it? Now I'm a spiritual person and I do believe that God has ways of whispering
truth to us. In fact that there is a spirit of truth that you can feel when you come
face to face with truth. So, what I look for is when somebody is giving me advice, I will ask myself
almost as if my mind asks my heart or my spirit is this true and I start discerning
and if I feel that yes, I think this is true and it looks like it's not just selfish about the parent
and it looks like it's not just about emotions or manipulation but there is parental bond, parental
role ,there's teaching that's occurring and we're understanding development while we're doing the
teaching, then if all of those things align that I usually know I have heard a truth that I probably
am safe at applying. Another thing that you want to look for is a mentor. Every person needs to have
somebody that they can look up to as a parent. I know many people come to teaching self-government
and to learn from me because of that because maybe they didn't have a parent who could mentor them
properly in their lives. I would say the majority of people turn to their parents or grandparents
or otherwise people in their communities or in their churches that they feel like really do
understand principle, live by truth and are doing a good job at raising their children
and they will observe those people, maybe even ask pointed questions to make sure they understand
deliberate things that they can do so that they aren't the next person following bad parenting
advice or giving out bad parenting advice to other people who might come asking. Our children truly
depend upon us to be the examples of truth and one of those ways that we are the examples of truth
is through our tone. So, calmness is one of the most important things that you can do to teach
your children what really is important and what lessons they need to learn within their hearts
so that they make good choices. Since you've stayed to the end of this video, I would like to give you
a free gift and it is my free calm parenting toolkit. For everybody who sees this video,
there's a link below that will take you to this mini course which has 10 different lessons in it
for free. So click on the link that says teachselfgov.com/toolkit and I'll see you there.