Hi, I'm Nicholeen Peck and I teach all over the world about parenting, good communication and how to
build strong family relationships through the principle of self-government and in this video,
we're going to be talking about how to parent without tearing children down.
So let's talk about parenting, what makes good parenting, and then let's talk about what to avoid
so that you don't end up tearing your children down when you're having interactions with them.
So what makes good parenting in a good parenting relationship? Everybody knows who they are. They
have a proper understanding of their roles. So a 15 year old son understands who am I as a 15
year old son and who are my parents? Oh, they're my teachers. They're supposed to teach me things
I'm supposed to learn from them. They keep that dynamic in place. So good parenting keeps the
family rules in a proper place so that there's function and that childrens don't start bossing
their parents around or parents don't parent their children properly and get lazy and just do what
they want to do. But instead, everybody works well together. In order to work well together,
you have to have a method of communication that's going to help you solve your problems
in a way that will not lead to any friction or contention, which means there needs to be calmness
in place. In fact, at the end of this video, I'm going to be giving you a special gift that's going
to help you with your calmness so be sure to stay tuned for that. So calmness is vital. When
a person is truly calm in their communication, then they can convey the truth to somebody
else and when I say truly calm, I mean truly because there's the type of person that's like,
I am calm. You're the one who's angry, but they're not really calm. So when a person is truly calm,
that means they're being completely honest in their communications. So this brings us to
anxiety. So in good parenting, the anxiety levels would be low. This doesn't mean that you can get
rid of all anxiety for everyone forever because all people have some amount of anxiety and we all
have to learn how to handle it. But what it does mean is that when we communicate in a way that
is truly connective and honest and empowering, that we actually end up decreasing a person's
anxiety or helping them decrease their anxiety because they don't have to worry about things.
So that means we need to be predictable in our communication. So in the teaching
self-government form of parenting, it's all about telling everyone ahead of time, this is
how we are going to communicate in this type of a situation. These are the skills that we're going
to use. This is how we'll correct them. These are the consequences. There's no surprises.
So this is very predictable and decreases that anxiety for everybody in the family and should
decrease also the power struggles that the family members might have. So this type of
parenting is called self-government parenting, where the focus of the parent is actually on
their own self-government and the focus of the child is on their own self-government,
which is the opposite of other types of parenting where the focus is to control, to manipulate,
to make to trick, to create some instant change quickly when really the heart doesn't change.
When a person is self-governing, they are focusing on having a change of heart all of the time. So
the definition of 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. When a
person is focusing on becoming the best version of themselves, then their hearts can change. So
long as they're focusing on trying to control somebody else, then they will be communicating
oftentimes in a dishonest way that will fracture relationships and lead to feelings of isolation
and increased anxiety. So the best thing you can do is open the communication, teach skills,
and make plans for success, that's what makes really good parenting. We're going to talk
about what to do, what to avoid so that you don't tear your children down in your parenting because
anybody can fall into that trap. But before we do, click the subscribe button now. On this channel,
you will find video after video of content teaching you skills, principles, tone elements
that you need in order to become the best version of yourself. So be sure to click subscribe now and
don't forget that notification bell because then you will also get the opportunity to be notified
when new content comes out. So what does it sound like when someone is tearing their child down? It
could sound different for different people. They could say something to a child, why are you always
the one to start a fight? Or they might call the child names. They might say, come here, booger,
or something like that. Those types of statements are demeaning statements that are meant to show
superiority. They're condescending, they put a person down to make them feel like that that
other person is somehow better than them in some way. Now, do parents have more experiences than
their children? Yes, they've had more experience. They should have their prefrontal cortexes fully
developed, so they've got that going for them when the children don't, they also have probably
the understanding of the way parenting should happen because of the experience that they've
had. However, does that mean that there is any merit in talking condescending to your child or
being aggressive name calling, those kinds of things? Absolutely not. It's going to create
distrust in your relationship if you do things like that and the way that it's internalized is
worth note. When a person is called a name, they feel like that they aren't valuable.
That's what happens. When you call somebody a term of endearment, they think they're more valuable.
When you call someone their name, they recognize they're valuable. When you name call at someone,
they get the impression that they are not valuable. This makes them feel like they don't fit
in with the group, with the family, whoever it is because of that name calling. When you say things
to someone such as making absolute statements like you always are the first one to start an argument,
what you are doing is you are making it seem like that person has no hope
that that person's progress has not been noted, and that it's pointless to keep trying because you
already have categorized them in a place of they always are no good, right? Because that's what
you say when you say an absolute statement like that, you might say something like you never
do your share of the dishes or you never help out around the house. Those are emotional statements
that are meant to divide, not connect, and when you correct a person, shouldn't it be
possible to correct and actually have a positive interaction with the person? Well, the answer is
yes. You can correct a person and have a positive interaction. In fact, you can feel closer to your
child during and after a correction than you even did before. So how do you do that? We're
going to talk about how to do that. But first I want to give you a few other tips. You want to
avoid the absolute statements. You want to avoid emotional statements. So statements where you are
just venting your emotions on the other person. These are also going to be very unhealthy and they
tear somebody down. They make the interaction all about you, and it feels very controlling.
