Who does not want to know how to teach a child responsibility? That is an important thing
for adults to know how to do. I'm Nicholeen Peck, and I teach parenting. I teach self-government,
relationships, communication all over the world, and in this video, I'm gonna be sharing
with you some of my tried and true principles for how you can teach your child responsibility.
In this video, I'm gonna share with you three things that you can do to teach your child
to take responsibility for themselves. It is possible I promise. I worked with my own
four children as well as many... treatment foster children all over the world and after
over 20 years of teaching I have parents teach their children responsibility again and again.
The first thing that you can do to teach your child responsibility is to teach them that
they can self-govern. 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 you can understand cause and effect and you can
analyze yourself and make plans for which direction you want to go so that you have
the most desirable outcomes. Children can learn this. They need to know that they have
that type of power and ability. In fact, in all the years of teaching the principles of
teaching self-goverment. I have seen children from ages 2 all the way up to adulthood learn
the skills of self-government and what's more inspiring? I see how parents learn how to
govern themselves too. A key part of teaching a person self--goverment is giving them skills
that they need for success. So, inside our brains, we all are formated like robots. I
know that sounds kinda sad but it's true. We teach ourselves how to respond to similar
situations same way that we have responded to a situation before. Yet something happens
and we tell ourselves a certain thought and say certain words. The next time that something
like that occurs we will think the same thought and say the same words. This means we've got
to have new skills in place in order to not say or do the things that we don't want to
do anymore. So if you want your children to take responsibility there are key things that
they can learn. In fact, there are four basic skills that I teach parents in order to teach
their children responsibility, and here's a little tip for you everyone should know
these four basic skills. Not just the children but the parents too. In fact, there's also
parent's skills called the five teaching styles. I'm not gonna get into those in this video.
Those are covered in the training that I do on my website. But in this video, we will
touch on those four basic skills briefly. The first of the four basic skills is following
instructions. This is probably the most important skill to teach a child so that they learn
to take responsibility. To follow instruction, there are five steps, you look at the person
or situation, keep and calm face voice, and body, say "okay" meaning you accept that you
have to whatever it is, or disagree appropriately, do the task immediately, and then check back.
When a person does those five things they're following instruction. So, teaching a child
responsibility requires first giving them instructions, having them follow through with
that five-step process again and again, and then over time soon they will start telling
themselves what to do, It's true. If your child practices following instruction enough
it will just naturally start giving themselves instructions as well. So, the other skills
that are part of the basic skills are, accepting no answers and criticism, accepting consequences,
and disagreeing appropriately. Each one of those skills also has a skill set attached
to it. When your children learn these four basic skills. That transforms not only their
communications with you but also their communications with themselves. Which helps them guide themselves
to do more things that are required for taking personal responsibility. Before I get to my
final point I want to know if this skill sounds useful to you. If you think these skills are
useful give this video a thumbs up. A key part of creating an environment where a person
learns self-government. Meaning, they are going to take responsibility for themselves
is they have to have time for accountability. So, in our family we have three different
meetings every week. One of those meetings is the couple's realtionships. One of those
meetings is for the family and the other meeting is for the parents to have one on one with
each child each week. In all of these meetings, every member of the family is taking personal
responsibility and solving problems together with the other people. So, in the family meeting,
we might decide as a family that we have difficulty with people not remembering to take their
dishes over the sink after meals. Well, then the family decides on what negative and positive
consequences are going to be if a person chooses not to follow these instructions. Remember
that skill that they have, following instructions? Well, it's gonna come in handy when you're
having meetings and then the family plans and takes votes on what types of consequences
that they're gonna put in place if the person doesn't follow that instruction when the time
arises. So, they take ownership over the decisions being made in the home in these meetings.
When they take ownership for the decisions being made then it's far more likely that
they will actually control themselves when the time comes. Another meeting that is vital
for helping children learn to take responsibility for themselves in all aspects of their lives
is the mentor meetings. That's that one on one meeting that the child has with their
parents. In this meeting, their gonna be discussing their relationships, their social skills,
their academics, as well as their chores and responsibilities at home. So, with the parent
the child makes a plan for how to get better academically, to follow through on homework
and other assignments. As well as how to remember to do the responsibilities that they have
for the home. If the child does not follow through the things decided in that meeting
well, there's probably some negative consequences attached to some of the decisions that they
make for the plans for that child. But also, there will always be another meeting where
the parents meet the child to check up how things are going and to see if there's need
for any more training or adjustments that need to be made. One thing that parents would
love for their children to take responsibility for is how they're expressing themselves.
So, are they calm or they're not calm? that's a big one. In fact, many children think that
they cant be calm because of something that happens. When in reality, they can use their
free will to choose to be calm. But maybe they need the skills. In fact, maybe everyone
in the family could use the skills for calmness. For listening to this video, I have a free
gift for you. In the description below this video, there is a link to my calm parenting
toolkit. If you click on that link and go to the page that it takes you to. You can
have the calm parenting toolkit for free. This is a mini-course that is a perfect start
to get your family on the pathway to learning self-government. Click on the link below and
I'll see you there.