Comparison statements also tear people down. So be mindful of that. When you compare one
child to another person or another child, then they feel like again, they're not valuable. They
feel disconnected from you. This doesn't help them move forward in a very good direction, or at least
for very long. In the end, if the relationship does not get strengthened by the interaction,
then probably it's tearing somebody down or having them process things that you're not wishing that
they processed about you. We already talked about how it's important to avoid name calling
and labeling as super vital that we don't label as well. So if a person has a problem with lying,
don't call them a liar, that doesn't help. Soon, they'll just embrace that because if they've
worked on it and worked on it and they have a hard time conquering the habit, soon they might just
decide something they do well and they'll embrace it, especially if they've been labeled with that
statement for a really long time. Another thing that you want to avoid doing is being negative.
So when someone is trying to improve all the time, which we need to give everybody that bit
of benefit of the doubt. People are trying, they are. We may not see what they're thinking in their
heads or how they're trying, but most people are trying to improve all the time. If we focus
on the negative or try to project a negative onto somebody by assuming the negative about them, then
that actually makes it so that they start thinking negative about themselves and they start feeling
like it's hopeless to be putting in whatever amount of effort that they are putting in. So
just being negative, just saying, well, that was good, but the negative is actually not the
direction that you want to be going. You should be talking more about the things that are going right
than the things that are going wrong. This is a good practice for motivating a person in a forward
direction, and quite frankly, it helps everybody just have hope. Negativity is not hopeful. That's
just how it is. So let's talk about how to correct a child in a way that can be connective because
that's important. So once you've checked yourself that you're calm and ready to do a correction with
your child, which we'll talk again more about calmness here in a minute but once you have
determined you're calm, you're ready, then you're going to use skills that, so I'm known most for
teaching self-government and the self-government teaching has a lot of different skills. So if you
find yourself on the TSG Parenting course, which is at teachingselfgovernment.com, then
you'll see that that course actually teaches a lot of parent skills and child skills that they need
to handle their problems in a calm connective way. So I'm going to talk about just a few of
those things right now that you can start using even before you have the full program. Although
I do recommend getting the whole program because there are going to be pieces that are missing.
So there are four basic skills that we teach children, and they are following instructions,
accepting "no" answers and criticism, accepting consequences and disagreeing appropriately. So
when a child learns to follow instructions, for instance, they learn five steps to following an
instruction. Those five steps 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. If a person
could do all five of those things, then they are following instructions. But if they miss one of
them, maybe they don't have a calm face, voice and body, or maybe they don't do the task immediately,
or maybe they don't look at the person because they're trying to stay disconnected from the
person or something like that, then that person does need to be talked to about the situation
so the connection and the relationships can be reestablished. So when a person's not willing
to do all five of those things, we know that there could be a problem in the relationship
at that particular moment. That's why intervention must occur. So then the parent does what is called
an correction. These effective corrections are positive corrections. They're connective
corrections. They actually bond the parent and the child closer to each other. So the parent's
going to be very consistent about doing their corrections. They're going to be very calm in the
corrections, and the whole point of the correction is not to tear the person down or tell the person
how bad they were, but the whole point is just to help them learn cause and effect and plan
for what to do in the future. So there is this forward movement that's in the correction that's
really sound. So to do the steps for an effective correction, there's seven steps. Those seven steps
follow into the categories of descriptive steps, action steps, and then proactive steps. So you're
going to want to be describing things that are going on and things that should be happening,
what action needs to be taking, and then preparing for future acce future success to do an effective
correction. That's what you do and if you can do it calmly and you can look at your child with love
as you're doing that correction, then they won't take it personally or as an attack or as a tear
down, especially if you've pre-taught them ahead of time, exactly how you will do those corrections
and then follow through like you said that you would. So here comes the good part. You want
a free gift? I've got a free gift for you. So I have multiple classes and courses on my website,
and one of them I would like to make free for you right now because it's the perfect introductory
course to learning about self-government, and it's called the Calm Parenting Toolkit. In the
description below this video, there is a link to the Calm Parenting Toolkit, and you can have it
right now for free. If you click on the link that's in the description below this video,
the link should say Teachself gov.com/toolkit or something like that. So click that top link,
go to the Calm Parenting Toolkit and get started today. There are 10 lessons,
10 tools that you could be using to be more calm and that you can help your children use as well,
and it will prepare you to start using some of the other skills that I've just been talking about in
this video as well as others that are available at teachingselfgovernment.com. So I'll see
you on the Calm Parenting Toolkit now go ahead and click that link.